Work in Progress

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?

Here we are. The heart of the campus. The heart of the heart of the campus. It’s the base of operations.

 

When the world burns, you can always come up here.

Like a lovely panic room.

 

Mother’s wise.

I didn’t know a machine could be wise.

Mother’s more than a machine.

 

She knows what to do with despairers. She knows how to cure your despair.

 

This is the countryside we need. This is how it should be served up. Homoeopathically. A little dose here and there, during the day.

Can’t you feel your blood pressure lowering?

 

Nature, philosopher. Surely you don’t object to nature? Surely you aren’t disgusted by nature? You can’t be.

Nature’s good for us. Are you saying it isn’t good for you? Nature’s calming. Nature’s what we need after a day of work. And during the work day. As intervals in the work day.

Nature’s relaxation. Green space. Green leaves! The greensward! We need these things.

Fake nature …

But it’s as good as real.

 

There should be one of these in every home. And there will be, in time. Mother will be extended everywhere. Mother will be omnipresent. There’ll be a new cult of the divine mother, won’t there?

 

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

So let’s go to the beach.

 

Mother’s a scholar, too. Ask her humanities questions.

 

Mother supersedes the humanities. She can explain it all, whatever you want to know. The humanities haven’t been lost, philosopher. They’ve been taken up into the cloud.

Must be daunting for you. All the humanities knowledge. In the mother-cloud.

 

We’re all transparent to Mother. Mother knows us like no one else does. She has all our data.

 

We’re transparent to Mother – like glassfish. Mother cares. Mother sees all and knows all about us. It’s care, philosopher.

 

Mother sensed you. She anticipated you. She knows what you want, philosopher.

What do I want? I don’t know what I want.

 

Can mother do philosophy? Only someone who can go mad can do philosophy.

 

The questions he asks to Mother:

What is the meaning of meaning? Is this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?

 

Thunder – Mother’s having bad dreams. Which you’re giving her. She’s probably reading your philosophical thoughts.

 

Mother’s glitching. There’s a glitch in the Matrix, philosopher. A philosophical glitch.

 

God, I’m not sure what was supposed to appear. What have you done to the greensward, philosopher?

Don’t break mother.

 

Mother needs time to repair herself. Mother needs to mend Mother.

 

You know you broke mother, don’t you? There was an earthquake last night. A crack through the campus. They might declare it unfit for human civilization. God has spoken, or something.

Heroic. You’re still awake.

I can’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep.

I had a splendid night of sleep last night. After a splendid day of study.

Don’t lie.

 

What intelligence did you gather on your romantic walk, Shiva?

Explaining.

Mother … maybe Mother’s the clue. The campus AI. Like the one in Alphaville. You turned Mother philosophical. That was a genius move. You struck a great blow against the enemy.

Mother repaired herself.

Sure she did. But the campus is cracked …  

 

You hit them with a literaro-philosophical bomb! With the most profound question!

They’ll just go round scratching their heads. Wandering what had happened. Why they felt so existential.

 

And we’re really meeting the others? God, I can’t stand it when they’re hungover.

It’s an emergency meeting. We have to decide what to do.

Do about what?

The Organisational Management move, of course.

Can’t you just accept it.

We’re not supposed to just accept it. Even Cicero wouldn’t want us to accept it.

Fuck Cicero. I thought you’d decided it was all part of Cicero’s masterplan. That’s what you were telling me on the ferry.

It’s complicated.

Sure it’s complicated. Everything’s complicated. I think there’s a way to beat it. Last night … Mother …

You’re gabbling. You should get some sleep. You’re addled by romance. Romance can be positively deranging. And romance with a bot.

She wasn’t a bot.

She was an Organisational Management manufactured synth – clearly. She was Anna Karina from Alphaville.

 

A giant crack has appeared in the campus. Did you hear about that?

It’s the bore. It’s fracking.

Something’s going on.

Something’s always going on.

It’s geological. It’s philosophical. It’s geophilosophical.

You’re delirious.

Of course I am. It’s proof … that thought can have efficacy. Of guerrilla attack …

The crack? You really think that was your doing? You’re mad. Of course you’re mad. It’s not even an interesting madness, that’s the problem … Meanwhile, have been doing real work.

 

We thought the campus was impregnable, but really …

Okay, Luke Skywalker. Calm right down. What did you take last night?

 

You were always the chosen one.

No, you were the chosen one. Cicero had her highest hopes for you. It was your literary turn. That’s what interested her. Trust me, I knew her better than you.

 

Does Priya actually exist? Did you look her up on the website.

She’s real. She’s human …

You’re infatuated. How tedious.

Were you ever infatuated? Were you infatuated with Cicero?

 

What kind of people are we, Shiva? Where are we headed? What’s happening? What’s going on? Is there any rhyme or reason in this crazy world?

 

You fucked up Mother. You hit ‘em where they were weak. It was some kind of genius move, Shiva. You sensed their weakness, and then …

I just hung out with a hottie.

Sure you did. The manager’s wife. Or some AI creation. Some hologram beamed out by Mother.

She wasn’t a hologram, believe me.

Some android, then.

I don’t believe she was an android.

Perfectly modelled to tempt a philosopher called Shiva. To turn his head. To send him gaga. I’m not criticizing. I’d be seduced too, believe me. I could do with some seduction. Life’s getting very boring. But you turned it around, Shiva. You educed her. Then you fucked up Mother. You turned their weapons upon them.

 

There’s a crack running right through it, that’s what I heard. From one end of it to another.

Just some geological thing. An earthquake, or something.

Newcastle really isn’t on a faultline. That’s the most unlikely thing of all.

It’s probably caused by all their drilling. They’ve sent that bore down, haven’t they?

I think it was you and your profound questions. Your philosophico-literary questions. Or your literaro-philosophy ones. See, I knew reading all that Blanchot was good for something.

 

And the weather seems to have changed, have you noticed. It’s getting positively springlike … you’ve broken the spell, Shiva. These are happy times, you see. You’ve got them on the run. They’re full of hubris, thinking they could just absorb philosophy. But their campus is cracked. They're panicked.

The thirteenth bottle is the last wine. It’s the culmination of a whole eschatology of wine. It’s the wine all the others have been leading up to. That will make all of them make sense.

 

We’ve been ascending a wine ladder, don’t you see?

Or descending it. We’ve been going down, down, down a spiral staircase.

 

There’s been a method – of sorts.

A method in our drinking?

 

We always wanted to believe Cicero was wise. For her to know what she was doing. To sheer our fragile craft. To send us in the right direction.

And it turns out she was guiding us all along.

 

She’s rewarding us for our years in the part-time wilderness. To show us the meek really do inherit the earth. That the stupid are the greatest geniuses. That the great inversion could be inverted in turn.

Through making us drink bad wine?

 

Was the thirteenth bottle Cicero’s plan?

Everything was Cicero’s plan.

The thirteenth bottle wasn’t in Cicero’s rack. There was an empty space where it belonged. We were led to it.

 

Thirteen bottles is the end of the course of anti-poison.

Do you think?

It’s a cure. A cure in doses.

 

The thirteenth bottle turns lies into truth.

Is that right?

It’s the messianic wine.

 

So the thirteenth bottle stands in for all the poison in the world. it’s symbolic.

 

The thirteenth bottle. It’ll be your test. You’ll become Neelkanth, the blue-throated one.

And then what?

I don’t know. Get superpowers. Head out onto the astral plane and defeat the Bug in solitary combat.

So I’ll suck all the evil out of the world? What’ll happen then? Will the word be saved? Will the world end?