Now it holds the attraction of something that has happened. It has the allure of a storm. And their tale can give rise to another tale. The Professor’s tale. The tale he has not yet told, the one he has until now kept from them.
The secret tale.
Yuri has the time to muse that this is what forges alliances, this sort of moment when words pass from one person to another in circulation fluid yet more solid than a diamond, horizontal and yet straining toward a common summit.
“Do you know why it was so easy to conduct the ‘World’ update?”
“Tell us,” says Chrysler imperturbably.
“Because it was a prototype. It’s only lacking the essential.”
“The essential?”
“What do you know about the Metastructure? Practically nothing, I bet. Shortly before 2020, while the space industry was booming, the Grand Jihad, after two decades of intense preparations, broke out for good, starting in Europe. A joint program between the American defense ministry and NASA held a consortium of laboratories and industrial corporations with the goal of eventually creating so-called fourth-generation artificial intelligence, with the very latest technology and software, which would be capable of efficiently handling all the planet’s problems and remaining immune to any viral attack or something of a similar sort. The consortium got back to its clients with a revolutionary idea.”
“A biopolitical megamachine, able to interconnect all the human organisms on the planet,” interjects Yuri.
“Yes, of course. But the most important fact was that it already wasn’t exactly a ‘machine’ in the usual sense. That’s why they called it a ‘metamachine,’ and then a ‘metastructure.’”
“What do you mean, not exactly a machine?”
The project designers were inspired by the Internet and then the NeuroNet, when it appeared. They understood that the best way to integrate all these emerging technologies into a single coherent ensemble wouldn’t be by means of a computer, or a particular network of computers, or even a single program, even a very sophisticated one.”
“What, then?”
“An invisible machine. A totally virtual machine. A completely digital quantum machine with no material support other than a few relays managed by regional governance bureaus. A purely numeric platform whose peripheral connections and interfaces will be men themselves. It was tested successfully in 2027 and permanently operational two years later. By 2030, it was at the head of the Global Bureau for good.”
Yes, I thought it happened in that order, muses Yuri to himself.
“And that is why it wanted to become a World—and why, unfortunately, I contributed to its doing so. Purely abstract, other than its biocybernetic connection with humanity, it desired to become a true World. It wanted its own body. Except that a computer, or even an entire network, wouldn’t be enough. It wanted more. It wanted a body-world. It wanted to be a metaorganism, an authentically regulatory coevolutionary entity. It wanted to be an ecological system.”
There is a long pause.
An ecological system.
“So now, since the breakdown of the Metastructure is carrying it into its own inverted paradigm, what do we have?”
“Er … an anti–ecological system?”
“You don’t create new concepts just by adding prefixes here and there. Of course an anti–ecological system, but you need to be certain of the ‘anti’ part of it—especially the double meaning of that prefix.”
“Double meaning?”
“Yes. Antiworld means opposed to the world, but it comes from the Latin ante, which means ‘before.’ That is why the Antechrist, the Antichrist, is also thought of as some sort of precursor, or an inverted accompanier to the coming of Christ to earth.”
“Before? But before what?”
“Before itself. It is its own antinome. And what is in the process of taking its place, this anti-ecology, is thus an anti-World, an ante-World.”
“Before the world?”
“Before its World.”
“But what was there before its World?”
“Exactly; there was nothing except itself, so its World was us, helping in the creation of it.”
“So it goes back to the situation from before its World, or the world as such?”
“Both of them, my good general. It isn’t important. The difference is a simple variation in density. What counts is what there is before any World. What there is before any ecology, before any system of autoregulation and coevolution.”
“And what is that?”
“Think about it for a minute. What is there just before life itself? Don’t think of the word before from a simple chronological perspective, but genetically, all right?”
“Genetic?”
“Yes. In the sense of creation and evolutionary processes, which are paradoxical.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“You will see. One day you’ll admit that evolution happens in two senses—on a temporal line, evolutionist phenomena climb up the thermodynamic arrow of time and influence a posteriori vital, essential selections.”
“But then … the Metastructure …”
“Is devolving, my young friend. It only functions in one direction now; or, rather, the regressive dynamic perpetuates, on its scale, with its methods, the progressive line that it was following until its Fall.”
“But, this anti-World, this anti-ecology—what is it?”
“You haven’t guessed? You’re kidding me.”
“I think I’ve guessed,” Judith Sevigny volunteers from behind them, sitting in the lotus position on a small camp bed.
“Ah? You, young woman? You have an idea of the makeup of this anti-World that the Metastructure is creating for itself and its bioexogenous systems—we men? Really?”
“Yes. I believe that before any concrete production there have to be plans.”
“Plans! Ah, bravo! Do you know what Leibniz said? ‘God calculates, and the world creates.’ Plans. Very good. And in your opinion, in what form do these plans exist, these plans for the Metastructure’s anti-World?”
“If it is a form of life, and even a metaform, since it continues to die when already dead, then as you say we are dealing fully with genetic science—which is your specialty, isn’t it?”
