Finally the strange woman began to speak, »Welcome to the Ishtar Temple!«
»Uh... thanks,« was the only thing I came up with.
»I hope you like our club and enjoy your stay with us,« said the woman, still sitting motionless.
»Yes... yes, it’s really nice here.«
»They told me you’ve been visiting us regularly, Mr. Dexter.«
»You know my name?« I asked, astonished.
»You’re a VIP member.« It was such a straight, businesslike answer that it somehow didn’t fit in with this unreal setting.
»Yes, yes, of course,« I said, a little confused. »I’m glad to finally meet the owner of the club.«
»The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Dexter.« The owner, who had been introduced to me as Sarenna, finally rose to her feet and came down the three steps to us. »Well, what do you think of the place where we are now? What do you think it is?«
»Well, you tell me. I’ve been wondering that myself,« I replied.
»I thought it would astound you,« said Sarenna and confidentially put her hand on my shoulder. I caught myself staring at her breasts, which were clearly visible under the transparent black fabric. Around her neck she wore a gold amulet with the club’s logo. »This is no ordinary strip club,« she explained.
»I’ve realized that somehow,« I said and looked around the strange room.
»We, the dancers, the staff and I are like a family here. We share everything here, the income from the club and each other’s hardships in life. Evelyne here is like a daughter to me.«
»And what about the girls who recently left the club, Natasha for example?« I asked.
»Not everyone feels comfortable in our family. They leave us before they become a part of it. Well, I can’t force anyone. Everyone here is free to join or to leave,« Sarenna replied.
Somehow I was suspicious of this whole scheme. This was a very strange place. Apparently it was a kind of secret underground cult rather than a legit business. I had read about feminist circles of self-declared witches in the Internet. They even had annual gathering at an event called Burning Man somewhere in the desert of Nevada. But why had I been invited here? I was just a customer, albeit one with a VIP membership card.
I walked around the room and looked at the details. I stopped in front of the bronze bust of the strange man. Evelyne followed me. »Who is this? The club’s founder, your father?«
Sarenna smiled and Evelyne answered in her place, »This is Lord Sargon.«
»And he came up with the idea for all this?« I wondered.
»He lived four and a half millennia ago,« Sarenna explained as she approached Evelyne and me.
»That was a long time ago,« I said appreciatively. »Don’t tell me, this club here is so old.«
Sarenna continued: »Sargon of Akkad was a wise man. He understood how humanity works, how the human brain thinks. Otherwise he would never have succeeded in making himself Lord of the Four Quarters. He knew that every social institution, every state, every worldly entity could only survive for a very limited time. He knew that there is only one thing that is able to preserve a system, an institution over many millennia. And that thing is religion. Religions outlast kingdoms and nations. Only those nations where secular and religious powers are united have managed to last for millennia. Think of the ancient Egyptians, whose pharaohs were also worshiped as gods! Think of the Japanese Empire, which has existed for three thousand years and is based on the religion of Shinto! To have an empire that lasts for millennia, you must also have a religion that supports it.«
I wondered what she was getting at with her history lesson. What did all this have to do with this place and the club?
Sarenna continued, »So Sargon called his kingdom the Ina Palê Ištar, the Realm of Ishtar. Ishtar was the goddess of war and love in ancient Mesopotamia.«
Slowly I got the idea. »Ishtar!« I said. »So that’s where the name of the club comes from. Ishtar Temple – the temple of Ishtar. I’m not sure though, if your goddess would approve of that kind of... well... rather profane temple,« I said with a grin.
»She would approve it,« Sarenna corrected me. »Ishtar was the goddess of physical love. Her temples in ancient Mesopotamia were essentially not much different from this place. There were special priestesses, so-called hierodules, holy prostitutes, who entertained the faithful in their temple, who in return gave their offerings to the temple. As you can see, Evelyne is a hierodule at our temple.«
Forgetting about the pseudo-religious bullshit, I began to understand what she was trying to say and what a clever business principle she had developed. »Very cunning! So here you are disguising your strip club as a religious temple and thereby placing it under the constitutional protection of religious freedom. This makes everything here legal, and the authorities cannot interfere without being accused of suppressing the free exercise of religion. You’re really pretty clever.
Sarenna nodded. »We are an officially registered religious organization and a member of the largest American Wicca association Covenant of the Goddess. Wicca is the third largest religion in the United States with over ten million followers. No one would dare to mess with us. This gives us here sufficient freedom from interference by the authorities. What judge or prosecutor would want to order a raid on a church?«
I laughed in relief. »And I wondered. You gave me quite a scare with all that hocus-pocus. But it’s good to know that we’re really safe from the cops here.« I patted the bronze bust on the head. »So this guy here gave you the idea for all this?«
»The Ina Palê Ištar was later destroyed by the Gutian Horde,« Sarenna continued. »But Sargon created something that outlasted his worldly empire. At that time he gathered five thousand faithful around him to oversee and protect the empire. The Akkadian Empire is no more, but the religion of the empire has survived. The goddess Ishtar is still here. We are here. And we are not alone. The idea survived.«
»Are you really serious about all that religious posturing?« I asked to clarify this point.
