The days were mild and already warm; it was without difficulty that we crossed the ranges of the Sierra Nevada through the Perto de la Ragua, at an altitude of two thousand meters; in the distance, I could see the snowy summit of the Mulhacén, which had been—and remained, despite the intervening geological upheavals—the culminating point of the Iberian peninsula.
Further to the north extended a zone of plateaus and limestone peaks, the surface of which had been bored with numerous caves. They had served as shelter for the prehistoric men who had first inhabited the region; later, they had been used as refuges by the last Muslims hunted by the Spanish Reconquista, before being transformed in the twentieth century into recreation zones and hotels; I got used to resting in them during the day, and continuing my journey at nightfall. It was on the morning of the third day that I saw, for the first time, indications of the presence of savages—a fire, some small animal bones. They had lit a fire on the floor of one of the bedrooms installed in the caves, charring the carpet, despite the fact that the hotel kitchens contained a battery of vitroceramic cookers—that they were incapable of understanding how to use. It was a constant surprise for me to observe that a large part of the equipment constructed by men was still, several centuries later, in working order—the electric power stations themselves continued to churn out thousand of kilowatts that were no longer used by anyone. Deeply hostile to anything that could have come from mankind, wanting to establish a radical break with the species that had preceded us, the Supreme Sister had very quickly decided to develop an autonomous technology in the enclaves intended for inhabitation by neohumans, which she had progressively bought from bankrupt nations who were incapable of balancing their budgets and soon after of satisfying the health needs of their populations. The previous installations had been neglected; the fact that they could still function was all the more remarkable for this: whatever he might have been otherwise, man had undoubtedly been an ingenious mammal.
On reaching the top of the reservoir of Negretin, I made a brief stop. The gigantic turbines of the dam turned slowly; they now only powered a row of sodium lamps that stretched, uselessly, along the highway between Granada and Alicante. The road, crevassed and covered with sand, had been invaded here and there by grass, and bushes. Sitting on the terrace of a former café-restaurant overlooking the turquoise surface of the reservoir, amid metal chairs and tables gnawed by rust, I found myself once again seized by a fit of nostalgia as I thought of the parties, dinners, and family reunions that must have taken place there, many centuries before. I was however, and more than ever, conscious that mankind did not deserve to live, that the death of this species could, from all points of view, be considered only good news; its spoiled and deteriorated vestiges were nonetheless upsetting.
“Until when will the conditions of unhappiness last?” wondered the Supreme Sister in her Second Refutation of Humanism. “They will last,” she replies at once, “for so long as women continue to have children.” No human problem, teaches the Supreme Sister, could have found the merest hint of a solution without a drastic reduction in the density of the Earth’s population. An exceptional historic opportunity for rational depopulation had been offered at the beginning of the twenty-first century, she went on, both in Europe through the falling birthrate, and in Africa thanks to epidemics and AIDS. Mankind had preferred to waste this chance through the adoption of a policy of mass immigration, and bore complete responsibility for the ethnic and religious wars that ensued, and that constituted the prelude to the First Decrease.
Long and confused, the history of the First Decrease is now only known by rare specialists, who rely essentially on the monumental, three-volume History of Boreal Civilizations, by Ravensberger and Dickinson. An incomparable source of information, this work has sometimes been considered to be lacking in empirical rigor; the authors have especially been reproached for devoting too much space to the relation of Horsa, which, according to Penrose, owes more to the literary influence of chansons de geste rather than strict historical truth. Its critics have, for example, focused on the following passage:
The three islands of the north are blocked with ice;
The finest theories refuse to make sense;
It is said somewhere a lake has collapsed
And dead continents rise back to the surface.
Obscure astrologists crisscross our provinces,
Proclaiming the return of the Hyperborean God;
They announce the glory of Alpha Centauris
And swear obedience to the blood of old princes.
