Grand Junction

by Maurice G. Dantec

  The Tri-Unity: the three hypostases of the unified divine nature summed up in a few lines, like a sort of navigation report for the use of far-distant future generations.

  Lines that have been forgotten, and that are difficult to understand on first reading; it seems that between 1300 and the twenty-first century, human intelligence has regressed a great deal, and that we have done all we can to make that happen.

  Welcome to the Territory, every soul is trapped between murder and treachery, welcome to the Territory, digital numbers put the flesh into the market race, you’ll see what is now the local living money, welcome to the Territory, baby, no doubt it is your lucky day.

  It is a dead component that a force of unknown origin causes to work again, it is an organ coming back to life in the acoustic crystal of music that falls from the sky, becoming more and more dazzling with every instant, containing the fire of a million suns.

  Scotus knew how to avoid the second mistake: not being divisible into subjective parts, not being identical to another seemed to be the sine qua non conditions of any definition of individuation; this was the thesis of “double negation” by the French theologian Henry of Ghent, who had already caused a number of Saint Thomas Aquinas’s proposals to be condemned by the University of Paris in 1277.

  Against the first negation, Scotus very subtly pointed out that not being divided was not the same as being indivisible—since specifically, the “rapport of relationship” articulating the physics of the process of individuation involves, in addition to the two differentiating modalities (formal and material), the gap between actual division and potential division—actualized being and potential being. The fundamental difference between Aristotelian numeric infinity and Scotus’s ontological infinity was that the first was never anything but “potential infinity,” always being postponed, indefinitely, by the “potential” adding of a number to the series, while the second was true infinity, completely actualized, an infinity of which every part, even the most infinitesimal, was infinite, and to which absolutely nothing could be added because it WAS EVERYTHING.

  In addition, Scotus demonstrated that though a material substance could be divided into several numerically different substances (a rock can be broken into several pieces, each of which will continue to belong in the category of “rock”), it could not be divided into numerically identical substances (none of the pieces is identical to the others and none can be identical to the original rock). From that, he drew the conclusion that this property was “negentropic,” to apply a concept to it taken from quantum physics, since “nothing is absolutely incompatible with the nature of a being due to privation, but rather through something positive within it.” In other words, the indivisibility of a substance into subjective parts is an absolute, and not a default. Again, man is singularized in the image of God, in a relationship of rapport between the Unique and the Multiple, which permits the emergence (phusys) of Infinity.

  Welcome to the Territory, recycling the Infinity, welcome to my home, baby, welcome to the Singularity.

  The radio station of the Electric Middle Ages, the music of machines replying to forgotten theologians. The cosmodrome is speaking to cathedrals. The sky is becoming more and more luminous over his head.

  Scotus fought even more ferociously against the second negation: “Nothing can be formally turned by negation into an entity more perfect than the one that existed before this negation.” Primary nature already being at the highest point, one can add nothing to it by saying that is not this or that thing, because these predicates cannot, by definition, add anything to it. In addition, since nothing can be predicated negatively in a being of the “non-man” type, because nothing can be affirmed other than a tautology such as “a non-man is a non-man,” we find ourselves faced with ex absurdo proof of the nonexistence of Nothingness.

  Thus for Scotus, the process of individuation, the unique entity produced by the singularity of each man, corresponded to the fact that “all created substances will be immediately active by virtue of the principle composed of the real relationship between God and the created,” which implies a unique, singular, actual relationship. For Scotus, an individual was the indivisible attribution of real, individual difference to human nature. An individual was a “monad,” a material point at once physical and metaphysical, situated on a line of disjunctive synthesis but not closed according to Leibniz’s model, and so open, or rather “interfaced” with other “superphysical” points like it.

  Welcome to the Territory, baby, welcome to where the secret rules, welcome to the Territory, baby, you’re the angel who must fall here.

  The brain is a burning chamber where knowledge is the fuel that permits the truth to become a true source of ontic energy; it is no longer only the skies, the waters, and the emerging land that are irradiated; it is not the entire world that seems to be sun-drenched in a single moment. Everything is identically illuminated inside him with the same intensity.

  Everything is alive in the infiniteness of its multiples, but everything extends beyond its physical form toward the absolute infinity of the One. He has never been so filled with joy by the understanding of an “abstract” problem. It is a joy unlike any other, the very joy of kindling fire.

  Who, then, managed to correlate the metaphysical intuitions of Scotus and the mathematical ones of the brilliant Russian-born German Cantor, six centuries later? Who dared to accomplish such a feat? Who remembered that Cantor called the first number of his transfinite series “aleph,” after first having chosen “omega” and then realizing his mistake? It is not the last number in a series that breaks open the whole, but rather the first number in a universe unknown until that point, which swept away with a single brush of the hand the Aristotelian precept that “the whole is always greater than any one of its parts.”

