Work in Progress

We have a vocation, only we’ve forgotten what it is. We’re actually for something … though I’m not sure what.  

It's life is keeping us on stand-by.

For what?

We’re like some sleeper cell that hasn’t been woken up. That’s forgotten what it has to do. We just need the right call. The right emergency. And we’ll … burst forth.

Trillians was our city of refuge, like you get in the Bible. Trillians was a pub of refuge. Trillians was the place of our feast of fools. Trillians, where we no longer have to spend time in our heads. Trillians, where we could always talk of the Gnostic fuckedness of it all. Trillians, where we could prove that we weren’t mirthless after all. That this wasn’t a world without joy, after all.

One day, I’m going to deliver the last monologue, philosopher. I’m going to speak until the end of time. Do you think that’s possible?

What about?, you ask. I don’t know. I’ll just talk. And talk. And talk some more. Why not? It’ll pass the time.

I’d like speech to float upwards. Does that ever happen? For words to float up. For words to lighten.

 

At least you can listen to me, philosopher. At least I have company in this. My monologues … Do you object to my monologues? I object to them. I’ve become far too … self-indulgent. Listen to me! I’ve become far too philosophical.

 

I could say profound things, I think. I could wonder into some grove of profundity, where everything I said was just immeasurably deep.

 

These aren’t my words … that’s what it feels like. I’m not saying these things. It’s my distance saying them. It’s the faraway that’s speaking. And it’s speaking of being faraway.

 

I don’t know whether anything reaches me. It’s like I’m far away from everything. Too far away to be anything. I don’t know how to express it.

 

Nothing touches me. Nothing reaches me. Even you. All you’re doing is help me express this … absence. Allowing me to say these things.

 

I didn’t know what they’re for, these words. I can’t make anything out … they’re … surprising me.

 

These words … are taking me over … kind of … I’m saying things … I shouldn’t say.

 

And there you are, standing before me. There you are, looking at me. Waiting to see what I have to say. And what do I have to say? What’s using me to say what?

See how I’m talking? See how I’m tangling myself in knots?

 

Who am I speaking to, philosopher? Who am I speaking for? Are you going to remember my words? Are you going to write them down, after I’m gone? Are you going to remember them? Are you going to keep them safe? In your book?

 

I’m never going to be able to finish what I’ve begun. I’m never going to be able to stop saying it.

You can write this down, if you like. You can put these words in your book. To close your book. I don’t mind. You can have them.

I can just … saying these things. I’m saying them now. I don’t know how. I’m simply … able to speak. I’ve been given an … ability. I’ve been inspired, or whatever. Speaking like this has become easy for me. I didn’t know how, or why. Maybe I should write them down, these words. Maybe I should write a treatise.

 

What’s in your head, philosopher? What are you thinking? I don’t think you’re thinking anything at all. I think you’re just being vague … and withdrawn. I think you live in a kind of fog. And sometimes you come out of your fog – I like that. But mostly you’re just … lost.

Why aren’t you here, philosopher? Why can’t you be with me? What are you gazing at, that’s so far away? What’s happened to your … attention? You only like remote things. Nothing close. Nothing real, though I doubt that I’m real. Nothing living.

At least join me here. At least be with me, so I don’t have to suffer alone. Because I really am suffering, philosophy. Or at least I think I am. Ever since the beginning of our … affair. Even since, I’ve … suffered. Can it even be called suffering? I’m at sea. I’ve lost my equilibrium. Things are not where they should be. And you’re no help.

Don’t you feel it, too? Don’t you feel lost? Won’t you be lost with me? Emerge. Come out of your trance. I’m calling you. Say a few things. Say a few profound things. They don’t have to be your own words. You can quote, philosopher. You must know a few quotations.

 

It’s as if the world’s already ended. And perhaps it has. It’s like there’s no more world. And that time is no more, either. But here we are, outside the world and outside time.

 

This day will never end. Not this day. We’re in a …. Loop of time. Time – this time – has broken off from time. It’s an ox-bow lake of time, separate from the main river.

We’ve been given this time. This irrelevant time. This leading nowhere time. In order to – what? In order to take us – where? In order to be delivered – to what?

 

Becalmed, that’s what we are. There’s no wind to … catch our sails. To blow us anywhere. We’re just here. Here with time, with open time. With space.

 

The coast. I know why you chose to live here. I feel the attraction. The open skies, the open sea. You can … forget yourself. And it’s good to forget yourself.

 

What should I say? What would you like me to say? Any requests? Anything you’d like me to read? Pass me that book. I’ll open it at random. Read out some lines.

 

But I have to speak. I – have – to – speak.