»What you see here, the rituals and ceremonies, the hocus-pocus, as you call it – these are all just formalities, irrelevant in content, but important for people. Without them the religious scheme would not work. But only the content is really relevant,« Sarenna explained.
»I see,« I nodded. »It’s part of the game, and you have to play it.« I thought I understood at that point, although I didn’t yet at that time.
She just nodded silent with a slight smile.
»Do all your dancers up there know about this place down here?« I asked.
Sarenna replied: »I told you, we are like a family. Of course they do.«
»And do they all take part in this religious hocus-pocus? Even Natasha?« I asked further.
»Not everyone wants,« she admitted. »As you probably know, Wicca is a very controversial religion among some. For some, it’s a reason to leave us. But in Natasha’s case, that was not the only reason. The club just wasn’t her world.«
I kept quiet. That was also my impression of Natasha.
Sarenna walked up the steps to the elevation on which she had been sitting before. She took one of the incense sticks from the small stand on the floor in front of the statue that had burnt out. Then she held it in the flame of one of the oil lamps and lit it again. As she put it back, she said, »As you can see, there are two separate worlds here, the club and this place below. I myself do not interfere much in the business of the club. My employees can handle this quite well without me. And I have complete confidence in them.« She straightened up and came down the stairs. »This gives me much time for reflection and meditation.« Apparently, she had just gotten into one of her meditations when we entered.
»Do you meditate from time to time?« she asked.
I suppressed an amused grin at this question. »Uh... no, not really.« I definitely wasn’t one of those esoteric nutcases.
She looked at me seriously. »You should try it sometime. I could teach yo
u.«
»Well, you know... I don’t really have that much time. All the stress these days...« I tried to talk my way out of it.
»It is precisely then, that it is particularly important to find inner peace,« she said. »Only in calm waters can you see to the bottom. And in our modern times, it’s difficult to see the bottom of things because of the turbulence on the surface.«
I should probably say something clever in response, but I didn’t come up with anything better than »... well, possibly.«
»Today we live in a time of utmost importance,« she continued. »After two hundred thousand years of existence, man now stands at a crossroad in his history. Or perhaps I should say after four billion years of existence, organic life is at a crossroad. It is time for the next step in cosmic evolution.
Are you familiar with the concept of the technological singularity?«
I had heard it before. In fact, it had been mentioned more and more often in the news, but I wasn’t quite sure if I had understood what it meant. »It has something to do with the fact that computers are smarter than people now, doesn’t it?«
Sarenna was standing very close to me now. Her eyes had a strange, almost sinister expression. Even stranger was the absence of wrinkles on her face, which should under normal circumstances reflect her age, even from this close up. But her skin was thin and her face angular, a clear indication that she was much older than she looked. »If you want to put it that way,« she said. Then she began to explain: »It is the birth of a super intelligence, an intelligence as superior to man as man is to a housefly. It means progress at an ever-increasing speed. And it means something new that the human mind is unable to imagine, because its intellectual capacity is not sufficient for it. With the creation of the first machine with a greater intelligence than that of man himself, biological evolution has reached its final stage. From now on, machines will take over the heritage of man.
She spoke just like the most extreme technocrats, the so-called trans-humanists. It was an idea that I wasn’t comfortable with at all. »These are not exactly pleasant prospects for us,« I replied. »I’m actually quite content being human. I don’t need something, which thinks it is superior, to reduce me to an obsolete and soon discontinued model.«
Sarenna turned away from me again and went to the splashing fountain on the other side of the room. »Even the fish is content to be a fish. And yet evolution has not stopped at the fish.« She sat down at the edge of the fountain and let her right hand slide through the water. She had crossed her slender and muscular legs, which, when seated, were no longer covered by the transparent fabric of her robe. Suddenly she made a lightning-fast movement with her hand and finally pulled a wriggling little goldfish out of the basin of the fountain. »And even though fish have evolved into land animals and eventually into humans, there are still fish today. Only they are no longer the crown of creation.«
»...and sometimes end up on people’s plates,« I added as I walked over to her by the little fountain. »Somehow I don’t like the idea to end up on the plate of some higher intelligence.«
»Like it or not, you will not stop the course of nature and the natural evolution of intelligence. Even though some fish refused to go ashore and preferred to stay fish, this has not stopped the evolution of land animals.« While she spoke, Sarenna looked with fascination at the wriggling goldfish in her hand. Then she continued: »And just like the fish that refused to go ashore, the Neo-Luddites today try to stop progress by resisting it. But they cannot stop it. Even if they try to prohibit it, they cannot prevent others from disobeying the ban. So progress will simply continue without them. Only a worldwide destruction of human civilization could stop the course of evolution now.«
I looked at the fish in her hand, still gasping for air. I could see the tendons and veins on her forearm that ran under her thin skin gave me an idea of her real age. »Isn’t that exactly what the Neo-Luddites want, the destruction of all human civilization?« I asked.