The man allows himself a small smile. “Yes, it is genetics. You have guessed; you have understood?”
“Yes, Mr. Zarkovsky. What exists before the World are Numbers. What exists just ‘before’ life is code. What programs its organization. The genetic code. In this particular case, it is an antigenetic code, with numbers serving to de-create the World.”
“Excellent. And do you have any idea what type of numbers we’re talking about here, miss? To what mathematical branch they belong?”
“No, sir; that I don’t know. But in view of what’s happening right now in Junkville, according to these gentlemen, I would say that it is visibly using binary-based numbers.”
“Truly excellent, miss. We will see, later, what it really goes back to. But for now, let’s continue. If numbers are the origin of all worlds, if code is the plan for all life, what would a binary code look like that could induce the creation of an anti-World, that of the Metastructure, which in addition is dead?”
They are really hitting a ceiling of complexity, thinks Yuri. An ecology, then an anti-ecology; genetics, then anti-genetics. A code, and now an anti-code?
“You need to understand the nature of the inversions and intensifications and how they’re interconnected. What we end up with is this: the Metastructure wanted to become a World. At the moment it attained success, disturbing phenomena of unknown origin began to manifest themselves in its genetic—that is, semantic—structure. After its death, it was able to pursue a phenomenological metamorphosis, an extraordinary one, that we call ‘superdeath’ and that continues the work begun during its breakdown. Don’t forget its original nature—purely numeric, and using humans themselves as hardware platforms. And now we are present at a s
econd ‘superdeath,’ its second phase, in which it is men that end up not being able to communicate except in machine language. What is your conclusion?”
Zarkovsky acts like a real professor; he does not give answers, he gives hints, and then asks the questions again, until his students’ thoughts move in the right direction.
He was probably a very good professor.
“Understand the nature of the inversion and intensification, I said. If men speak the language of the machine so that it can create its anti-World, what becomes the Metastructure’s genetic code, after its death?”
“I’m tempted to say that what you call its ‘intensified inversion’ is trying to destroy human language, all thought,” volunteers Yuri.
“Yes, but not necessarily in the way you imagine. Its true goal is not to destroy language; that is only an epiphenomenon. What it really wants is to absorb Logos, do you understand? What makes the World for the inverted Metastructure in its postmortem mutation is, precisely, human language. It is an exchange of the vampiric type, but it is also, objectively, a pure data transfer. The dead Metamachine does not wish to speak human language, which it knows, nor any language as such, because it knows all of them. It wishes to speak the language corps of all humanity, of the ensemble made up of each individual, and in order to do this it transforms the central units of humans into supercoding machines devolved to binary language. Don’t forget, either, the specific nature of this ‘metavirus,’ which is not really one at all. When biosystems are attacked, the ‘natural’ organs transplanted or nano-implanted do not escape contamination. Whether we are talking about substitute neurons, artificial lymphocytes, transgenic hemoglobin, enlarged white globules, or entire transplanted organs, they all—or almost all—go the way of bionic technology. The Metastructure makes no distinction between artificial and natural, between mechanical and organic, because in most men the dividing line is blurry. The line between numbers and language, too. The line between life and death—well, that one I’d prefer not to talk about. The only line that still cannot be crossed is the one that separates us from Heaven. As you know.”
* * *
There are nights for such energies to coalesce. There are nights for such tales to unfold. There are nights for such truths to be revealed.
Otherwise, such a night as this could never happen, Yuri thinks.
He imagines it—the six people present in the mobile home, to whom the sheriff himself might doubtlessly be added—yes, this group of warriors against the night seems made specifically to battle the night on its own home field.
They form a sort of shield, a defense, a suit of armor, a titanium wall against the reversion of the world the Thing is trying to cause with total impunity.
He looks for a moment at Link de Nova, lost in thought as usual. The boy has so far said nothing during the discussions taking place. The night is young, but he wouldn’t say anything in any case, thinks Yuri.
But he does listen. Yuri knows that, too. He listens very attentively. So attentively, in fact, that he mentally records everything he hears. He will remember it down to the last phoneme.
That is part of the boy’s special gift. A sort of human voice-recording system …
He then focuses his attention for an instant on Link’s mother, the android. So mysterious, silent like her son most of the time. She has fascinated Yuri for a long time; she is the only living female android he knows in the Territory.
What makes them sentient? Why were they so heavily affected by the successive Falls? Why have none of the cases he and Chrysler have recorded thus far of the new “alphanumeric mutation” been found in these semi-artificial beings?
The androids, he thinks, have a bizarre but undoubtedly significant relationship with the Metastructure, and with the entity that has succeeded it.
Then, he does everything he can to avoid Judith Sevigny’s violet eyes.
“Never lose sight of the particular evolutionism that presides over the ‘superdeath’ of the Metastructure,” the Professor was saying.
“First phase: the Megamachine-World destroys itself with some sort of autoimmune disease—I don’t know, really—that takes with it all the electronic systems in its planetary network, with the exception of a few rare cases.
