Having established, then, that the situation in which we now find ourselves, lion arrow and I in this moment t0, will occur twice for each coming and going of time, identical to the other times, and that it has been so repeated as often as the universe has repeated its diastole and its systole in the past—if it really makes sense to speak of past and future for the succession of these phases, when we know that it doesn’t make sense within the phases—an uncertainty still remains about the situation in the successive seconds t1 t2, t3, et cetera, just as things were uncertain in the preceding t-1, t-2, t-3, et cetera.
The alternatives, on closer examination, are these:
either the space-time lines that the universe follows in the phases of its pulsation coincide at every point;
or else they coincide only in certain exceptional points, such as the second I am now living in, diverging then in the others.
If the latter of these alternatives is correct, from the space-time point where I now am there extends a bundle of possibilities which, the more they proceed in time, the more they diverge, cone-like, towards futures which are completely different from one another, and each time I find myself here with the arrow and the lion in the air will correspond to a different point X of intersection in their trajectories, each time the lion will be wounded in a different way, he will have a different agony or will find to a different extent new strength to react, or he won’t be wounded at all and will fling himself upon me each time in a different way leaving me possibilities of self-defence or not leaving them, and my victories and my defeats in the struggle with the lion prove to be potentially infinite, so the more times I am disembowelled the more probabilities I’ll have of hitting the target the next time I find myself here billions and billions of years later, thus I can express no opinion on this present situation of mine because in the event that I am living the fraction of time immediately preceding the clawing of the beast this would be the last moment of a happy period, whereas if what awaits me is the triumph with which the tribe welcomes the victorious lion hunter, what I’m now living is the climax of anguish, the blackest point of the descent to hell which I must make in order to deserve the coming apotheosis. Therefore it’s best for me to flee from this situation whatever may be in store for me, because if there’s one interval of time that really counts for nothing it’s this very moment, definable only in relation to what follows it, that is to say this second in itself doesn’t exist, and so there is no possibility not only of staying in it but even of crossing it for the duration of a second, in short it is a jump of time between the moment in which the lion and the arrow took flight and the moment when a spurt of blood will burst from the lion’s veins or from mine.
Consider, too, that if from this second infinite lines of possible futures move out in a cone, the same lines arrive obliquely from a past that is also a cone of infinite possibilities, therefore the I who is now here with the lion plunging on him from above and with the arrow cutting its way through the air is a different I every time because past mother father tribe language age experience are different each time, the lion is always another lion even if I see him just like this each time, with his tail which has curved in the leap till the tuft is near the right flank in a movement that could be a lash or a caress, with the mane so open that it covers a great part of the breast and the torso from my sight and allows only the forepaws to emerge laterally raised as if preparing for me a joyous embrace but in reality ready to plunge the claws in my shoulders with all their strength, and the arrow is made of material that is always different, tipped with different heads, poisoned by dissimilar serpents, though always crossing the air in the same parabola and with the same hiss. What doesn’t change is the relation between me arrow lion in this moment of uncertainty which is repeated exactly, an uncertainty whose stake is death, but we must agree that if this menacing death is the death of a me with a different past, of a me that yesterday morning didn’t go out to gather roots with my girl cousin, that is rightly speaking another me, a stranger, perhaps a stranger who yesterday morning went gathering roots with my girl cousin, therefore an enemy, in any case if here in my place the other times instead of me there was somebody else, it doesn’t then matter much to know if the time before or the time after the arrow struck the lion or not.
In this case, then, it’s out of the question that stopping in t0 for the whole cycle of space and time could have any interest for me. However, the other hypothesis still remains: as in the old geometry lines had only to coincide in two points to coincide in all, so it may be that the spatio-temporal lines drawn by the universe in its alternating phases coincide in all their points and therefore not only t0 but also t1 and t2 and everything that will come afterwards will coincide with the respective t1 t2 t3 of the other phases, and likewise all the preceding and following seconds, and I will be reduced to having a sole past and a sole future repeated infinite times before and after this moment. One might, however, wonder whether there is any sense in speaking of repetition when time consists in a single series of points not allowing variations in their nature or in their succession: it would then suffice to say that time is finite and always equal to itself, and can thus be considered as given contemporaneously in all its extent forming a pile of layers of present; in other words, we have a time that is absolutely full, since each of the moments into which it can be broken down constitutes a kind of layer that stays there continuously present, inserted among other layers also continuously present. In short, the second t0 in which we have the arrow A0 and a bit further on the lion L0 and here the me Q0 is a space-time layer that remains motionless and identical for ever, and next to it there is placed t1 with the arrow A1 and the lion L1 and the me Q1 who have slightly changed their positions, and beside that there is t2 which contains A2 and L2 and Q2 and so on. In one of these seconds placed in line it is clear who lives and who dies between the lion Ln and the me Qn, and in the following seconds there are surely taking place either the tribe’s festivities for the hunter who returns with the lion’s remains or the funeral of the hunter as through the savannah spreads the terror of the prowling murderous lion. Each second is definitive, closed, without interferences from the others, and I, Q0, here in my territory t0 can be absolutely calm and take no interest in what is simultaneously happening to Q1 Q2 Q3 Qn in the respective seconds near mine, because in reality the lions L1 L2 L3 Ln can never take the place of the familiar and still-inoffensive though menacing L0, held at bay by an arrow in flight A0 still containing in itself that mortal power that might prove wasted by A1 A2 A3 An in their arrangement in segments of the trajectory more and more distant from the target, ridiculing me as the most clumsy archer of the tribe, or rather ridiculing as clumsy that Q-n who in t-n takes aim with his bow.