  In Cantor’s series, as in Scotus’s process of individuation, the Philosopher’s axiom is reduced to nothing by this invention of the infinite as a dynamic of the Absolute. The definition of infinite series rests precisely on the inverse property: between a series of this type and one or another of its parts, there exists a constant relationship of perfect equipotence. And it is the continued actualization of this equipotence that is at the root of the infinitary dynamic. Like Scotus, Cantor and his friend Dedekind developed in parallel the paradigms of two complementary logics, the logic of the finite and the logic of the infinite, each one characterized by operations that cannot be transposed to the other. Cantor and Dedekind emphasized that one cannot judge the qualities of infinite series by attributing properties to them that are only verifiable as part of finite series. Scotus claimed that divine—and thus perfect—attributes are formally distinct (or non-identical to each other) while at the same time being perfections, themselves infinite, that are part of the Infinite Being of God. Cantor explained that his number ω (aleph) marked an absolute disconnect with the series of natural whole numbers, since between that number and any other number in the series N, the distance was infinite. Scotus surpassed Aristotle’s numerical infinity with an ontological reflection and instituted the co-naturalness of the Absolute Being and His Infinity in actu.

  Cantor and Scotus thus practiced the same fundamental operation, six centuries apart: a radical schism with the Aristotelian order of indefinite successiveness, and the substitution for it of the actualized simultaneity of all successive units, and it is precisely by this fundamental ontological break with the numeric “collection” of finite numbers that, suddenly, one gains access to infinity.

  Here, the break showed the absolute power of identification, and specifically of identifying totality as infinity. The break showed, in the most profound way possible, the absolute freedom behind the Creation of Man, the Image of an Infinite Being, intensely free.

  One cannot accede to infinity by accumulating finite totalities. Infinity requires a radical cognitive leap, and this cognitive leap, according to Scotus, is an act of absolute will. Free and sovereign action is thus necessary;
it alone creates truths from reality. Free and sovereign action alone is capable of bringing one face-to-face with Infinity in Action.

  Thus, Cantor and Scotus came together across the centuries, and from there to beyond the End of the World: Infinite series may be defined by positive properties, while finite series may be defined only by the lack of this fundamental property. Individuation is not the result of an “accidental” action isolated in time and space, and especially not one reiterated indefinitely through numeric discontinuity; rather, it is an infinitely dynamic process, a nondetermined process, forever escaping the track of the numerical logic of false infinity—nominalist or Aristotelian—which, on the contrary, determines the common nature of humanity. Moreover, it is through Freedom, the individuation of divine Liberty, that Man gives the created World its true determination. The reversal is dazzling, like the fiery sky above him. Individuation is, therefore, a singular and unique process, made in the intelligible image of God through its most immediate actuality—that is, its infiniteness. The more we are individuals, the more individual we become.

  The opposite is proof of that.

  Welcome to the Territory, welcome to the drone society: This is the land where the babies are stocked in cold chamber gridlocks/This is the world where the boots are made to crush the mouth in all circumstances/This is the Planet of the talking Apes who will remain absolutely silent/This is the globe that is a ground zero where we run from block to block/This is the Mondo-Campo, this is the very last frontier/This is the Mondo-Campo, it’s the no-man’s-land everywhere/Welcome to the Territory, baby. …

  He, too, is an antenna, like all the living beings in the universe; he is an antenna open to the luminous sky contained in books, to the ultraviolet night that has been transformed into the arsenal of the Word, this luminous sky vibrating above him, radiating with all its infinite power from the secret library of the Territory.

  Everything seems so terribly clear. Everything seems so mechanically logical—so organically interconnected—when you contemplate the state of the world seven or eight centuries later.

  Especially when you have lived through the ascension, the reign, and then the fall of the Metastructure.

  Especially when you have lived through the three successive “Falls” of human civilization.

  Yuri can feel a strange sensation overtaking him.

  Is he becoming a Christian?

  37 > HALO

  Link hesitates for a long moment.

  Who should he trust with his secret? His plan to stop the Humanity-Thing before it can react, relaunch its offensive to counter the victorious campaign they are leading against it?

  Judith Sevigny? The sheriff’s Council? The Professor? His parents?

  Or his two friends from the south of the Territory, now permanent residents of the Fortress?

  In the end, he realizes that he has very little choice. If he had a choice, he would lose all real freedom.

  He can undoubtedly talk to Judith about the experience, like he did last time—that is, afterward. And later still, to the others. But really, he has to take it to Yuri and Campbell. Nothing can change this Law of Bronze, or any other law of the Territory.

  Two or three days later, while the sheriff’s men and several groups of HMV volunteers are distributing the last newly repaired radios throughout the Territory, Link goes to the home—still under construction—of the two bounty hunters, these men who have watched over both him and the Library unfailingly, two big brothers living constantly at the edge of the abyss to keep him from falling into it.

  He walks quickly toward their cabin, where Campbell is working and Yuri is absorbed in reading a thick volume that can only have come from the Italian cargo.

  He says hello, makes some small talk, asks Yuri what he is reading. “The Prologue to the Ordinatio—an English translation. John Duns Scotus, you know …”

  He asks Campbell how the work is going. “Everything should be finished in three or four days at the most. It would have been finished a week ago if your father hadn’t made the mistake of lending Yuri those fucking books!”