This passage, it is argued, manifestly contradicts what we know about the climatic history of the globe. Deeper research has, however, shown that the beginning of the collapse of the human civilizations was indeed marked by variations in temperature that were as sudden as they were unpredictable. The First Decrease itself, that is to say the melting of the ice, which, produced by the explosion of two thermonuclear bombs at the Arctic and Antarctic poles, was to cause the immersion of the entire Asian continent, with the exception of Tibet, and divide by twenty the population of the Earth, occurred only a century later.
Other research has shown the resurgence, over the course of this troubled period, of beliefs and behaviors from the most ancient folkloric past of Western mankind, such as astrology, divining magic, and fidelity to hierarchies of a dynastic type. Reconstitution of rural or urban tribes, reappearance of barbarian cults and customs: the disappearance of the human civilizations, at least in its first phase, slightly resembles what had been predicted, at the end of the twentieth century, by various authors of speculative fiction. A violent, savage future was what awaited men, many were aware of it even before the unleashing of the first troubles; certain publications such as Screaming Metal display a quite troubling prescience. This anticipatory awareness, however, did not enable men in any way to put into action, or even to imagine any kind of solution. Mankind, teaches the Supreme Sister, was to fulfill its destiny of violence, right up until its final destruction; nothing could have saved it, even supposing such a rescue could have been considered desirable. The small neohuman community, gathered in enclaves protected by a failsafe security system, equipped with a reliable system of reproduction and an autonomous communications network, was to have no difficulty passing through this period of ordeal. It was to survive just as easily the Second Decrease, correlative to the Great Drying Up. Sheltering from destruction and pillage the whole sum of human knowledge, complementing it when the occasion arose, it was to play almost the same role as the monasteries during the Middle Ages—with the caveat that it had absolutely no intention of preparing a future resurrection of mankind, but rather it favored, in all ways possible, its extinction.
During the three days that followed, we crossed a dry, white plateau, with anemic vegetation; water and prey became scarcer, and I decided to shift eastward, moving away from the line of the fault. Following the course of the Río Guardal, we reached the reservoir of San Clemente, then it was with pleasure that we found ourselves in the cool shade, abounding with game, of the Segura sierra. As we continued along our journey, I became aware that my own biochemical constitution gave me an exceptional hardiness, an ease in adapting to different environments that had no equivalent in the animal world. Up until now I had seen no trace of the big predators, and it was rather in homage to an ancient human tradition that I lit a fire every evening, after setting up camp. Fox had no difficulty rediscovering the atavisms that were those of the dog before it had decided first to be a companion to man, now many millennia ago, then to retake its place beside the neohumans. Cool air came down from the summits, we were at an altitude of about two thousand meters, and Fox contemplated the flames, before stretching out at my feet as the embers glowed. I knew that he would sleep with one eye open, ready to get up at the first alert, and kill and die if necessary to protect his master and his home. Despite my close reading of the narrative by Daniel1, I had still not totally understood what men meant by love, I ha
d not grasped all the multiple and contradictory meanings they gave to this term; I had grasped the brutality of sexual combat, the unbearable pain of emotional isolation, but I still could not see what it was that enabled them to hope that they could establish between these contradictory aspirations a form of synthesis. However, at the end of those few weeks of travel in the sierras of inland Spain I had never felt as close to loving, in the most elevated sense that they had given to this word; I had never been as close to understanding “what is best in our lives,” to use the words of Daniel1 in his final poem. I understood that nostalgia for this feeling could have started Marie23 out on the road, far from here, on the other side of the Atlantic. I was myself drawn along a path that was just as hypothetical, but it had become a matter of indifference to me whether or not I reached my destination: basically, what I wanted to do was to continue to travel with Fox across the prairies and mountains, to experience the awakenings, the baths in a freezing river, the minutes spent drying in the sun, the evenings spent around the fire in the starlight. I had attained innocence, in an absolute and nonconflictual state, I no longer had any plan, nor any objective, and my individuality dissolved into an indefinite series of days; I was happy.
