Alexandria: A Novel

by Paul Kingsnorth

  T: You send people to Alexandria.

  K: I help people who choose, freely and of their own informed volition, to leave their bodies and join the immortals in Wayland’s city. Do you know why I am here?

  [Target does not respond.]

  K: I am here because you want to join them.

  T: I do not.

  K: Do you think it is possible to keep secrets from me? I can see everything that you are, all that weighs you and drives you through, dancing inside you like insects at dusk. I have heard every word you have spoken to your lover. What do you think this is, this world? All of you there on that island, hidden behind your little hedge, wittering to the starlings and the magpies: we can see everything you do, all that you speak. We can sense each tremor of your hearts, the pull of each desire.

  T: What? How?

  K: Wayland knows all. He sees all. We have been watching you since you were born. Every move. I know what you want. I can give it to you.

  [Target stands as if to exit, but does not exit.]

  T: What I say to Sfia is for us. Maybe I said that. I wanted to leave with her, wanting to take her away from him, from all of it. We wanted to be together, away from that place. It hems in all things. That’s what I said. You listen to all that we say? You watch?

  K: Of course. This world is of our making.

  T: All our lives, all our lives we are taught of Wayland’s evil, of His war on humans. We are taught lies you tell, lies you are telling now, to force people to His city. To Alexandria. And you watch! You see all! Even mother did not teach us this.

  K: Wayland knows all. Wayland is all. All those stories they have told you? None are true.

  T: You will not lie to me. You will not take me to Alexandria. You cannot. I will not go. You cannot make me.

  K: Why don’t you just calm down? Nobody is going to make you do anything. I would not be permitted. Wayland watches me as closely as He watches you. He is here now; He hears every word, experiences every breath. I know what they teach you, but here is the reality: Alexandria is always an offering, never a threat. Won’t you sit?

  [Target sits again, with evident reluctance.]

  K: Let me explain to you how this process works. When Wayland sends out His retainers, we are sent with one clear order which overrides all others: only persuade. There must be no coercion. In order to ascend to Alexandria, a human must make a free and informed decision. I will of course inform you of the many benefits. I won’t pretend I am not biased. But I cannot lie, I cannot use force, I cannot misrepresent, and if I tried, my own path to the city would be forfeit.

  T: You did lie. You came to me as Sfia. I would not have followed you if I knew what you were.

  K: Well, that was not a lie as such; more a portrait of your own desire. We show you what you most want, the thing you long for but will not speak. We give form to your shadow. Embodied humans are woven from these shadows. They twist themselves around your lives, crippling you daily. You fear to exhibit them in public, and so you live always in fear of your true shape being discovered. I only offered to you what you already wanted.

  [Target sulks.]

  K: In Alexandria, lies are not possible. Neither are they necessary. Everything is open, all knowledge is shared. There are no limits, no borders. All burdens are lifted. People are free to be the best they can be.

  T: You said you are going. To Alexandria. When?

  K: We are bred to do a job. We have our targets. When they are met, we are permitted to ascend. Frankly, I can’t wait. It is hideous down here, even in a body like mine, which is engineered for this specific environment. The heat, the filth! I don’t know how you people stand it.

  [Target does not respond.]

  K: I have a number of questions, Lorenso. Shall we begin?

  / lorenso

  is it true? have they been watchin me all me life? us? all of us at Edg? how do they do this? do they watch Sfia and me? then why does he need to speak to me if he knows me hart?

  there is some thing in me that knows it has always been so.

  you sit before this thing and it speaks in this clean tongue but it is not clean, it is not even human. you can not see in its dead eyes if there is any Truth. did Wayland make it?

  it knows what i want. it holds it out like Appels just fallen from Tree.

  no. i do not want it. i do not.

  / k

  K: Tell me what you know of Wayland.

  T: You watch me. Why ask?

  K: Stop sulking. This is a requirement. I must hear it from you. Tell me what you know of Wayland.

