Here will appear a work d’Ouvroir de littérature potentielle  (Oulipo).

“7. And a roof, vast petrific around,
On all sides He fram’d: like a womb;
Where thousands of rivers in veins
Of blood pour down the mountains to cool
The eternal fires beating without
From Eternals; & like a blackglobe
View’d by sons of Eternity, standing
On the shore of the infinite ocean
Like a human heart strugling & beating
The vast world of Urizen appear’d.”

William Blake – The First Book of Urizen – Chapter III – 1794.

Chapter 1 – Life Sentence

The streets were words.  They delivered even more useless meaning every night.  He tried hard to find that one symbol, he looked around intently beyond the letters, but his eye could not reach through the confrontation of the familiar overcrowding rush of advertising.  Endless, pithy sentences, all with a long lost and sometimes forgotten purpose.  Signs from corners, words and numbers from old boarded-up shops, in a procession flowing by his side.  He had stopped searching; now he was just keeping an eye out for anything unusual hiding behind the leaves of these lost words.  Some were torn in half, as if sentences were uttered and interrupted mid-thought.  Anyway, no one was listening anymore.

This story will never have a sequel, but then again, I’m usually a liar, he thought. He negotiated the boundary of his known territory, avoiding any contact with other people on the opposite side of the street.  He would never dare cross the road, it was not his world, not his right, and they were looking.  He could afford to ignore some of the others, those who were not a part of his world, they knew nothing of his presence either, but he didn’t care.  The time of silence, enjoyable in itself, had long passed.  It was a peace amongst the flow of words, stretching over a lost horizon, which he only just remembered from a long time ago.  Even the past was changing in his mind, a memory recast into the present, changed so much that he couldn’t remember the boundaries between reality and [imagination].

They had observed him, studied him to get a sense, make a judgement of the man.  All they could notice was the avoiding eyes from others in the street.  Possibly another creature scuttling along in the twilight of the city.  They watched the careful strides through the traffic, somehow confident, his step avoiding the movements of the crowds around him, and always at the last minute.  They noticed the way his walk would always slowly shift, moving closer towards the smells of spice, the burning smoke of oil, from the street vendors.  They could not see his left hand folding into a fist in his coat pocket, whilst the other hand slowly tightened its grip around the handle of an open pen-knife.

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I want to hear you cry – this was the last sentence she remembered him saying.  She mentioned this to her friend X1, but as the words ran out of air, when they’d stopped carrying meaning, she realised that no one would understand the events of the past fortnight.   These had taken hold of her life.  Her carefully structured environment was now shaken to the core.  Progress was halted, other meanings destroyed by a few minutes in the street.  X1, in his annoying compassionate tone, had stated that everyone secretly dreads this kind of uncontrolled behaviour from others.  We all know that it exists, but we never want to consciously acknowledge others can do such things.  If humanity admitted its violent tendencies, cities would fall and states would fail.  This had already started to occur in Somalia, which was lost, it had almost happened in Iraq after the war. X1 believed that the current violence in Iraq and Afghanistan was a glimpse into the future for all of us.  A dreadful future of suicide bombers exploding in shopping malls, IEDs buried under every street, daily kidnappings as a way of earning a living.  This future was slowly catching up with all of us, like a slow tide.  Mexico, Colombia were already in this future, the tide lapping towards the shores of Texas, and slowly destroy the US.  On this side of the planet, Turkey would be next, after the events in the Middle East, and according to X1, Europe would have to blow-up the Istanbul Bridge just to keep safe.  It was all paranoid madness, she thought, as if you could stop a tide of violence by severing a bridge between continents.