After the Segura sierra, we began to climb the sierra of Alcaraz, which was not as high; I had given up counting the exact number of days we had been on our march, but it was around the start of August, I think, that we arrived in sight of Albacete. The heat was oppressive. I had strayed far away from the line of the fault; if I wanted to rejoin it I would now have to head straight west, and cross the plateau of La Mancha, which was over two hundred kilometers, and where I would find neither vegetation nor shelter. I could also, by turning to the north, head for the more wooded areas that extended around Cuenca, then, crossing Catalonia, rejoin the Pyrenean range. In my entire neohuman existence, I had never had to make any decision or initiative, it was a process that was completely foreign to me. Individual initiative, teaches the Supreme Sister in her Instructions for a Peaceful Life, is the matrix for will, attachment, and desire; thus the Seven Founders, continuing her work, strove to create an exhaustive cartography of all imaginable life situations. Their aim, of course, was first to do away with money and sex, two pernicious factors of which they had been able to recognize the importance through the collective human life stories. It was equally a question of casting aside any notion of political choice, the source, they write, of “false but violent” passions. These preconditions for a negative order, indispensable as they were, were not, however, sufficient in their eyes to enable neohumanity to rejoin the “obvious neutrality of the real,” to use their frequently cited expression; it was also necessary to provide a concrete catalog of positive prescriptions. Individual behavior, they note in Prolegomena to the Construction of the Central City (significantly, the first neohuman work not to have a named author), was to become “as predictable as the functioning of a refrigerator.” Indeed, while writing down their instructions, they acknowledged as a main source of stylistic inspiration, indeed more than any other human literary production, “the manual for electrical appliances of medium size and complexity, in particular the video player JVC HR-DV3S/MS.” The neohumans, they inform us at the outset, can, just like the humans, be considered as rational animals of medium size and complexity; thus it was permissible, in a stabilized life, to establish a complete repertoire of behaviors.
By quitting the path of a standardized life, I had at the same time moved away from any applicable pattern. Thus, in the space of a few minutes, crouching on my heels at the top of a limestone mound, contemplating the endless white plain that stretched out at my feet, I discovered the torments of personal choice. I also realized, definitively this time, that my desire was no longer, and probably never had been, to join some kind of primate community. It was, without any real hesitation, a little like being under the influence of some kind of internal force of gravity, a little like the way one ends up leaning to the heaviest side, that I decided to turn toward the north. Just after La Roda, catching sight of the forests and the first shimmering of the waters of the reservoir at Alarcón, while Fox trotted joyfully at my feet, I realized that I would never meet Marie23, nor any other female neohuman, and that I did not feel any real regret about this.
I reached the village of Alarcón shortly after nightfall: the moon was reflected in the waters of the lake, animated by a light rippling. As I came to the first houses, Fox froze and growled softly. I stopped; I could hear no sound, but I trusted his sense of hearing, which was more acute than mine. Clouds passed across the moon, and I heard a slight scraping noise to my right; when the light became brighter I made out a human form—which appeared to be curved and deformed—as it slipped between two houses. I held back Fox, who was preparing to run after it, and continued to climb the main street. This was perhaps careless on my part; but, according to all the testimonies of those who had been in contact with them, the savages exhibited real terror of the neohumans, their first reaction in all cases was to flee.
The stronghold of Alarcón had been built in the twelfth century then turned into a luxury hotel in the twentieth, I learned from the faded letters of a tourist bulletin board; its mass remained impressive, it dominated the village and enabled one to survey the surroundings for kilometers around; I decided to stay there for the night, regardless of the noises and silhouettes that flitted around in the darkness. Fox was growling continually, I ended up taking him in my arms to calm him down; I was more and more convinced that the savages would avoid any confrontation if I made enough noise to warn them of my approach.