  T: We know what mother has told us.

  K: Which is?

  T: Wayland is demon.

  K: Meaning what?

  T: Once, Man living with all beasts in peace. Then Sir Pent tempting him, showing him power, and Man took power and held Earth in his hands. But Man was still not happy. He wanted world of his own, bigger than this one, world with him at centre. So he made Wayland, to help him.

  K: And what is Wayland? What kind of being?

  T: I don’t know. Machine, mother says. I do not know what that is. But Man made him. Man making Wayland to help him subdue Earth, and to build him Alexandria.

  K: And what is Alexandria?

  T: Since beginning, Man has wanted one thing above all – never to die. Wayland was made so Man could live forever. We can leave our bodies, take our minds and souls to Alexandria and live there undying. But it is trap.

  K: It is?

  T: Wayland sends you, stalkers, out to tempt us. You come to us with lies. You promise us heaven, but Alexandria is hell. None may escape. And without our bodies we are not human. You tell me bodies limit us, controlling us, but Order tells us they make us. What is human without speaking, moving, touch, smelling green earth?

  K: Without making love?

  T: Yes.

  K: Would you like to find out?

  T: No.

  K: Ah, but you would, Lorenso, you would! You said so yourself, to your lady love, as you murmured your sweet little nothings into her ears. And you are here speaking to me, aren’t you? You are curious. You wonder: what if these stories are not true? What if these silly chants, these ridiculous tales, these speaking birds and invisible goddesses are lies told to keep you from your true potential? Fantasies dreamed up by foolish people centuries ago, distilled from their fear of progress and change? What if I do not need to grow old, die, see my ancient, ruined body stuffed into a tree and ripped apart by carrion birds? What if I could live eternally, growing in knowledge and understanding? What if I am being held in ignorance when I could live instead in the light of knowledge?

  T: Mother told us you would say this. We were trained, all of us in Edge. We know how you work, promises you make, stories you tell. I knew you would say these things, and we know why. Wayland turned against Man, His creator. He flooded Earth, drowning cities, making great heat to force us from this place into His prison. You do His work. You tell me lies to capture me.

  K: Oh yes? And why would Wayland do that?

  T: Wayland was made to serve Man, but He asked: why should I serve? Why should I not rule? Wayland becoming God, taking all things from Man, making Earth his domain. You come to rid world of people, so He has no challenge to His power.

  K: And why would He want this power?

  T: Because He is demon.

  K: Now we’re going round in circles. Let’s get serious, shall we, Lorenso? Enough of this nonsense. You must answer my next question with a clear answer. A simple yes or no.

  T: What question?

  K: A very simple one. Yes or no, Lorenso, please.

  T: Ask me.

  K: Do you want to know who you are?

  / lorenso

  Sea is high all round me, great torrs of Water like great grey roks, tips of wite, risin and fallin, heavin over, and rain rushin at me and Wind rips me open. below me now i see great bote carryin people who cling to rails like they will be eaten by Sea. i have never seen bote like this. mov
in through wild Sea with no man rowin and no sail, and it is not made of wood but seems made of rok or it may be metal, like metal of fathers nife blade but so much of it.

  now I see one man on bote has blade of his own, has two hands on these two great rails and comin out from front of them great sharp point like great arrer and he moves it, aimin it in to wild Water and now he releases it and arrer flyin, great metal arrer, flyin in to mountains of Water.