She had no idea why these memories of past conversations with X1 were entering her brain now.  She needed to concentrate on the digitally enhanced picture of the man.  He was tall in this footage, yet his head was out of proportion to the rest of his body.  She wasn’t sure if this was due to the camera lens, or the poor quality of the digital scanning software.  It was definitely him, moving slowly through the crowds on the screen in front of her.  She observed him discard the knife in the river, the blade momentarily shinning in the ray of a street light, before hitting the water.  His head was in a strange position when this happened, as if he somehow managed to displace it away from the rest of his body, the enhancements were also making his eyes glow.  She was annoyed with herself for being such a poor witness.  She certainly had not noticed those eyes a few weeks ago, and she wondered why he remained there next to the river for so long.  They had told her that he was probably listening out for the sound of the knife falling in the river, or he was waiting for others in the street to move away.  It was only then that she noticed a small figure on the screen actually walking straight towards him, hurrying to get to were he was standing, almost as if they were long lost friends.  At first she didn’t even recognise this figure, it was only when they pointed at her bag, that she realised it was her, on that very night, as she almost deliberately walked into him.  How could she have been so blind?  She looked at the officials in the room, saw that X1 had a stupid and embarrassed smile on his face. He was probably feeling sorry for her.  She was the only person on the planet with a first-hand look at this man, and she couldn’t remember a single feature of his face, and certainly not the glowing eyes.

They had contacted her because the street camera had latched on her features.  The automatic facial recognition system zooming in and delivering a pop-up of her contact details on the screen.  They had no other footage of the man, they asked what should could remember from the encounter, what he felt like when she walked into him.  She answered with the details of how she was shaken by the impact, she couldn’t remember why she had been so distracted that she had walked straight into him.  In fact she couldn’t even remember even being aware of his presence until it was too late.

– Surely, you must have seen his face, you walked into to him? X1 asked letting out a nervous laugh.

She remembered how this man’s body seemed to quiver in the night-time street glow. How the man’s hand had touched her shoulder, pushed her aside, whilst uttering – I want to hear you cry.  Maybe he actually said… I don’t want to hear you cry….I can’t quite remember. She looked up at all the officials in the room with a sigh as she made her official recorded statement.

A groan greeted this account.  It was probably the third time she had changed her mind.  Someone in the room asked if she remembered the sound of his voice.  She was thinking about the sounds when they had shown the footage.  The river was delivering the usual dull oily flow of sound; she remembered a splash, and then a thud in her head as she bumped into him.  Thinking back, she did experience what seemed to be a static shock, with the sound of a slight slap of energy from the spark.  It’s only then that she looked up.  His voice was softly spoken, he almost had a French accent, I don’t think he said the “h” in “hear”, it was like he said, I want to ear you cry…

– You mean, I don’t want to hear you cry? – asked X1.  She corrected herself.  She knew the officials now thought she was the most useless witness. The footage was left to show her on screen, wincing a bit with pain it seemed, she did get a bruise on her shoulder where the man had touched her with his hand.  In her mind at the time, she simply recalled a feeling of remaining stunned. Maybe we should just leave, said X1.  She agreed and closed her eyes to avoid the stares from the junior police officers in the room.

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He could feel that it was time to move away from the square.  He was still within the limits of his territory, but he knew he had attracted the attention of others.  They probably already had talked to the witness.  If they set out to track his presence he would be unable to act.  He walked through the passageway, the connected street was very near, but he was at his most vulnerable.  If something happened to him now he would be unable to call for back-up.  They would also question the wisdom of letting him work alone.  He now knew the territory well, no need to draw further attention from the contact team, the events were now void.  No more crying, no suffering, he thought.

He smiled at the sight of other people in the Square, he remembered the stare of that woman. It was only a glance, but he had not returned it, she would not recall, he was confident of that.  He tried to think of the other places where he had seen her before. He might have time to deal with her before any possible fall from grace from the team.  Looking through the cables over the last couple of weeks, he had expected a mention from the Endzone.  They had been no acknowledgement of his work in years.  It would be ironic if his final dismissal took place because of her.

The worst fate was to be sacrificed for the good of the team, or simply to provide an advantage for another team.  He’d seen that happen before, once you became too good at the job, others would want to see you fail.  He could understand the logic, they wanted to manipulate his movements to the other territories.  They would not allow observation, if he kept on delivering.  Observation did not mean control, at least not yet.

He walked around the perimeter, again the words on the street, the search for symbols.  He noticed how some words seemed to randomly connect to make sentences, depending on the direction you approached the street.  Words in graffiti, followed by words on the billboards, followed by fly-posters on the street lamps, followed by the neon warning signs.  The sentence was endless, but it could have significance, if interpreted correctly, if you looked carefully at the foreign words.