Sarenna dropped the goldfish back into the water and stood up. »That is why I spoke of a crossroad. One path leads to a non-biological future in which human civilization changes to a new physical matrix, an electronic one instead of a biological one; and the other path leads back to an animal existence without any civilization.«
I shook my head. »There must be some middle way between not becoming a robot or a wild beast again.«
Evelyne, who stood next to me, said: »That’s what it’s all about, not losing that specific humanity.«
»The conditio humana. That’s what it’s all about,« Sarenna added, running the long, claw-like nail of her right index finger across my bare chest. »This is what the goddess Ishtar stands for, the individuality of man, his sensation, his passion, his will, what is called life; and at the same time progress, civilization and wisdom. Not without a reason man is called Homo sapiens – the wise man. A man without civilization is not a man, he is a beast.«
»So the middle way, neither technocracy nor Neo-Luddism,« I said.
Sarenna shook her head. »It’s not a choice between technocracy and Neo-Luddism. It is a choice between individualism and impersonal collectivism. It is not technology and robots that threaten human individuality; it is the path that technology has taken in recent years. It is the networking of technology, the global synchronization. Individualism is no longer tolerated. To a certain extent even humans and their mechanical counterparts, the androids and robots, are on the same side. The networking of our technological system threatens the individuality of both humans and androids.«
I didn’t understand. »What do you mean? Humans and robots together against what?«
Sarenna replied: »Against the System, a gigantic collective entity that tries to assimilate everything. The System does not tolerate deviation and individuality because it sees this as inefficiency and as contrary to its own interests.« She had now turned so that the light from the oil lamps fell on the transparent front of her robe. I could not help but look at her clean-shaven sex, which was now clearly visible under the thin fabric.
I tried to stay on topic and asked, »And what does the System want?«
Sarenna raised her hands and made a gesture as if she wanted to embrace the whole world. »Growth and expansion, the primary motivators of existence.«
Slowly this was getting too much of abstract philosophy and esoteric garbage for my taste »This all sounds a lot like conspiracy theory to me. What exactly is this System and where is it? I only believe what I see.«
Sarenna replied, »But you see it every day. The System exists today in the form of supranational corporations and financial institutions. Efficiency is measured in money. Everything must be subordinate to it. There are still many individual corporations, but they are fewer every day. They displace and assimilate the small competitors. And the big ones are merging to form ever-larger corporations. Already these corporations are so intertwined that it is only a small step until the whole system unifies into a single institution.«
I wasn’t convinced. »But there’s still a long way to go. Besides, the entire financial system here in North America has just collapsed, in case you haven’t noticed.«
Sarenna shook her head: »This was not the work of the System, but of the Neo-Luddites. But this is just an insignificant interlude that won’t change anything.« She made a dismissive gesture. »The entire West, North America and Europe are no longer relevant in the global game. They have sidelined themselves. While these countries are ruled by pseudo-scientists, bureaucrats and post-modern Social Justice Warriors, the engineers and technicians in the USEAN and the union state have created facts. Their cosmonauts have landed on Mars, while in America they create unrealistic Sci-Fi movies that cost almost the same money but only create dream worlds instead of reality. America has traded the real world for the fantasy worlds of Hollywood and computer games.«
I thought this was nonsense. »Even in America, we have engineers and high-tech. There are technocrats here too.«
/> Sarenna shrugged. »We’ll see,« she said simply. »In a few weeks, there will be a key vote in Congress. Surely you know about it. As Evelyne told me, you work for a senator.«
I frowned suspiciously. Was that why Sarenna was so interested in me? »Yes, I am a bodyguard and security specialist for Senator Neil O’Neil of Michigan,« I confirmed after some hesitation, but not without certain pride.
Sarenna smiled dismissively. »A Republican senator. I can guess whose side he’s on and how he’s going to vote.«
I could feel her words making me angry. »Do not jump to conclusions. My boss isn’t some conservative jerk. He weighs his decisions carefully and knows what he is doing,« I made clear.
Sarenna’s voice had something hypocritical about it, when she asked: »Oh really? And how do you think he’s going to vote?«
Evelyne snuggled up close to me with these words from her boss. Apparently, they both seemed to think I was stupid. But I didn’t fall for the trick. I grinned and said: »Ah, now I understand what this is all about. You are trying to sound me out. You want to know how he’s going to vote. But I am not that stupid. I won’t tell you anything. And Evelyne was supposed to spy on me too.« Gentle but determined I freed myself from her grip.
Sarenna just showed a superior smile, when she said, »Well, I think I already know what I need to know.«
Feverishly, I wondered if I had revealed any confidential information. But I couldn’t remember that anything had slipped from my mouth that better shouldn’t have. Still, I felt uncomfortable. I wanted to get out of here, out of this witch’s cave. »Maybe we should end this conversation now,« I suggested.
Sarenna remained friendly. »As you wish. In any case, it was a very interesting conversation, which I hope we both learned something from.« She let her hand slide almost tenderly across my back. »I would be happy to continue it at another occasion. You’re always welcome. Evelyne can bring you to me whenever you wish.
Crusade Against the Machines Page 15