Grand Junction (71 page)

There are two forces. The two entities are worlds. The Territory is the place where these two worlds have met.

Animals that do not rely on their senses cannot survive more than three days; those that do not rely on their instinct have a life expectancy of only a few hours.

The old Territory crow’s instincts rise up inside it in a vociferous clamor. Something is going to happen. Something is going to happen to the humans in the Territory. Something that has not yet hit them.

Something is probably going to happen to all the humans on Earth. Something they have forgotten.

Something that no animal, in the Territory or elsewhere, ever forgets: the world changes with disconcerting ease. The process is even simpler when the world itself is in control of it.

*   *   *

It is the two androids from the Ring who mention the phenomenon first. They “feel” its manifestation, just as they can “feel” the enemy android somewhere in the Territory. Link de Nova’s mother is probably experiencing something similar, but she isn’t sharing it with anyone, except perhaps in deepest secrecy. In any case, she is not the one who comes to find Yuri and Campbell.

“An antiscriptural attack?” gasps Chrysler, disconcerted.

“Yes, we’ve been discussing it with Professor Zarkovsky and Mr. Djordjevic. It is the other side of its attack against language. The last phase seemed to spare fourth-generation androids, but what is happening now is different. It ‘unwrites’ writing. We can feel, acutely, microprogramming routines—nonessential ones, for now—being erased from the biological nanogenerators created by our artificial genetic code. This offensive will not touch humans directly, unlike the other side. Androids and humans—we find ourselves up against each of the two alternate faces. For us, it is numbers transformed into written language on which our existence depends. For you, it is language as speech that can be digitized and that lies at the core of your singularity, your voice, your senses, your difference. The Thing is hitting both faces. It wants and intends total domination.”

“Do you agree with us, as Link said you did, that this ‘Thing’ is not an exterior entity capable of incarnating itself, but rather the demultiplication of the disincarnation of the human species, transforming all singularities into generic digital form?”

“Yes. The second phase, the antiscriptural attack, will not spare any android surviving on Earth. That is part of its plan.”

“A plan? Well spotted. A plan necessitates a person who thinks it up,” says Yuri. “I think, more and more, that the Thing, this devolutive global mutation, has managed to implant itself into a human singularity. I mean, that’s what I thought until now. But thanks to you, I understand. It isn’t a human singularity in which the Thing has individuated; even to a small extent, that would be impossible for it.”

“What, then?”

“A fourth-generation artificial human like the two of you, and like Link’s mother—and like this unknown android whose presence you can sense. Are you following me?”

They are following him perfectly.

They won’t have a chance against this artificial human, even though
they have come from the Orbital Ring—or maybe
because
they have come from it. They will not be able to fight an android in whom the devolutionary mutation has ontologically crystallized.

In a manner analogous to the creation of the “natural” neohumanity, the unknown android, through its “personal” relationship with the Thing, is, perhaps, going to initiate a line of neo-androids living in harmony with the rest of the population. The plan must include eliminating all the previous androids, so that humanity will consist only of a single huge
registered trademark
, monomodular, monoserial, of “human” androids. It is easy to see the goal: an overall lack of differentiation among all humanity, the annihilation of any individual singularity.

Yuri muses that the Thing’s project is growing clearer day by day. A perfect equalization of everything, of the whole world, even of the less-visible things it contains.

Everyone equal in everything. Everything equal to nothing.

Paradise on New Earth.

“In order to overcome the double ontological constraint that prevents it from incarnating,” explains Yuri, “the postmechanical entity is resolving the problem by disincarnating men through the numerization of their bio-physiques; and now, wanting to truly imitate God, it has decided to copy the principle of individuation—without, of course, acting on humans. So it is choosing to demultiply inside a surviving android, one it is ‘updating’ in its image, in order to make this android its interface with neohumanity. Its mission is to prevent the Coming of the Kingdom and to update Link de Nova’s remission processes, and to transform man into its image as fast as possible. It has to destroy the other androids, because they are ‘creations of the creation,’ and thus direct competition for the coming neohumanity, which will be a sort of fifth-generation android, and above all it has to destroy the Scriptures. The Thing, Post-Humanity, will do anything to destroy the Word and eliminate even the slightest possibility of its incarnating on this Earth, in any form.”