I know the comparison with the frames of a movie film emerges spontaneously, but if I’ve avoided using it so far you can be sure I’ve had my reasons. It’s true that each second is closed in itself and incommunicable with the others exactly as in a film frame, but to define its content the points Q0 L0 A0 are not enough: with them we would limit it to a little lion-hunting scene, dramatic if you like but surely not displaying a very broad horizon; what must be considered contemporaneously is the totality of the points contained in the universe in that second t0 not excluding even one, and then it’s best to put the film frame right out of your head because it just confuses things.
So now that I have decided to inhabit for ever this second t0—and if I hadn’t decided to it would be the same thing because as Q0 I can inhabit no other—I have ample leisure to look around and to contemplate my second to its full extent. It encompasses on my right a river blackish with hippopotamuses, on my left the savannah blackish-white with zebras, and scattered at various points along the horizon some baobab trees blackish-yellow with toucans, each of these elements marked by the positions occupied respectively by the hippopotamuses H(a)0, H(b)0, H(c)0 et cetera, by the zebras Z(a)0, Z(b)0, Z(c)0 et cetera, the toucans T(a)0, T(b)0, T(c)0 et cet
era. It further embraces hut villages and warehouses of importers and exporters, plantations that conceal underground thousands of seeds at different moments of the process of germination, endless deserts with the position of each grain of sand G(a)0, G(b)0. . . G(nn)0 transported by the wind, cities at night with lighted windows and dark windows, cities during the day with red and yellow and green traffic lights, production graphs, price indices, stock market figures, epidemics of contagious diseases with the position of each virus, local wars with volleys of bullets B(a)0 B(b)0 . . . B(z)0 B(zz) 0 B(zzz)0. . . suspended in their trajectory, bullets which may strike the enemies E(a)0 E(b)0 E(c)0 hidden among the leaves, aeroplanes with clusters of just-released bombs suspended beneath them, aeroplanes with clusters of bombs waiting to be released, total war implicit in the international situation (IS)0 which at some unknown moment (IS)X will become explicit total war, explosions of supernovae which might change radically the configuration of our galaxy . . .
Each second is a universe, the second I live is the second I live in, la seconde que je vis c’est la seconde où je demeure, I must get used to conceiving my speech simultaneously in all possible languages if I want to live my universe-instant extensively. Through the combination of all contemporaneous data I could achieve an objective knowledge of the universe-instant t0 in all its spatial extension, me included, since inside t0 I, Q0, am not in the least determined by my past Q-1 Q-2 Q-3 et cetera but by the system composed of all the toucans T0, bullets B0, viruses V0, without which the fact that I am Q0 could not be established. For that matter, since I no longer have to worry about what will happen to Q1 Q2 Q3 et cetera, there’s no use in my assuming the subjective point of view that has guided me so far, now I can identify myself with myself as well as with the lion or with the grain of sand or the cost-of-living index or with the enemy or with the enemy’s enemy.
To do this I must establish exactly the co-ordinates of all these points and I must calculate certain constants. I could for example emphasize all the components of suspense and uncertainty that obtain both for me and for the lion the arrow the bombs the enemy and the enemy’s enemy, and define t0 as a moment of universal suspense and uncertainty. But this still tells me nothing substantial about t0 because granted it is indeed a terrifying moment as I believe is now proved, it could also be just one terrifying moment in a series of moments of mounting terror or equally a terrifying moment in a series of decreasing and therefore illusory terror. In other words this established but relative terror of t0 can assume completely different values, since t1t2t3 can transform the substance of t0 in a radical manner, or to put it more clearly there are the various t1’s of Q1, L1, E(a) 1, E(I/a) 1 which have the power to determine the fundamental qualities of t0.
And here, it seems to me, things start becoming complicated: my line of conduct is to close myself in t0 and to know nothing of what happens outside of this second, giving up a limited personal point of view in order to live t0 in all its global objective configuration, but this objective configuration can be grasped not from within to but only by observing it from another universe-instant, for example from t1 or from t2, and not from all their extension contemporaneously but by adopting decisively one point of view, that of the enemy or of the enemy’s enemy, that of the lion or that of myself.