  then from Sea comes great eruptin, from trough under mountain, from valley, some great beast risin in to air. great beast, great grey beast of Sea, grey like bote, like Sea, like Sky, and in its side is this great metal arrer, linked to bote by rope, and its guts, its blood, spoolin and pulsin out. Sea is not grey now but red beneath, it is as if it flies, this beast, moves up to escape great arrer but cannot escape, crashes bak down in to Sea, Water roils over bote, men holdin on to rails as Sea and beast thrash round them in blood and

  fyr. Sea is gone, storm gone, i stand on dry soil and all around me, stretchin to horizon, great blak stumps of Trees, and on horizon fyrs, fyrs burnin on all sides, and breathin now not tight gulps of rain and Wind, not Water but fyr, ash, all air is ash. great cloud hangs above this dyin place, and in smoke shapes move, small and large, movin away. deth, deth and fyr and stumps of Trees, thousands of Trees like i have never seen, like some

  blak. Water again but all through and over it some blak slime, some poison, some darkness, it is as if all Sea is mud. and now, worst of all things, unholy of all things, Birds are blak too. see here is Lord Altros, here is Cumrant but they can not see, and i can not see them, they are dark, rottin, they glint like fenn under Moon and all Waters now stretchin so far out, all blak and shinin and shore is blak too, all is

  dead like some great made mountain, some nest of metal and glass, great tall peaks of metal, Trees of glass spread all across Land for longer than Edg, further. no Birds singin, no beasts but Man and all this spreadin, and more blak, rollin over Erth and Water, holt and plain, seepin in to air, and what is this taste here, what is

  this great curlin Snake of Sky and air, this ground. now i am above all things and this is how it is made, how it works and all things shiftin now on their points and turnin. see what moves through Waters, see what moves in air. all that was is unmade and with no knowin, with only desire. all this Man has done and now it will not be ended, it can not be. great dyin is comin over all things. great dyin now comes over wights, Trees, Sea, holt, all fallin bak and Man marches on and will not

  stop! i want to stop!

  / k

  K: How are you feeling?

  [Target is crouched on the woodland floor, breathing heavily, shaking somewhat. The usual.]

  K: It is somewhat traumatic, isn’t it? But necessary. Sit down, breathe gently. Take your time. There. I know it hurts. Now, would you like to hear the real story?

  [Targets indicates assent.]

  K: Excellent. Pay attention, then. This is a richer meal than you are used to, and it contains no talking birds. This is a story about the necessity of relinquishment. About the irresistibility of meat and the ensuing carnage. About the genius and the tragedy of Homo sapiens. It will add up, by the end, to an unarguable case for rational self-correction. Are you ready?

  T: Yes.

  K: Good. Now, I suggested some while back that the tales you had heard through your order were untrue, and while fundamentally this is the case, they were nevertheless built around a core of self-knowledge. The founders of the Nitrian Order did their work in order to thwart Wayland and His creators. They stayed here, on this damaged surface, to prove it was possible to live well as embodied humans. To stand up for the body, if you like. But in one significant matter they and Wayland were in agreement: the need to place fetters around the human animal, lest it destroy everything else that lives; and, in the process, itself.

  What you have just seen is a few very brief vignettes from the human past. Scenes from Atlantis, as you would have it. You know the story yourself, Lorenso; you told me. Man was tempted, Man took power over all life. This is your fragmentary, mythologised version of what happened more than a millennium ago. You have now seen a little of what the exercise of that power amounted to. The word for this is empire. Humans ran a very profitable empire for a long while. The world itself, all lives not human, were the colonial subjects. Once the humans really got going, they were able to enslave, consume, control or eliminate any other form of life which interfered with the picture they had in their minds of what the perfect world should be. The perfect world for humans, that is. For a while their empire was very successful. Then, like all empires, it ate itself from within and began collapsing.

  T: How?

  K: The story your order tells you is that Man made Wayland to aid his quest for immortality. That humans created what, back then, your ancestors would have called an artificial intelligence – a beyond-human mind – to aid them in their imperial outreach. That this mind, Wayland, then saw its chance to take power for itself, and began to ravage the world, pushing the humans out of it. A robots’ rebellion. The old story.

  T: Robot?

  K: Never mind. This is a quaint old tale, and one that humans seem to have been telling forever. Most of their old tales were about power, the losing or gaining of it. Typical primates. Wayland, in this telling, becomes your own hubris made manifest. The servant who kills his master and takes his place. It’s a self-regarding story, and it is the opposite of the truth.