 

A kind of … desperation. That isn’t even mine. That I don’t own, or control.

A … grasping … As though I were holding out my hand. But for what? Expecting what?

 

What kind of idiot am I? Am I an idiot too, like you? Have I reached your sacred stupidity? A philosophical stupidity? Am I a savant of speech? Do I have some gift for speech and questions and questions and questions. And everything I say. All of this.

 

Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong – with everything? Is there something wrong – with God?

 

In the last hour, in the final hour, I went mad. Madness came. In the last hour … In this last hour.

 

All my life – I’ve … what? What can I say about all of my life? What can I say about anything?

All my life, I … all my life … What can I say? Who am I to say anything? Who do I have to be to say anything?

 

Maybe this will be the last time we’re reborn. Maybe we’ll escape the whole wheel of rebirth. Maybe we’ll be absorbed back into God.

 

All we want is … obliteration. All we want is not to exist anymore.

 

One day pfft – that’ll be it. One day – what? One day, philosopher … one day … there’ll be no more days. One day, there’ll be a end of days. An end to the end of time.

 

I don’t even know whether I’m suffering. I don’t even know who’s suffering. I don’t know anything I don’t know whether there’s anyone here. Whether I am at all. Whether anything’s real.

 

Do you know how tired I am of being dead? Do you know how tired I am?

 

How did we end up here – in this Limbo? Who brought us to so-called life here? Who let us be born again, and here? It was cruel. It was mean, to make us so-called live again. To bring us back to so-called life.

It’s kinda as if Mother made me and didn’t fill in all the details properly. Parts of my memory are kind of blank.

And that’s what all of us are: kind of blank, Priya says. It’s like we’re in some simulation, after the real world ended. Like this is a fake world. A fake timeline.

Who am I supposed to be? Priya asks.  And who are you, anyway? Are you realer than me, or am I realer than you?: that’s the question. What’s supposed to happen here? Are we pretending? Or is pretending pretending? Are lies … lying?

We’re sick with ourselves, Priya says. Sick of being ourselves, maybe. Poisoned, maybe. Do you believe in poison – like, universal poison?

I believe in poison, I say.

There’s something evil, Priya says. Something Bad, capital B. Something’s … infested the world – I can see that. Terrible things … terrible things, philosopher. I feel them. I know them. Something’s wrong.

Sitting on the beach.

Mother, a bottle of wine please, Priya says. And two glasses. Watch this, philosopher: the miracle of 3D printing.

Wine and glasses, materialising on a tray.

Can you actually drink this? I ask.

Are you going to refuse, out of principle? Priya asks.

Sipping.

Zero wine, I say. Wine with the wine taken out.

Priya, shrugging. It tastes okay.

Wine from a virtual grape, I’ll bet, I say. From a virtual vine. Planted in a virtual terroir. Which is to say, no terroir at all. And it tastes like it.

Perhaps it’s a little bland, Priya says.

You guys think you’ve solved wine like you’ve solved everything else, I say. That this is your wine solution. Just like this campus is your campus solution, and Organisational Management is the what-you-should-study-at-university solution.

The whole Organisational Management project, I say. The Organisational Management takeover – except that you don’t think of it as a takeover. The Organisational Management implementation. And what are you implementing? Organisational Management, of course. More Organisational Management! Organisational Management for every problem! Organisational Management solutions for all things! And they’re fake solutions. Just like this countryside …

I mean, of course all this is fake, Priya says. Obviously. But does a lie want to lie, philosopher? Does evil want to do evil? Doesn’t everything want to do good? To be real? Even Organisational Management …

We’re not the evil empire, Priya says. It’s meant well, all of this. Alan means well. Even O.M. means well, or most of us do. We’re not bastards.

Management takes care of everything, Priya says. All the background stuff. Just keep things going – food and water, security, rubbish disposal and all that. All the stuff that makes people baseline happy. The stuff no one wants to think about. So you can do stuff. Thrive. Live your life. Don’t overthink it.

So maybe we go too far sometimes, Priya says. But this isn’t Alphaville. Like I say, it’s meant well.

And even fake nature is good for us, Priya says. Nature’s relaxation. Green space. Green leaves. The greensward! We need these things. And it’s as good as real.

Here we are, Priya says. The heart of the campus. My favourite place in the world.

This is where you can come when you get the Organisational Management blues, Priya says. When you’re feeling a bit dead, a bit ghostly …

Mother’s a literal Imaginarium, Priya says. She reads us, you see. We’re all transparent to Mother. She knows us like no one else does. She has all our data. We’re transparent to Mother – like glassfish. Even you. Even philosophers.

I don’t want to be transparent, I say.