To sum up: to stay in t0 I must establish an objective configuration of t0; to establish an objective configuration of t0; to must move to t1; to move into t1 I must adopt some kind of subjective viewpoint so I might as well keep my own. To sum up further: to stay still in time I must move with time, to become objective I must remain subjective.
Now let’s see how I must behave practically: it remains established that I as Q0 retain my residence in t0, but I could meanwhile make the quickest possible dash into t1 and if that isn’t enough proceed on to t2 and t3, identifying myself temporarily with Q1 Q2 Q3, all this naturally in the hope that the Q series continues and isn’t prematurely cut off by the curved claws of L1 L2 L3, because only in this way could I realize how my position of Q0 in t0 is really constituted which is the only thing that should matter to me.
But the danger I risk is that the content of t1, of the universe-instant t1, is so much more interesting, so much richer than t0, in emotions and surprises either triumphant or disastrous, that I might be tempted to devote myself entirely to t1, turning my back on t0, forgetting that I had moved to t1 only to gain more information on t0. And in this curiosity about t1, in this illegitimate desire for knowledge about a universe-instant that isn’t mine, in wanting to discover if I would really be making a good bargain trading my stable and secure citizenship of t0 for that modicum of novelty that t1 could offer me, I might take a step into t2 just to have a more objective notion of t1; and that step into t2 might, in turn . . .
If this is how things stand I realize that my situation won’t change in the least even if I abandon the hypotheses from which I set out: that is, supposing time knows no repetitions and consists of an irreversible series of seconds each different from the other, and each second happens once and for all, and living in it for its exact length of one second means living in it for ever, and t0 interests me only with regard to the t1 t2 t3’s that follow it with their content of life or death in consequence of the movement I performed in shooting the arrow and the movement that the lion performed in making his leap and also of the other movements the lion and I will make in the next seconds and of the fear that for the whole duration of an interminable second keeps me petrified and keeps petrified the lion in midair and the arrow in my sight and the second t0 swift as it came now swiftly clicks into the following second and traces with no further doubts the trajectory of the lion and of the arrow . . .
The Chase
That car that is chasing me is faster than mine; inside there is one man, alone, armed with a pistol, a good shot, as I have seen from the bullets which missed me by fractions of an inch. In my escape I have headed for the centre of the city; it was a healthy decision; the pursuer is constantly behind me but we are separated by several other cars; we have stopped at a traffic signal, in a long column.
The signal is regulated in such a way that on our side the red light lasts a hundred and eighty seconds and the green light a hundred and twenty, no doubt based on the premise that the perpendicular traffic is heavier and slower. A mistaken premise: calculating the cars I see going by transversely when it is green for them, I would say they are about twice the number of those that in an equally long period manage to break free of our column and pass the signal. This doesn’t mean that, once beyond it, they speed: in reality they go on forward with exasperating slowness, which can be considered speed only compared to us since we are virtually motionless with red and green alike. It is also partially the fault of this slowness of theirs that we don’t succeed in moving, because when the green goes off for them and comes on for us the intersection is still occupied by their wave, blocked there in the centre, and thus at least thirty of our hundred and twenty seconds are lost before a single tyre can revolve once here on our side. It must be said that the transverse flow does indeed inflict this delay on us but then it is compensated for by a loss of forty and sometimes sixty seconds before starting again when the green comes on once more for them, thanks to the trail of traffic jams that each of our slow waves drags after it: a loss for them which doesn’t actually mean a gain for us because every final delay on our side (and initial delay on the other) corresponds to a greater final delay on the other side (and initial on ours), and this in mounting proportion, so that the green light period remains a deadlock for a longer and longer time on both sides, and this deadlock works more against our progress than theirs.
I realize that when, in this description, I oppose ‘us’ and ‘them’ I include in the term ‘us’ both myself and the man who is chasing me in order to kill me, as if the boundary line of enmity passed not between me and him but rather between those in our column and those in the transverse one. But for all who are here immobilized and impati
ent, with their feet on the clutch, thoughts and feelings can follow no other course but the one imposed by the respective situations in the currents of traffic; it is therefore admissible to suppose that a community of intention is established between me, who cannot wait to dash away, and him who is waiting for a repetition of his previous opportunity, when in a street on the city’s outskirts he managed to fire at me two shots that missed me by sheerest luck, since one bullet shattered the glass of the left side window and the other lodged here in the roof.
It should be added that the community implied in the term ‘us’ is only apparent, because in practice my enmity extends not only to the cars that cross our column but also those in it; and inside our column I feel definitely more hostile towards the cars that precede me and prevent me from advancing than towards those following me, which, however, would make themselves declared enemies if they tried to pass me, a difficult undertaking in view of the dense jam where every car is stuck fast among the others with a minimum freedom of movement.
The Complete Cosmicomics Page 24