Names, People, the Book. The Trinity incarnated here in the depths of a bunker/library. He discovers a vast room, a rectangular cube of ecru concrete. A military-looking metal desk. Two desk chairs. A sort of microreplica of the normal world in the schematic state. And on the chairs sit a man and a woman. And in the middle of the desk there is a book, an enormous manuscript, at least a thousand pages stacked right in the center of the Bakelite surface. The woman speaks: “You are in the Cosmogonic Narration Center. I am your mother.” “And I am your father,” says the man, “and we are one. We are not your ‘biological’ parents, though we created you; you were created, but you were not born. The World of Angels follows its own laws. You were born of our union, and yet your father was only a fiction made flesh by act of the cosmogonic power with which your mother was gifted. You come from another story. Practically from another world. You were born at the moment your father caused the singularity of life to arise within a semidigital creature that lived in the exoplasm. You are not that ‘child in the box,’ and yet you are its shadow, born by the luminous dynamic of ontic narration, because your father also placed a dead body inside the exoplasm. This dead body was It is happening in the body. In the body. But that means it is also in the mind, especially in the mind. They are one. Body-mind; what happens is a specific reaction that enters the synthetic disjunction of the body and the mind. These luminous emissions indicate that a form of metalanguage is taking shape within Link de Nova. This is certainly not what they planned. For example: now, Link is a luminous extension of the network that has come back to life, but not as it was before. Link has changed the order of things. He has not reanimated the Metastructure; he has opened an infiniteness in the heart of reality, and this infinity is now absorbing him. In the proper sense of the word. He has become the principal agent of some luminous circuitry traveling the network and his organism in the form of an ascending spiral constantly increasing in intensity, leaping from quantum orbit to quantum orbit. Not only is he this living processor but his mouth is open—open not to speak but to swallow all the nothingness of the Numbers stored in the fossil trace. Yuri can see them, like a pipe of humming darkness that emerges from the interface to penetrate the aqualung and enter the wide-open mouth of Link de Nova. The Transmutation of energy. The phase
LINK DE NOVA YURI AND CAMPBELL
incorporated as part of the principle of individuation by the Metastructure, which was killed by so doing, but it left behind it a devolving Humanity that then individuated the final result of the process. You were created by this operation. Your adoptive father has been trying for more than ten years to tell of this adventure in which he participated; he has gathered testimonials, he has rewritten his book three times. You will be the one that permits the book to exist.” Link understands: his “narrative” parents form a single being, while yet remaining separate. The mystery of Incarnation is a principle that, once applied, may be found at all stages of individual experience. So the father/ mother being, the man/woman, while remaining man/father and mother/ woman, holds out the manuscript on the steel table. “This book must be written. It will be, because you are the antenna that will transmit it to your adoptive father’s brain. This Library is the last monad that has resisted the Antiworld, and what is to come, and what is already here. But the secret heart of the monad is contained in this single book. It is worth all the books we have brought together in the Library. It keeps all the others together. If it dies, they will all die. difference of recycling. The numerical nothingness absorbed by the luminous body-spirit is immediately transposed into its reverse principle: the light of Names. He catches a glimpse of them, too, in the quicksilver current flowing along the neurospinal cord. Yuri realizes that Link is acting in a way exactly opposite of the men affected by the numeric devolution: he is not spitting out Numbers, he is swallowing them. The light is not being extinguished inside him so it can be reborn in the form of his digitized body somewhere, it is being reborn in him to ensure the extinction of what digitalizes bodies even before their deaths. Yuri understands just how dangerous what Link is doing is. He understands, too, just how necessary it is—and he understands how that makes it all the more dangerous. Red zone, maximum risk. What will the consequences be, of his supernatural acts on the real state of the World? And what will the aftereffects be for his own metabolism? Can he even survive an experience as intense and radical as the one he is living through? And at the very instant of the quantum leap, Yuri realizes that Link may survive, but he will never be exactly the same. He realizes that the change is only beginning.
There is no discontinuity between each sequence; it is a process, an infinity that stretches between him and what he is becoming at each instant. The bunker has disappeared; as a monad it has reconfigured itself into the form of an ecology surviving in the middle of the desert. In the ocean of sand, from time to time Link comes across a bunch of half-buried books, though he keeps Milan Djordjevic’s manuscript clutched tightly in his hand. He will be an antenna that writes the definitive version in the No, nothing happens as foreseen—it is so foreseeable! Link has not reawakened the Metastructure, he has absorbed its principle of individuation. And though Yuri does not understand how or why, this principle of individuation of the Metamachine has appeared, at the very moment of its disappearance, in the aqualung connected to this interface under the dome covering the roof of this particular hotel, here in Grand Junction. So, of course, what is physical is beginning to transcend itself, and what is
LINK DE NOVA YURI AND CAMPBELL
internal light of the man. Express transubstantiation: he will give shape to the Word in another body as his body becomes the Word, in a process of inscription—something is happening as he walks along this oceanless beach, this beach without spray. What is happening is extremely simple, yet the physics at work are of redoubtable complexity. He is absorbing the exoplasmic aqualung. It is becoming him and he is becoming it; they are forming a single entity, while yet remaining distinct. The globe of light is him; his being is individuating the flesh-code-meaning unity, and it is for this reason that the manuscript suddenly smolders in his hands, an atomic sphere, disintegrating in fire that reunifies matter and life. This fire will burn in him, now and forever. not yet physical is doing the same: body-mind unified in the paradox of light, a third state between existence and nonexistence. Yuri, filled with wonder, watches the metamorphosis taking place before his eyes: the exoplasm is incorporating Link de Nova’s organism; Link de Nova’s organism is singularizing the exoplasm, which is being born at this very moment; Yuri knows it—it is the first true “natural cyborg” in human history. Even the computer devices that are not connected to the network are engulfed in the light; they are recombining to become organs/machines in the new human condition of which Link is now the bearer. He is an Anti-Metastructure in himself, and at the same time he is also the Anti-Fall correlated to it. He is the eminent paradox of living light.