The interior of the castle bore all the traces of recent occupation; there was even a fire in the great fireplace, and a reserve of wood; so they had not lost that secret, one of the most ancient human inventions. I realized after a quick inspection of the bedrooms that this was about all you could say in their favor: the savages’ occupation of the building translated above all into disorder, stink, and piles of dried excrement on the floor. There was no sign of mental, intellectual, or artistic activity; this corresponded to the conclusions of the few researchers who had looked into the history of the savages: in the absence of any cultural transmission, the collapse had occurred with amazing speed.
The thick walls kept the heat in well, and I decided to set up camp in the main hall, contenting myself with pulling a mattress near to the fire; in a stockroom, I discovered a pile of clean sheets. I also found two automatic rifles, as well as an impressive reserve of cartridges and all the necessary gear for cleaning and lubricating the weapons. The region, which was hilly and wooded, must have abounded with game in the time of the humans; I did not know what was in it at present, but my first days on the road had revealed to me that at least some species had survived the succession of tidal waves and extreme droughts, the clouds of atomic radiation, the poisoning of the water supply, in fact all of the cataclysms that had ravaged the planet for the last two millennia. The last centuries of human civilization, it is a little known but significant fact, had seen the appearance in Western Europe of movements inspired by a strangely masochistic ideology, known as “ecologism,” although it bore little relation to the science of that name. These movements emphasized the necessity of protecting “nature” from human activity, and pleaded for the idea that all species, whatever their degree of development, had an equal “right” to occupy the planet; some followers of these movements even seemed to systematically take the side of the animals against men, to feel more sorrow at the news of the disappearance of a species of invertebrates than at that of a famine ravaging the population of a continent. Today we have some difficulty understanding these concepts of “nature” and “rights” that they manipulated so casually, and we simply see in these terminal ideologies one of the symptoms of mankind’s desire to turn against itself, to put an end to an existence that it considered inadequate. Whatever the case may be, the “ecologists” had greatly underestimated the living world’s capacity for adaptation, the
speed at which it reconstituted new equilibriums on top of the ruins of a destroyed world, and my first neohuman predecessors, such as Daniel13 and Daniel14, emphasize the sense of slight irony with which they watch dense forests, populated by wolves and bears, spreading rapidly over the old industrial complexes. It is also comical, at a time when humans have practically disappeared, when their past domination is only manifested in nostalgic vestiges, to observe the remarkable hardiness of mites and insects.
I spent a peaceful night, and woke up just before dawn. With Fox at my heels, I took the path around the battlements, watching the sun rising over the waters of the lake; the savages, having abandoned the village, had probably retreated to its shores. I then began a complete exploration of the castle, where I discovered numerous objects manufactured by man, some in a good state of preservation. All those that contained electronic components and lithium batteries intended to preserve data during power cuts had deteriorated irreversibly as a result of the passage of centuries; I thus left to one side the cellular telephones, computers, and electronic pagers. The machines, however, that were made up of only mechanical and optical components, had for the most part stood up well. For some time I played with a camera, a double-lensed Rolleiflex with matte-black metalwork: the crank that enabled the movement of the film turned faultlessly; the glass of the shutter opened and closed with a small silky sound, at a speed that varied according to the number selected on the focusing knob. If photographic films had still existed, and developing laboratories, I was sure that I could have taken some excellent photographs. As the sun began to warm up, to illuminate the surface of the lake with golden reflections, I meditated for some time on grace, and forgetting; on what was best about mankind: its technological ingenuity. Nothing now remained of those literary and artistic productions of which mankind had been so proud; the themes that had given birth to them had lost all their relevance, their power to move had evaporated. Nothing was left, either, of those philosophical or theological systems for which men had fought, and sometimes died, and had even more often killed for; all that no longer aroused the slightest echo in a neohuman, we could no longer see in it anything more than the arbitrary ravings of limited and confused minds, unable to produce the slightest precise or simply practical concept. Man’s technological predictions, on the other hand, could still inspire respect: it was in this field that man had been at his best, that he had expressed his deepest nature, there he had attained from the outset an operational excellence to which the neohumans had been able to add nothing of significance.
The Possibility of an Island Page 33