He could not control the flow of these things.  They ebbed over time, it was like trying to control rats in the city.  Looking at an advert for nappies on the billboard, he tried to think of a time when a child would be born and educated with no foreign influence.  They were getting there, but it was probably still a future unborn stranger who could live peacefully without fear from the others.  He often thought about this child, the unborn pure soul, with no deviant cultural influences.  His colleagues called this future child the “writer of history”, if only he could communicate directly with them.  They would give meaning to all this work, the correct meaning, applied to the correct way of life.  The sentence about his life would be glorious.  This reassured him, he also knew that none of the others, the ones his friends called the D-K, would ever be able to understand his motivation.

In the endless permutations of the city Squares, you could sometimes think that the connections of territories would end up representing all the futures of the world including the future of the unborn interpreter, ready to write his history, to tell of his meaning.  The meaning was in his mind, but the words would come late or not at all. He walked along the boundary to the riverside.  He enjoyed this part of the patrol, he could look at the water without fear.  None of the others ever came along the river walk.  People were such docile creatures in this world, they breathed, ate, procreated, met their end.  Some used machines to achieve nothing of any significant in particular. Even their greatest creations, the cities, were devoid of any meaning or purpose.  He no longer felt pity for them, or compassion, he ignored them completely. His eyes fell on the spot of the last action.  No change to be seen.

He thought of her, she had seen him, there was no doubt that he would have to find her again, to avoid any possible contamination of his territory.

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Actual separation, X1 wanted to leave her, he didn’t want to be associated with her.

– You were so bloody ditsy back at the station, he moaned.

She was feigning surprise, not even really listening to him, she was too tired to focus on his words.  In fact if pushed she would probably welcome his departure, it would take a lot of effort in moving, relocating out of this home, severing possessions and friends.  The events of the last fortnight were still to the forefront of her mind.  She couldn’t understand how she even got into the street, it was almost as if a gust had nudged her in the direction of that man.  That night was rough, lots of rain, some leaves flying in the air, she could remember mainly watching her feet as she walked. She was sure the authorities were suspicious now, the footage almost showed her making a bee line for the man.  Did she say anything to him after he spoke?  She couldn’t remember, probably mumbled an apology, the process had only taken a few seconds.  Her muscle twinged in her shoulder, she gave it a bit of a massage, looked up from the couch and realised that X1 was still talking and pacing the room.  He seemed very angry now, and was gesturing towards the door. She just nodded, as another memory from that night came back to her in a flash.  She had looked back at the man, she had seen his head change shape, it could have been the shadows from the corner light, the red glow from the infrared camera playing a trick of light.  In her mind, she looked at him, at his back as he walked off, and his head was getting smaller compared to his shoulders.  The door slammed, X1 had left, she would need to find somewhere else to live.

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Ascendance would be swift, it would be a mercy without pain, he thought.  He couldn’t wait for the correct symbol from the streets.  His wonderings sometimes took all day, he could tell the mood of the crowd simply by flowing into their pace, he was never noticed.  Sometimes he would divert through the lanes and overgrown passageways, like shortcuts through the maze of streets, into shopping malls, through metal doors leading into underground parking, and finally along train platforms.  He was aware of the cameras watching, he had a slight stoop forward, with his face always hidden by shadow.  The darkness could hide the symbols, it could hide the proximity of a team-mate, someone else wondering out of their set territory. They might be there to give him deliverance, instantaneous liberation, he was ready.  Annoyingly he could feel a presence, the unborn were already there, a future encroaching into the present.  His territory wasn’t only physical, when he stopped walking, his mind focused on the temporal barriers around him.  Time moved forward all around him, at the usual one second pace, but the other unborn interpreters were moving in, he could sense them.  The meaning given to his life was no longer adequate, the sentence was far too short, after all the training and coaching.

The darkness hardened around him, almost pitch black at the end of the platform, waiting for the train.  Other lonely walkers avoided his border, a camera with a red laser light moved past into the dark.  Time to move away, he exited the station, walked quickly towards the river.  The wind was pushing some pedestrians towards him, they were all looking carefully at their feet, trying to avoid the swirling dust and leaves.