And now everything is being consumed; his entire body is rising to the temperature of incandescence. Everything is burning, shining with a brightness never before attained; everything lives in infinite singularity; everything is real, everything is absolutely artificial; everything is the Word, everything is transfigured in the Everything is shining; everything is being consumed as if in a furnace hotter than the sun. What is hardly a man anymore is a man-machine-light synthesis; he will speak a new language, capable of silencing the numbers of death. Everything is already so bright—everything is transfigured in the
Halo.
38 > INFECTED
It is morning. An efflorescent, turquoise morning in the Territory. They reach the crest of Xenon Ridge, the hotel, the strip, the cosmodrome, the city of Grand Junction behind them, a cavalcade of gray-green tumble-weeds blowing in front of them. They walk silently among the cottony quicksilver reeds in tall bunches at their feet, a ball of pure gold just rising above the line of the horizon. The World is more and more beautiful. The World is no longer the World; Ma
n will soon no longer be Man, but everything remains suffused with the light of each instant.
Once, Yuri remembers, he had the sense that his life was taking a radical turn, growing ever closer to infinity. What happened in the hotel very much resembles this infinity; he knows he is part of the greatest secret the Territory has ever hidden, however skimpy in substance.
Link de Nova walks between him and Campbell, calmly keeping pace.
Link de Nova?
Rather, the being he has become. But hasn’t he simply become what he is? He is almost thirteen years old; hasn’t he simply undergone the meta human equivalent of the millennia-old rite of passage to adulthood?
A pupa hatching. Caterpillar-butterfly. Actualized simultaneity of successive units. Yes, that’s it; Link has become entirely what he is, and what he has become is not really human; he never has been, and he never can be, because in truth he is much more than that. And, even more complex, Yuri realizes that the first natural cyborg in history is a counterproduct of the neonature engulfing the Earth. He is completely a man; he is completely a Metamachine; and he is Electricity-Light, the Logos-Eikon of mechanical division. Completely. And yet he is only a single being, perfectly unique and singular.
He is a unique and singular being whose luminous body is emitting nearly all the frequencies in the visible spectrum, creating a gold-silver halo all around him. The exoplasm and its integrated nanocomponents have become organs in the biophysical supermachine that is Link de Nova, and the light keeps all these multiplicities in one dynamic, active, actualized unit.
They won’t be able to hide the secret for long in the Valley of Heavy Metal; they need to stay coherent: wanting to hide it from the residents of HMV means running the risk of revealing it, in one way or another, to the men on the outside. This very morning they will speak to Milan Djordjevic and Paul Zarkovsky, and then request an urgent meeting of the City Council. Sheriff Langlois’ security measures have quite a time in store for them. The Fortress will become the Citadel, the Sanctuary, the Tabernacle itself. The Law of Bronze will become Titanium Armor.
When you can’t hide a secret, Campbell often says, you have to shine a bright light on it. Light can blind. It can even keep certain essential details from being seen.
In this particular case, thinks Yuri, gazing at the brilliant silhouette superimposed on Link’s organic structure, that is no metaphor. Link himself is light. He is infinite division. He is the first cyborg of neonature. He is singularity-infinity-action. He is man-machine-electricity. He is body-mind-light. He is matter-space-time. He is what was hidden inside him. The greatest secret in the Territory.
They are descending the mesa when, all at once, they perceive the presence of a living being behind them, and Yuri knows that, at the same instant, all three of them have guessed who it is.
The dog gives an almost comical grimace of surprise when they stop and turn toward him in concert.
Balthazar, the bionic dog, the mascot of HMV, the guardian of the Hotel Laika. Why was he absent the previous night? On that night, of all nights? Yuri realizes that while the three humans are gifted with their own particular intuitive mechanisms, Balthazar, the bionic dog of war, has remained true to his own. And he has as much to tell them as to ask them.
He has probably followed them from the hotel, but why didn’t he come up under the dome, where he knows everything is always happening?
The dog himself explains it to them. He anticipated the boy’s visit, as usual, and he had remained on the premises. He did not go under the dome because it proved impossible. The whole hotel suddenly became an extremely dangerous place, more lethal than the immediate surroundings of a stripped-down nuclear reactor, and the intensity of the “radiation” increased with one’s proximity to the dome. He had had a great deal of difficulty even reaching the eighth floor, and he hadn’t been able to stay in the hallway on the top floor for more than a few minutes.