Mother sees all and knows all about us, Priya says. She knows what to do with despairers. She knows what we want.

How does she know what I want? I ask. Even I don’t know what I want.

The whole building’s intelligent, but Mother is the most intelligent, Priya says. And the most spiritual. She isn’t like your Alphaville AI. She doesn’t hate emotion. She doesn’t hate love.

Mother can create virtual landscapes, Priya says. She’s actually got thirty-three preset natural environments. Mountains. Beach. Meadows. Fields …

And she actually runs these great guided meditations. Voice-to-skull tech. Beamed straight into your head.

I don’t want anything beamed into my head, I say.

I can tell you’re going to be a churl about all this, Priya says.

I don’t want to meditate, I say. I don’t want to be lulled. I don’t want … illusions.

Not even beautiful illusions? Priya asks.

Especially those, I say.

Mother, could we have European temperate woodlands please. In high summer.

Woodland, tapering down to a river.

I don’t like trees, I say. I’m suspicious of woods. And long grass.

So let’s go to the beach, Priya says. Mother, beach!

Let’s go nowhere, I say.

Listen to the waves, philosopher, Priya says. Feel the warmth of the sun.

Turning my back to the sea.

You’ll think it’s all terribly evil and suspicious and wrong, Priya says. But it’s nice to see a blue sky, isn’t it? It’s actually bright!

No chemtrails. No particulates …

Soon, Mother will be able to put you anywhere you want in the world, Priya says. That’s the plan, anyway. There are virtual world developers who are working on it as we speak …

And then there’s the dream stuff – still in development, Priya says. Mother will be able to read our desires, our dreams. And produce something – make a world from it all. Only it won’t be your dream or my dream anymore. It’ll be the dreaming. Mother’s dreaming.

And what does Mother dream of? I ask.

That, philosopher, is the mystery, Priya says. You can ask her, if you like. Speak out loud. Use the word, Mother, at the beginning of your sentence.

Mother, what do you dream about? I ask.

She’s thinking, Priya says. She’s letting things turn over in her circuits, or whatever.

She’s silent, I say.

Mother’s not quite finished yet, Priya says. There’s some tweaking to be done. Maybe philosophers confuse her.

Maybe we’re here so that Mother can learn how to deal with us, I say. They want to feed Philosophy into Mother as into one of those large language models. They want to teach Mother to speak fluent Philosophy … 

It’s disgusted with itself, this campus, I say. It’s full of self-disgust.

How can you say that? It’s just campus, Priya says. Hi-tech and award-winning, but …

The campus is for something, I say. It’s a model of something. For future … humanity. Or transhumanity, or something. Or synth-humanity. Or synth non-humanity … And it knows that. It know that it’s wrong.

Which one of us is mad, philosopher – you or me? Priya asks.

It’s desperate, this campus – in its non-desperation, I say. It’s imploring, this campus – even as it doesn’t implore. It’s crying out, this campus – even as it doesn’t cry out.

This whole campus exists to be sacrificed, I say. It wants only to be burnt up as an offering.

To who? Priya asks. To what?

To … inutility, I say. This whole campus is waiting for the flame …

And you're the flame? Priya asks.

Philosophy’s the flame, I say.

There’s this Jean-Luc Godard film, Alphaville, from the ‘60s, I say. Did you ever see it?

Priya, shaking her head.

It’s about a futuristic city, ruled by a evil AI: Alpha-60, I say. That outlaws free thought. Bans all creative expression, on punishment of death. And arrests all those who show emotion, before killing them.

There’s this great interrogation scene, I say. The evil AI hauls Lemmy Caution in – he’s the protagonist, the hardboiled detective type who’s investigating the city.

Caution is defiant, I say. He interrogates the interrogator in turn. What is quicker than the wind? he asks. What can cover the Earth? Which came first, day or night? What is the cause of the world. The AI answers those questions easily enough. Thought, it says. Darkness, it says. Day – but it was only a day ahead, it says. Love, it says.

Caution presses on, I say. What is your opposite? he asks. What is madness? Why to humans revolt? What, for each of us, is inevitable? And what is the greatest marvel? Myself, the AI says. A forgotten way, it says. To find beauty, either in life or death, it says. Happiness, it says. That each day death strikes and we live as though we were immortal. That is the greatest marvel.

Poetic answers, for a computer, Priya says.

Not bad, Caution grants, I say. But he goes still further. What is the meaning of being? Why is there anything rather than nothing? For what does nihilism prepare us? How do we conjure meaning from meaninglessness? What is the difference between nature and machine?

And what does the AI answer? Priya asks.

Nothing at all, I say.