Into the darkness of the night he walked. His features were different, they were shifting with the flow of his thoughts, his mouth now clearly defined into a rictus of pain.  The process had only taken on a few seconds, internal trauma was making him weak.  He sat down on a bench just to recover. He felt like his head was shrinking, pressure building around his ears was becoming unbearable. Nausea was invading his body, the resting legs were difficult to move. Only a few more minutes of consciousness, just time to throw the books away behind the bench, before he accepted that he would pass out, slumped in the shadow.

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“Nothing to eat, nothing to wear,
There’s the enemy who will supply us.
No guns, no cannons,
The enemy will forge them for us.”

Chinese Patriotic Guerilla Song by He Luting

Chapter 2 -  Je renouvelle le monde, I renew the world, kāi shǐ zì jǐ móu shēnɡ.

 

He felt his presence everywhere. In all the territories reached and patrolled. They knew his sign and always felt ready for his meaning.  In fact they longed to be in his presence.  He understood the irony of that last thought, the content of the meaning was yet to be finalised, yet it was driving them even further forward.  The next land would be the last, and then the next, and so on forever. The darkness hardened its grip on the city, the street light desperate to reassure the lonely walkers. They continued their progress towards the last outer edge of the territory.

Mansfield’s first disobedience was the fruit of the tree whose mortal taste could bring death into the world.  The seat restored and regained from the secret inspired him in the choice of the seed. Rising out of chaos, in the beginning, were the heavens and the third rock from the Sun, called the Earth.  While it pursued its course through the centuries, spirits arose, with upright heart from their purified temples.  Dove-like brooding over the abyss of humanity they shouted the word “Illumina”.  This was their one and only argument.  Some called it and asserted an eternal Providence, others claimed they were the mere birthright of fairy-tales.  The truth was that both were righteous and both would be misled.

With superstitions and traditions tainted,  with written documents impure, only these spirits understood. They sought to avail themselves of names, places and titles, and with these to join the global power elite.  They always acted by their laws, which was a carnal force, but they had freedom to undertake persecutions.  Mansfield remembered the uprising, those who persevered to demand the truth.  So that the World Panel, the clever men who look upon these events with benign confidence, and the knowledge that a terrible vengeance on the wicked would occur.  All wanted a new world in their land, lifted from the fires on the ground, purged and refined, a new earth, founded in justice, peace and love, for the joy of success and eternal happiness.

The streets looked exactly as he knew them.  Yet somehow the pattern was different, a certain road which would normally lead to a well-known shop now bought him back to where he started.  Sometimes she thought someone had placed a mirror in front of him, as the paths and lanes where alternatively on opposite side of where they used to be.  Other street corners were somehow inverted so that a street whose name he knew turned out to be called something else by the locals.  He walked for hours trying desperately to find a common point with the maps in his mind and the world around him.  The memory of the city was in his brain, but they were fading fast, as if several years had now passed and he had returned to his birth-place with all the street names changed, all the shop-fronts removed, all the trees cut down and all the intersections redesigned in order to forget the needs of the people and bow to the rule of the car.

Around him were names and words which no longer retained meaning.  They had signified so much in his mind, a certain passage of time, a type of feeling.  Even these were contradicted by the reality of his senses.  Either his mind was now playing tricks on him, or he was now lost in his own city.  He had now become the foreigner in his own land.  A turn of a corner, past the rugged edge of a stone building which seemed to age and crumble in a few minutes, even as his feet moved along the ground towards an old doorway.  He sat on the steps in front of the door, and thought about this seemingly endless labyrinth of streets and new names.  How could I become lost in my own city, he thought. His head was spinning, if only he could find his old home, maybe then he could get his bearings.  He looked up at what seemed to be a new fly-over, clogged with cars.  His eyes squinted as even the air had changed almost overnight into a polluted fog of fumes and dust.  The black dirt particles were slowly seeping into his skin and under his nails, his breathing felt strained, tears formed over his sight to protect his eyes.  The air was troubling his lungs, now unused to its thickness, he almost felt like he was drowning in this new viscous atmosphere.  Sitting down was no longer providing rest as he was struggling to breathe.

Maybe the city had aged overnight.  He was now a stranger getting used to a new language, he would need to learn the new grammar of the streets, of the shop fronts, of the new sign posts.  At this stage he could not understand a word of this new language, as he tried to fumble his way back on his feet.  He stepped forward in this new environment, stuttering through these streets, as if a child bumbling new words in a foreign tongue.