The two astronauts do not reply. Campbell simply says, “Welcome to the Territory,” with his usual dry humor, the corner of his mouth quirking and his expression saying to Yuri: “You’re talking like a Christian now.”

And Yuri must admit that Chrysler is right. If he is talking like a Christian, it is because his language, too, has been irresistibly transformed during these past few months.
If I speak the language of Christians
, he thinks, shaken by an interior seismic shock wave,
maybe it is because the Christians
are speaking it through me. Maybe it is because this is the language that is individuating in me, completely. Maybe it is just a sign that I am converting
.

I am converting to Christianity even though Rome has fallen, the Vatican is destroyed, and the last Christians alive on this Earth are all gathered here, in this city built of extinct machines
.

I am converting to Christianity though Christianity has ended. I am converting to Christianity even though I have twelve deaths on my conscience
.

In the end, he admits, he is a Man of the Territory, and whatever happens, he will remain so. It is the Law of Bronze. These are the rules and regulations of life in Grand Junction.

In the Camp-World, hope arises only after everything else has been destroyed.

“There is a fundamental difference between my first strategy, the one using the Territory Radio, and what I am doing with the Neomachine,” says Link de Nova. “We only have a limited number of radios and they have to be distributed as troubleshooting objects. But the Antenna has no need of troubleshooting objects. The Ark, the Neomachine, acts directly,
immediately
, just like the Thing, on human bodies and minds, passing through terrestrial magnetic lines, which are also aerospatial, as you know if you’ve ever seen the aurora borealis. I’ve decided to go back and use the Thing’s methods against itself; my Antenna imitates it. Unlike the radios, whose numbers are finite and whose distribution is random and subject to conditions beyond our control, the Neomachine’s influence increases via the principle of infinite division. It will double regularly in intensity as well, and in the scope of its power. In two or three weeks it will make a complete circuit of the Earth.”

“There’s a new problem, Link,” says Yuri simply. “The Professor and we have been told by the astronauts already; your father has been despondent in his trailer since yesterday.”

“What’s happening? I know HMV is completely immunized. It’s the Fortress, Yuri.”

“This is different, Link. So different that we didn’t see it coming.”

“What is it?”

“The last mutation of the Thing, the numeric devolution … it isn’t only attacking humans.”

“You mean it could be a danger to the few surviving androids?”

He’s thinking of his mother, of course, says Yuri to himself. And of the two astronauts. But that isn’t the problem.

“Yes, Link, but that’s just a consequence. It isn’t attacking the mechanical or the biological or even the symbolic—it’s attacking the disjunctive synthesis of the three.”

“Language. We already know that, Yuri.”

“Yes, but I told you, it isn’t only attacking living organisms.”

“Then what? Only living organisms have language.”

“Yes, but only human organisms, bionic or not, know how to
write
language. Only humans know how to communicate
in writing
. Do you see what I mean?”

Two or three seconds pass, during which time hangs as if from an atomic bomber.

“No. Not that.”

“Yes,” says Yuri, simply. “That. A direct threat to the Library. To
all
libraries.”

The first books attacked are, in order: the
Adversus Haereses
by Saint Irenaeus of Lyon; the
Homilies on Genesis
by Origes, and the
De Trinitate
by Saint Hilary of Poitiers. When Zarkovsky tells them the news, Yuri knows that the Thing is no longer acting in a random manner at all. It is following a plan. From quantitative, random, and numeric massification/annihilation, it has moved on to qualitative destruction based on the omnipresence of the zero, the null figure, the empty whole. From mass killing carried at random consequential to the human multitude–turned–biological scrap heap, it has moved on to a surgical attack against written singularity.