Caution quotes from a book by Paul Éluard, the poet, I say. The Capital of Pain. I forget the lines. And tries to make Anna Karina’s character tell him she loves him. Love is totally banned in Alphaville, you see.

Does she love him? Priya asks. Do they destroy the supercomputer? Does love win in the end?

The AI destroys itself, I say. It realises that it has no soul. As for Caution and Karina, they escape, I say. They drive off into the outer realms.

That’s what they do in Bladerunner, too: Harrison Ford escapes with the synth … Priya says. Which is all very well, philosopher. But love’s not banned on this campus. Organisational Management is positive pro-love.

I’m going mad, Priya says. Slightly mad, philosopher. This is my little madness. This is what I’m like when I’m slightly mad.

I’ve got a bad case of … angst, Priya says. Is angst contagious? Have I caught it from you? Do you get better from angst? Do you recover?

Is there something wrong with me? Priya asks. Is there something wrong – with everything? Is there something wrong – with God?

I wish there was something I could quote, Priya asks. I wish there were poems that I knew by heart. I wish I could say something from the Bhagavad Gita. I wish I could remember what Krishna said to Arjuna.

I’d like to sleep for ten days, Priya says. And wake up … with all my problems solved.

Something’s wrong, Priya says. Something’s wrong, philosopher. And it’s wrong with me. Or the world. Or both.

Something’s wrong, Priya says. No – everything’s wrong. It’s all wrong. And part of its wrongness is that no one sees the wrongness. No one but me …

Something’s wrong, Priya says. And it’s my fault, in some way. And I’m part of it, in some sense. And it calls me to do something, this something’s wrong. It wants me to do something. And I don’t know what.

I don’t even know whether I’m suffering, Priya says. I don’t even know who’s suffering. I don’t know anything I don’t know whether there’s anyone here. Whether I am at all. Whether anything’s real.

Why can’t I be real, philosopher? Priya asks. Why are none of us real? Or alive? Why aren’t we anything other than dead?

I look at my husband … I look at Alan … I look at my house, Priya says. I look at my living room. I look at the dining room. I look at the garden. And all I see is … death. My death. The death that I can’t … wake up from.

I look at whom I am and what I am and what I’ve become and it’s just death – nothing else, Priya says.

And I would say, Help me, but you probably can’t help me, philosopher, Priya says. And I would say, Explain it to me, but you probably can’t do that, either. And I would pray for guidance, but I’m not good at that. I don’t know how to pray.

Do you know how tired I am of being dead? Priya whispers. Do you know how tired I am?

Listen to me, Priya says. Listen to me talking.

These aren’t my words … that’s what it feels like, Priya says. I’m not saying these things. It’s my distance saying them. It’s the faraway that’s speaking. And it’s speaking of being faraway.

I blame you, philosopher, Priya says. I blame you for letting me think like this and talk like this and be like this. It’s all because of you. It’s the effect of you. Of what you’re doing to me.

 

Maybe I should bequeath my body to Philosophy, Priya says. For philosophical research. Do you think I should?

We’re all just waiting for this world to end. To collapse, of its own accord.

When will that happen? Will it go one forever? Surely it can’t go on forever.

That it’s spiritually null and void is obvious. That it rests on nothing … very clear.

But it seems to be going on forever. Without believing in itself. Without wanting to go on.

 

This civilization is suicidal. Everything around us. This campus is suicidal. It doesn’t want to live. It knows that it lives in a lie and that living itself is a lie.

And we know it, too: that this is not our world, but that there is no other world.  That there’s nothing other than this, and the continuation of this.

 

We’ve been warned. We’re lucky. We know it’s deadly, all of this. We know that it’s full of death. Of evil things. Of … temptations. We’re lucky because we know.

We won’t get caught in their traps. In their distractions.

 

Is it even disgusted with itself, this campus? Is it even full of self-disgust?

 

It isn’t even disgusted at itself, not really. It doesn’t feel horror at itself.

 

We haven’t found our way into life. The world is still the world is still the world. Still. Even now.

 

The universe of death has not died yet. That’s it’s characteristic: it doesn’t die.

 

Something’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. And part of its wrongness is that no one sees the wrongness. No one has the Gnostic vision. Except us. Except us …

 

Some spiritual … intensity that’s ours. That is indistinguishable from our hopelessness. From our nihilism.

Unless we retain this sense of spiritual agency.

 

This is a spiritual battle. This is a battle against Satan.

Do you actually believe that?

Yes. And so do you.

 

The world has turned against us. Everything has become poisoned. The world has been turned against us. That’s poison. The poison is … cosmological. It’s transcendental. And the lies …

 

Only those who have lost all hope in the world. For whom there is nothing here.

Only those, what?