“Several times. But what’s brought on the déjà vu? Is all the mathematics going over your head?”
“Well, yes, but that’s not the problem.” I glanced around the lobby; no one was likely to overhear us, but I didn’t want to add to the rumors about Mosala if I could help it. I said, “You looked like you were in a hurry. Maybe I’ll bore you with all my tribulations on the flight back to Phnom Penh.”
“In a hurry? No, I was just going out for some air. If you’re not busy yourself, you’re welcome to join me.”
I accepted gratefully. I’d been planning to eat, but I still had no real appetite—and it occurred to me that Lee might have some professional insights into technoliberation which she’d be willing to share.
As we stepped through the doors, though, I could see what she’d really meant by “going out for some air": Mystical Renaissance had decided to show themselves, crowding the street outside the hotel. Banners read: TO EXPLAIN IS TO DESTROY! REVERE THE NUMEN! SAY NO TO TOE! T-shirts displayed Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Joseph Campbell, Fritjof Capra, the cult’s late founder Gunter Kleiner, event artist Sky Alchemy—and even Einstein, poking his tongue out.
No one was chanting slogans; after Janet Walsh’s confrontationist salvo, Mystical Renaissance had opted for a carnival atmosphere, all mime artists and fire-jugglers, palmists and tarot card readers. Tumbling firesticks cast oscillating deep-blue shadows everywhere, giving the street an oceanic cast. Bemused locals threaded their way through this obstacle course with expressions of weary resignation; they hadn’t asked to have a circus shoved down their throats. So far as I could see, it was only a few badge-wearing conference members who were availing themselves of the free entertainment, or giving money to the buskers and fortune-tellers.
One of the cultists who’d stolen Albert was singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” accompanying himself on a keyboard—a common brand, like his T-shirt; both had IR programming ports. I paused in front of him, smiling appreciatively, while I invoked some notepad software I’d written several years before, and quietly typed instructions. As we walked away, his keyboard fell silent—every volume level set to zero—and Einstein sprouted a thought balloon which read: “Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas.”
Lee gave me an admonishing look. I said, “Come on! He was begging for it.”
Further down the street, a small theatre group were in the middle of a compressed version of The Iceman Cometh, rewritten in contemporary MR vernacular. A woman in a clown costume tore at her hair and declaimed: “I’ve failed to be psychically attuned! Everyone in my net-clan would have remained closer to the healing numen, if only I’d respected their need to continue to be nourished by their imagination-driven self-narratives!” Images of tears flowed down her cheeks.
I turned to Lee. “Well, I'm convinced. I'm joining up tomorrow. And to think: I used to take the fragile beauty of the sunset and reduce it to ugly technical jargon.”
“If you think this is painful, you should hear their five-minute Mahab’harata-as-Jungian-psychobabble.” She shuddered. “But the original remains intact, doesn’t it? And they have a right to their own… interpretation… as much as anyone.” She didn’t sound entirely convinced.
I said wearily, “I don’t know what these people hoped to gain by coming here. Even if they disrupted the conference, all the research has already taken place; it’s all going to be posted on the nets, regardless. And if the whole idea of a TOE offends them so deeply… they can just close their eyes to it, can’t they? They’ve closed their eyes to every other scientific discovery which has failed to meet their stringent spiritual requirements.”
Lee shook her head. “It’s a matter of territorial defense. You must see that. A TOE effectively claims sovereignty over… the universe, and everyone in it. If a conference of lawyers in New York set themselves up as rulers of the cosmos, wouldn’t you be tempted to go and thumb your nose at them, at the very least?”
I groaned. “Physics doesn’t claim sovereignty. Least of all here, where the whole aim is to find the one thing about the universe which physicists and technologists will never have the power to change. Using crude political metaphors like ‘sovereignty’ or ‘imperialism’ is just empty rhetoric; no one at this conference is sending troops to annex the weak force to the strong force. Unification isn’t being legislated or enforced. It’s being mapped.”
Lee said portentously, “Ah, the power of maps."
“Oh, stop it, you know exactly what I mean! As in a map of the sky, not a map of… Kurdistan. And with no constellations drawn in… or stars named.” Lee smirked, as if she had a much, much longer list of culturally charged attributes in mind, and wasn’t going to let me off the hook until I’d ruled out every one of them. I said, “All right, forget the whole metaphor! But the fact is: exactly the same TOE underlies the universe—and keeps these cultists alive, juggling, and spouting gibberish—whether the evil reductionist physicists are allowed to discover it, or not.”
“Not according to the Anthrocosmologists, it doesn’t.” Lee offered a conciliatory smile. “But of course, yes, the laws of physics are whatever they are—and half of Mystical Renaissance would concede as much, in suitably evasive and conditional jargon. Most of them accept that the universe rules itself in some… systematic fashion. But they still feel deeply affronted by an explicit, mathematical formulation of that system.
“You say they should be satisfied with personal ignorance, rather than trying to keep the TOE out of human hands entirely. And of course, they’ll go on believing whatever they like, even if a successful TOE is announced; they’ve never let scientific orthodoxy stand in their way before. But the very beliefs they’ve chosen to hold dictate that they can’t ignore the fact that physicists—and geneticists, and neurobiologists—are tunneling ever deeper beneath everybody’s feet, and dragging to the surface whatever they find there… and what they find will influence every culture on Earth, in the long run.”
“And that’s reason enough to come here and intimidate innocent people with the mutilated corpse of Eugene O'Neill?”
“Be fair: if you’re conceding them the right to believe what they like, that has to include the right to feel threatened.”
The play was coming to a close; one of the actors was delivering a monologue on the need to show only compassion to poor scientists who’d lost touch with the soul of Gaia.
I said, “So what do you call claiming to know the divine will of the Earth itself—if not an equally global land grab, couched in warmer and fuzzier terms?”
Lee gave me a puzzled frown. “But of course. MR are like everyone else; they want to define the world on their own terms. They want to set the parameters, they want to make all the rules. Naturally, they’ve evolved an elaborate strategy to try to mask that fact—such as describing themselves with words like ‘generous,’ ‘open’ and ‘inclusive'—but I'm certainly not suggesting that they’re any more humble, virtuous or tolerant than the most fanatical rationalist. I'm just trying to explain their beliefs to you as an outsider, as best I can.”