“Second phase, six years later: it surges up again, destroying the machines that had not been interconnected through its network. But note that, at the same time, it strikes out at bioloaded systems that have heretofore been resistant, of course, but also at technologies that are a bit simpler, requiring at the most a microprocessor or an analog device. So even telephones, most televisions, transistor radios—in short, the most rudimentary electronic systems—begin to die in their turn. Only batteries, cells, tension transformers, some devices like electric razors or refrigerators, and main cable and regulation systems still remain intact—which allows automobiles to continue operating, and some boats to sail around the world. But notice the rhythm of the Thing: during the first phase, everything goes very fast; in the space of a few months, the global network is contaminated, and in a year it is completely annihilated. Second phase: it began six years ago, but it is still not finished, while the third phase you’re talking about has only just begun.
“What does this mean? It is having more and more difficulty accomplishing its objectives. Something is resisting it. It has not managed to de-mechanize man, so it dehumanizes machines. To do this, it is no longer machines that it attacks but rather what there is of the machine in man, and of man in the machine. It cannot totally subdue electricity, so it seeks other routes of passage. Human language must have seemed easy prey to it, and it was not mistaken.”
Chrysler fidgets in the antique airplane seat he is sitting in, analogous to the ones in his own cabin—the Airbus debris was scattered over a very large area, Yuri thinks distantly.
“Listen, Professor. Theology is all well and good. Now we need to look at it from a very concrete, quasi-military angle. Let’s do some quick calculations. The First Fall takes place, and humanity loses more than half a billion inhabitants after 2025. So there are around seven billion humans remaining. The rhythm of the First Fall is very rapid because it instantaneously strikes everything connected to it—that is, everything. At maximum, in one or two years it has had its fill of victims; even the most resistant bio-implants have given way, except for some inexplicable exceptions and remissions, of which there are very few. But the Second Fall, which attacks the remaining half of humanity, is working at a slower pace, and so it takes longer, as you have remarked. Fine. That means that in six years, it hasn’t reached its ‘quota’ of destroying the still-living half of the human race—but on the other hand, thanks to the Third Fall, now, it is in a position to do just that. So we need to formulate a plan of action that takes into account these changes in rhythm and modus operandi.”
“That’s exactly right, Mr. Campbell, but any ‘concrete’—meaning ‘military’—approach is out of the question in this case. We can’t concretely approach an entity that has no concrete existence. We can’t make ‘war’ against an entity whose objective is to pacify absolutely everything.”
“So what, then?” demands Chrysler, dryly.
“The Scriptures, Mr. Campbell. If the Thing is able to ‘transcribe’ men into numeric data, it is in being able to do the reverse that we will have a chance to put a stop to its plans.”
“The reverse?”
“Once again, the Scriptures, Mr. Campbell. Everything is written there, including and especially what we are experiencing. The End of the World. It’s up to us to know how to ‘transcribe’ what the text tells us.”
“How will that help us fight the Thing?”
“Because we will know what to call it, though it has no name and cannot have one. We will understand its maleficent ‘numeric’ presence, because Numbers are divine creations; we will be able to send it back to its Nothingness, because we will be able to understand its genetic ‘code.’ In short, we will be able to destroy it.�
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“So that’s it? Your library?”
“Exactly that, Mr. Campbell.”
Yuri is silent, stupefied, and at the same time excited by the revelation that a library might prove to be a weapon of mass destruction.
It is the most reassuring thought he has had in months.
The discussion continues into the depths of the night, though it is slowed by the crushing weight of fatigue. But the fatigue itself seems to provide a paradoxical boost to attention, concentration, glimmers of hope.
The night is not really made to hide secrets, but to bring the truth to light. One day, Chrysler had told Yuri: “The best way to hide something is to make it visible to the whole world.” A twentieth-century man wrote a story on the subject, “The Purloined Letter”—Edgar Allan Poe. The “vanished” letter was simply in its place on the desk.
The night is the secret of day. And daylight is the best hiding place in the world. Therein is the indication of “intensified inversions” Professor Zarkovsky speaks of. Therein is a mysterious sign concerning the Thing, and what remains of humanity on Earth. Especially them.
The Professor has picked up the thread of a discussion with Chrysler; Yuri forces him to focus on the conversation.
“Let’s go back to the problem posed by the Antichrist, if that’s all right. He, too, like the Metastructure was, is caught in a double ontological constraint. If he comes ‘before’ Christ, who, being God, is eternal, that means that he comes from the Nothingness, and thus that he is also located ‘after,’ meaning in two impossible places, and more than that, two incompossible ones.
“But if Christ is the incarnation of the Unique, the Antichrist—who is also his absolute opposite, by definition, since Christ is absolutely God—operates according to a process of disincarnation of the Multiple; it directly attacks the principle of individuation, according to our old friend Duns Scotus, also called ‘the Subtle Doctor’; it directly attacks what causes a person not to be an individual, even if their ideas are disconnected, just as humanity is not man.”
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