Vernon Subutex Three
Page 33
By 2100, groups gathering for clandestine convergences were persecuted and executed. Any individual aiding or abetting them was severely punished. At the time, the movement was confined to Europe, large swathes of which were still inhabited despite the nuclear catastrophes. Repression was savage, but adepts of the Subutex sect were, by nature, difficult to apprehend. They moved in small groups, lived off-grid, and were experts at subterfuge. They tended to settle in the deep forests, but were also able to live for weeks at a time in city centres, usually in cellars and basements, without being detected. They had developed the sense of the hunted. They were alert to the slightest sound, quick to disappear, nimble, able to go without food for long periods. Furthermore, a kind of inanity and idiocy that characterised their religion made their actions difficult to predict. It proved impossible to completely eradicate this nomadic people.
Necessary energy-saving measures led the governments of the great civilisations to ban all energy consumption in Europe. Local peoples were herded into a series of camps where they were tasked with producing energy, but were not permitted to use that energy. Such actions further threatened peoples who had already been weakened by protracted wars, pollution and the displacement of populations. Unable to adapt and technologically backward, Europeans were dependent on the internet – a rudimentary global intelligence that connected them. Disciples of the convergences thrived during the chaos that followed the banning of electric energy, they were used to living in the dark, to migrating to avoid the harsh winters, to navigating by the stars and communicating using primitive means. They had also developed a means of communicating using paper as a medium – they exchanged information by means of letters and texts using a keyboardless writing technique that had disappeared decades earlier, but which they continued to pass down to each other. The sounds that characterised their religion were transmitted using another ancient technique – known as vinyl – which they learned to operate by producing their own energy. It was precisely their archaism that made it possible for them to survive. They were few in number. They caused little harm – even their thefts were small-scale, a crate of protein powder, a solar panel, nothing that would justify a large-scale hunt.
By dint of ignoring them, in time people forgot them.
It was then that Europe was divided into three administrative areas: energy production camps, camps for organ donation and human experimentation, and holiday resorts. Certain European cities were completely decontaminated, enshrined under glass and devoted to tourism. It is believed that this was when the disciples of the convergences were forced to flee Europe to move to the Great Territories. They had become as pliant as water, well versed in map-making and smuggling contraband, capable of identifying and exploiting the slightest chink in the armour intended to prevent contaminated European bodies from crossing their borders.
*
The first evidence of the disciples of the convergence in the Great Territories dates from the end of the second century of the third millennium. In the East, in North Antarctica, in southern Africa, even in the Caribbean. The great civilisations had emerged from their obscurantism. Music was no longer forbidden. It had fallen into disuse.
The peoples of the convergence found unexpected support among the developed populations. Scholars, researchers and enlightened souls were curious about this white subculture, some going so far as to consider this primitive art form to be an entirely different culture. It was they who archived onto permanent media thousands of hours of music, together with the founding texts of the faith.
When they became aware of this new fad, the authorities of the Great Territories published a number of official statements – Subutex had not been a prophet, any more than Alex Bleach had been, and the three apostles – known by the names Olga Isladovic, Lydia Bazooka and Laurent Dopalet – were usurpers. But the cult of the convergence continued to grow. They were characterised by a series of mass dances, performed using two sonic media mixed in parallel – something that left scholars puzzled: none of them could understand why integrated individuals would wish to senselessly cavort to crude harmonies.
It was not until the development of kinesics and time travel that the phenomenon could be truly understood. Just as, before the domestication of fire, bipeds had struck stones together to ignite dry grass without realising what they were doing, so this group of primitive Europeans had “cobbled together” a system for opening “the great doors”.
Prior to the Subutex sect, there are two examples of civilisations that opened the “great doors” – the Egyptians and the Mayans. But unlike the great masters of alchemy and resonant magic, the Subutex sect had no understanding of kinesis. Only by the purest chance were they able to correctly combine a genotypic communion of synchronous energies, corresponding waves and cardiac rhythm progressions . . . This hypothesis requires so many coincidences that it may seem fanciful – nonetheless these are the facts. The great doors were opened at various locations in the late twentieth century throughout European territories that had not yet been contaminated – today, they are commonly used. Entities – animal, alien, divine, post-mortem, ultra-frequency – are familiar with the gateway. We call this crossroads: Lost Paradise. It entails travelling through a land before the great catastrophes of the early twenty-first century. In doing so, we can communicate with living animals, the daylight is not artificial, the air is breathable, some practitioners even swim without protection in the waters.
The most surprising practice – in the sense that it has no practical or academic purpose – remains the dancing. Numerous invisible entities mingle with the dancing throng.
Proponents of the convergence do not proselytise. The saints revered by devotees are numerous, and the liturgy that has developed around the gods of rock is completely unintelligible to the neophyte. We must emphasise the utter gratuitousness of these practices, which entail no prohibitions.
*
In 2186, Chahida, a descendant of Aïcha, belonging to the family of Sélim, the diplomat, known as a disciple of the first circle, applied to the world governing body for official recognition for the Subutex sect. Such recognition was denied. But the laws inciting persecution were repealed, as a result of the great interest aroused by the opening of the great doors by the original disciples. This is why, against all odds, people continue to dance in the dark, to a primitive music whose creed still shows no sign of waning in the twilight of the third millennium.
THE END
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