  Link laughs.

  Then he looks at each of them in turn, with the fire of the night in his eyes.

  They both understand, instantly, that something is going to happen. The three of them know one another too well. Yuri and Campbell look back at him silently, ready for anything.

  Except that.

  Link explains his plan to them.

  His plan to fight the devolution of humanity from the inside.

  “The Hotel Laika again? But we went there with you two months ago and—”

  “The situation has changed since then, Chrysler. I couldn’t control all the elements; I didn’t have the entire gift yet. Now I know, and I’m ready.”

  “Ready? Ready for what? We saw the coded trace of the Metastructure in the local interface, just like you. It’s very interesting, because it shows that the alphanumeric mutation was ‘contained’ in the other phases of the devolution; it seems to be the departure point and the arrival point, both at the same time. We’ve already talked about all this, including with your father.”

  “You don’t understand, Chrysler. It isn’t just about connecting a mass spectrograph to the exoplasm in order to look inside; not anymore. And that trace doesn’t show only the specific dynamic of the Thing; it proves, once and for all, that it really was from here, from this local microsystem, that everything took off. I don’t understand why—none of us do.”

  “In other words, we’re no farther along than we were at the beginning of the year.”

  “Possibly. That’s why we need to go there. Not just to observe a fossil trace through an exterior device, however sophisticated it might be.”

  “Yeah? So? What do you want to plug in?”

  And Link smiles, a luminous smile full of solar joy, and Yuri understands immediately, even before the boy opens his mouth. Oh no …

  “Me, Chrysler. I want to plug myself into the interface. I’ll go inside the aqualung and restore all the systems to working order.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, first the exoform and then the interface, the local network, and why not the MegaNetwork itself?”

  “I’m following you. With a shortwave radio and ten or twelve thousand radios, we’re confined to the Territory. And I understand your strategy—attack the whole entity from its original point of singularity.”

  “Exactly, Chrysler.”

  “I know. But the network never really had any real existence; that’s what permits the Thing to keep progressing. There’s nothing material to repair, because the Metastructure was the integrative form of Humanity.”

  And once again, Yuri anticipates the boy’s response:

  “The Thing is the antiform of an entity that did not exist in itself; neither can exist except via ‘hardware platforms’ represented by humans themselves. I want to reactivate the anterior program so it will interfere with the devolutionary mutation.”

  “There was no program in the strict sense, according to the Professor, just chaos governing itself after the primordial ‘ignition.’”

  “There you go. I want to play the role of that ‘bootstrap.’ I don’t quite want to reproduce the initial ‘autopoiesis,’ exactly, of course, because that was incontrovertibly singular. But I can try to start the process over again.”

  Yuri closes his eyes. Link does not even need to read the books in the Library; he alone is all the books it contains, every one of them.

  Living man/dead network conjunction. Input/output. Mechanical/ organic connection in an extinct monad, open to infinity within its own enclosure.

  The aqualung, that strange exoplasm, sized for a child and able to contain a whole world.

  The black box, its interior strewn with a few computer devices, none of them connected to one another, none of which have functioned in years. The local network interface in the wall, inactive for just as many years, if not more. The coded trace, the “sig
nature” of the Metastructure, or rather of its disappearance, crystallized here in a single microsystem.

  Yuri draws rapid diagrams. It was at the moment of its annihilation that the immaterial, “Metamechanical” entity was able to take form, to individuate into a singularity. But it did so at the instant of its own fossilization. It individuated according to the same principle as it was annihilated. It was truly born at the very moment of its extinction.

  In view of the Metamachine, electric and neural devolution are a phenomenon correlated to the ontological unity of the flux affecting machines and brains. Electricity should be seen as the divine network of the Created World.

  For the Metastructure, the only conceivable singularity was Humanity as a species, or, more exactly, as a numerical catalogue of individuals. For it, everything was reversed from the outset, and the inversion of the inversion of the Post-Machine, of devolving Post-Humanity, in no way led to the restoration of some ancient form of order, or to the invention of a new one; it led only to a simple variation in intensity of the initial chaos, which never stopped being chaos or initial.

  The process was fossilized. And the interface contains the fossil trace of the phenomenon.

  Link de Nova knows exactly what he is doing.

  And he is doing exactly what he knows.

  Exoplasm/more-than-human conjunction. The ontological Grand Junction within the urban Grand Junction: surviving body-mind/cataleptic machine-network. A new synthesis. An asymmetrical synthesis. A synthesis setting the stage for the division of the singularity.

  Link has managed to slide into the aqualung without difficulty. He has connected the neurospinal cord to the local interface. He is now plugged into nothingness, emptiness, shadows.

  The black box is plunged into its own black light, the light they can perceive with their night vision, natural or artificial; the light cast by the fire of the ultraviolet sky. They appear as phosphorescent ghosts to one another; they are just-barely physical apparitions in a world trapped between existence and nonexistence.