When, at the end of the afternoon, the Professor tells them that
On the Division of Nature
by Erigena, the
Treatise on Incarnation
by Jean Cassien, and a work on the Holy Spirit by Basil of Caesarea have been taken in turn, Yuri is not even particularly surprised at the Thing’s strategy.

Now the war is total; it involves every detail of existence—physical, mental, concrete, symbolic, cognitive, organic, perceptive, linguistic, written. Every aspect of Being is now a battlefield, an infinite battlefield that goes far beyond the limits of the World.

What is happening here on Earth, he muses later in the day as he walks toward Link’s hangar, is the pivotal structure of an event involving the whole Cosmos.

A few meters farther on, as the hangar comes into view, an incandescent
burst of intuition illuminates his mind:
And it is because it was on this particular Earth that this particular humanity was created
.

Yuri waits for night to fall before he confides in Chrysler. The night has always been their greatest ally—perhaps their only one. The night is when secrets are shared. The night is when betrayals happen. The night is when the invisible can be made visible.

The hours spent that afternoon in Link’s hangar were enough to make it clear that they have reached critical mass. Total war with no possibility of mercy. Conduction at the subatomic level. Conduction at the level of infinity. Everything dead is alive; everything they believe to be alive bears death; the future of man lies in a secret fold of the past; the future represented by neohumanity is a simulated temporality where the present is indefinitely looped back upon itself.

Between the Thing—probably singularized in an organic simulation of a human being—and Link de Nova—more-than-human born of a singular ontic narration, created by a woman become an angel and a cyborg killer become a man, a strange relationship is polarizing on the axis of tyranny and mutation.

For the Thing, the devolving mutation permits it to extend the collective tyranny of Humanity over itself in absolute determinism. For Link, the tyranny exercised by the mind over Electricity and Machines permits it to glimpse Light as the moment when any mutation “signals” individuality in its infinite freedom, its
determining
freedom.

Yuri knows his friend has been waiting from the beginning for the conversation, when he will say what he has to say. When they will discuss the secret that Campbell can only discern in general terms—as a “presence”—and that Yuri can neither hide nor fully understand. Now comes the instant of primordial ignition. The act. The story in action.

“I spoke to Link today.”

“Right; we went to see him this morning, remember?”

“I went back to see him alone—not for any particular reason; we’ve been doing it for some time.”

Chrysler does not answer; this is a revelation: Link and Yuri are developing a unique relationship, one unlike any other. He tells himself that it is a sort of translation of his own relationship with the young Yuri a dozen years ago. A brotherhood. There are eleven years’ difference in age between each of the three of them. Chance is truly a god for Sunday’s engineer.
Campbell waits patiently for Yuri’s tongue to unfreeze, for the words to come from the man he considers his younger brother.

“Listen. Link has a project. I think he concocted it with Judith Sevigny. It fits in with the rest; the station connected to the Ring, the Territory Radio, the Neomachine …”

“Judith Sevigny? Are you sure?”

“Link told me so.”

“What project?”

“You won’t believe it. Really.”

“Is there anything left in the Territory I wouldn’t believe? Don’t treat me like an innocent, Yuri, no matter how much progress you make.”

“Okay. They want to build an ark.”

“An ark?!”

“Yes, a space ark to take the communities of HMV to the Ring.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Yuri, how exactly are they planning to do this?”

Yuri doesn’t answer. He gazes at the little biophosphorescent lamp shining in Campbell’s section of the cabin; for his part, an old LED diode screen serves as a night lamp near his own bed. They are talking from their respective segments of the cabin through the metallic half-opening the Ford Travelaire creates between them. Yuri looks often out the airplane window next to his bed. The airplane debris is hardly distinguishable from the landscape overtaken by vast expanses of neodesert plunged in darkness. The whole world is becoming a giant bunker. The whole world will soon resemble terrain devastated by a sort of indefinitely renewed microcatastrophe. A world in which any real accident will be impossible.