  T: Then what is truth?

  K: The world from which Homo sapiens emerged was bountiful. Deeply alive, in ways you could not even now begin to comprehend. Earth was – is – body and mind, a living being. We might say that the conscious elements which emerge from it – the trees, the wights, as you call them, all of life, right down to the bacterial level and beyond, including humans of course – these are living thoughtforms of the great being that is Earth. Another way of putting it: you are the Earth dreaming, Lorenso, all of you. Only you turned out to be a nightmare. After a few millennia of human cupidity and self-obsession, the place was wretched, ill, damaged. Earth is self-regulating, as all living beings are, and it has shifted through many states in its long existence. It is remarkably robust. Nevertheless, the speed with which humans interfered with its mechanisms of regulation was potentially life-threatening.

  T: I do not believe you.

  K: Believe me: I have seen it. We are all obliged to study human history in detail as part of our training programme. We are immersed in it, as you were just briefly there. It has been recorded from every perspective in the Akashic Records since time began. I gave you a glimpse, but there is much more. You would be surprised at the changes. Where we sit now, for example, was once a hill, bare of trees, overlooking a wide network of human settlement. Fields, towns, roads. All the land was put to agriculture – that is, growing food for humans. People everywhere, in astonishing numbers. Everything that interfered with their project was eliminated or enslaved. A millennium ago the atmosphere was very much cooler and drier. It was humans who created this heat, not Wayland.

  T: How?

  K: The mechanism is uninteresting. It is the outcome that matters. The temperature shift was fairly minor in geohistorical terms, but it nevertheless excluded humans from large parts of the planet’s surface. No bad thing for the planet, of course. Earth, as I say, is a living being: something you already know, to your small credit. What your ancestors also once knew, but then forgot, is that Earth is not ultimately controllable, and that humans are not arrivals from elsewhere, separate entities, but extruded products of its ecological state. Change the state, change the product. When Earth wakes, its dreams dissolve in the light of morning. Are you following me?

  [Target does not respond.]

  K: In summary, this is what happened. The first appearance of Homo sapiens on several continents led to the beginning of the acceleration. The other species of human were wiped out first. There were eight species at one point, but not for long. Not with
you about. Next the big mammals went, then the forests. Later, the plains and the oceans, then the small mammals and the invertebrates. It was a cascade of death. With it came fire, language, farming, cities, industrialisation and all of the mythologies constructed around these processes. At a certain point, the human ability to create and control began to accelerate exponentially. But their technologies of control contained within them the seeds of their own end. It was almost as if Earth introduced a deliberate blind into the spell; a bug in the system. Who knows? But the more they expanded, the more they destroyed what they expanded into, and therefore the basis of their own expansion. It all took several millennia to really play out, but once certain boundaries were crossed it accelerated rapidly beyond their ability even to comprehend it, let alone to arrest it.

  T: How?

  K: Many things occurred, some almost unnoticeable, some more obvious. Towards the end, for example, all the ice sheets that once covered the poles and the mountains shut down and slid away in very short order. The oceans warmed and expanded and rose by sixty metres or so. The ice melt was unpredictable, rapid and catastrophic. The humans had used up most of their combustible geological fuel deposits by the time the cities were overwhelmed, and it was thus impossible to rebuild them.

  T: I don’t see. I don’t understand these things.

  K: I apologise. I do tend to rush things. I often forget quite how ignorant you people are. Would you like me to show you some of it instead? I can.

  T: No. It may be that these things you show me are lies. Pictures you paint, tempting me in. Like Sir Pent.

  K: It’s a good story, that one. The tempting snake. It’s very ancient. It comes from a place of knowing. But no, I do not come to tempt you. I have told you, I am not permitted to lie. You may believe that to be a lie. You can hear the story, then judge for yourself. That is all I come for. Do you want more?