He explains to them that an invisible energy barrier had prevented him from entering the topmost service stairways. He tells them what they should already know.
“I don’t know what you created up there,” says Balthazar. “But I think you’ve set off what is going to become a global catastrophe. Link de Nova’s mutation seems to me to be a clear and obvious indicator.”
And Yuri, dumbfounded, hears Campbell answer the talking dog:
“Link’s mutation is an indicator, but you don’t know how to read it. And as for the global catastrophe you’re talking about, best to admit to yourself that it’s all that can save us now.”
“A catastrophe is going to save us? Is that bounty-hunter humor?”
And Campbell smiles the smile of a Territory carnivore. “When the threat consists of the establishment of an order based on permanent recycling, my dear Balthazar, health lies in the occurrence of a total event that will restore the dynamic of the living.”
Lord, thinks Yuri. Has Campbell been reading books from the Library on the sly?
No, you idiot, it’s what happened last night in the hotel. Campbell, too, realized that we were experimental subjects just as much as Link—he, just as much as I, experienced the flashes of awareness that the situation itself brought on.
None of the three of us is the same anymore. None of the three of us will ever be the same.
We have gone over to the other side.
The other side of infinity.
Here, on the earth of the last men, the sky is transforming. To the south, a new black-and-bronze wall is rising in the Pennsylvania sky and heading for the Territory, stirring up immense swarms of silica and dust. Another huge Arctic blizzard is coming from the north, its clouds of white powder slowly filling the boreal sky.
The atmospheric changes in progress do not escape the notice of the men heading for their respective homes, or the dog making for his own. A new double torment, snowstorm/sandstorm, will soon vent its wrath on the Territory—and this time it will not miss its target; it is clear that the Thing is clamping its climatic jaws down on them, the resistance fighters.
If the changes in the weather are obvious to men—even artificial ones—and to dogs—even amplified ones—there is no way they can avoid being detected by one of the large purple crows native to the Territory. The bird rises up in front of them, soaring from the top of a pile of crushed vehicles and soaring southeast with great strokes of its powerful wings, toward where the morning light is illuminating everything.
The bird flies above the Territory, passing the small townships of the central steppes and then Aircrash Circle, skirting Omega Blocks, crossing the highway north of Junkville and then gliding in concentric circles above the large city where everything is recycled. It turns toward Neo Pepsico, the city’s supermarket. The township specializes in food, alcohol, and household products of all kinds—canned foods, meat, sugar, salt, spices, pasta, cloned rice, synthetic coffee, detergent, paint, soap, wax, paint remover, acid, some basic medications—everything is available. Some local Triads even grow fruits and vegetables in subterranean hydroponic incubators. This is where birds such as the crow generally go in search of sustenance. A little farther on, elongating its elliptical circle, the bird passes above Leatherneck Mills, the township of leather tanners and clothing manufacturers, who produce garments from recycled materials of all origins. It is the Fashion and Style Center of the region. Between the two townships there is a small, solitary butte marking the western border, not far from Midnight Oil. The bird does not know the name of the butte, or of any other place in the Territory; for it, human signs are just an epiphenomenon of nature, the only thing that counts.
This isolated butte is jointly managed by the two large neighboring townships. It is the source of a commodity generally little sought-after in Junkville, but which sometimes finds a taker or two.
Books. Magazines. Newspapers. Writing. Fixed images, drawings or photos, the work of rotary presses and glossy paper. The tanners and couturiers of Leatherneck know how to stitch, splice, and restore,
and they know techniques for processing cellulose. The merchant Triads of Neo Pepsico know how to store, and how to sell. It is a symbiotic complementariness. Men are much closer to nature than they like to think. And especially to this encroaching neonature.
The bird soars above PaperPlan, the microtownship of pornographic magazines, bus-station books, business prospectuses, tourist brochures, and political tracts.
Now the crow lands. It has spotted some kernels of corn and bits of frozen beef accidentally spilled by a transshipment truck.
Before its piercing predator’s eyes stands the small hill of PaperPlan and the containers piled around the few cabins scattered on the clinker butte. It sees two men inspecting their containers and speaking loudly, punctuating their words with sweeping gestures and interjections.
The purple crow cannot understand what they are saying, but as it flutters up to perch on the roof of the nearest Combi-Cube, it sees what may have provoked their agitation.
The human signs have disappeared. The small graphics have been erased from most of the pages of those assemblages of paper and black ink they love to look at.
The photos and drawings are still there, but the newspapers, the magazines, the books, the circulars, the thinnest booklets are now empty of any writing or nearly so; some signs are still there in the form of strange, incomplete ideograms, but these too are slowly and systematically vanishing as if touched by an invisible eraser. The two men hurry to warn their neighbors, waving stark-white sheets of cellulose. No more writing, no more printed graphics, no more black ink—this seems to aggravate the men on the small hill to an extremely high degree. The phenomenon has affected all of PaperPlan in a single stroke. The panic is palpable. Something has come again to smash the human anthill.
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