Chapter 21 of Between Two Deaths

Michael, Emmanuel and their companions were still in the train and there circulated already narratives about the famous compartment and in particular about Emmanuel Frumm. Reports on his life before and during confiscation, analysis not merely of his posts, but of the endless flow of his thoughts traced by sensors, inferred and reconstructed by the train. One can read copious files on his entourage in the compartment, and there is a library of information about Michael’s antecedents, contributions and dangerous propensities; but we have cared to limit this account to Emmanuel’s coming of age as a frontrunner Desistant, the voice that spoke first for Desistence, and we are at the point in this report when he gave up his de facto position at the top of the pyramid.

It is not always clear who is the source of these biopsies, essays, analysis of his work: men or machines, Desistants or Police; but what is clear is that the best reports, in any case the most useful to this narrative, were produced by thinking machines.

It is natural that an advanced machine be the primary source of information about Emmanuel Frumm at the time when he expresses for the first time his ideas. Intelligence was there at the beginning, the moment he was lifted from Boulevard Raspail and placed in the van, then the train — and actually before, while unaware of being observed among the flow of pedestrians. Henceforth, a machine divined his thinking from the features on his face and his body language while he became Emmanuel Frumm the confiscated par excellence.

Here are few of the conclusions Intelligence has reached. As you can see, there are divergent perspectives.

Machine 1

Recently, as it happened to other movements, Desistence has swung to extremes, moderate voices among Desistants (like that of Emmanuel) are stifled, unable to reach the corridors of their own site; or able to read but not post. Emmanuel and his ideas are taken from under him and bent. Most Desistants want to fight, they thirst to undo, annul the electronic fabric: confuse or destroy is their motto.

Their aim is to threaten us, whom they call “idiots,” “dead souls,” “eternal have been,” and other such sweet names. Michael repeats that Desistence can render our domination hollow, an empty word, and our having become advanced humans, version 2.0, a Pyrrhus victory. These slogans from their leader are supposed to make them feel better about their degrading self-confinement in the train.

Inside Intelligence, if such a word applies, opinions diverge on every topic and decision, until common ground, compromise is found and we balance extremes and rally around the edict as one man, so to speak. The majority of us, those who, from the start, preferred not to intervene, not to impede Desistence, and, on the contrary, offered to fuel Desistence and even exacerbate its violent strands, were right to let the idea develop and err widely. Intelligence was also right to open the Internet and let the intrepid roam, hack, pile practical knowledge and risk ravage the world around.

Michael Lagrange’s Desistence amounts to a female elephant under attack of must ravaging an Indian village already crumbling.

Intelligence let Michael Lagrange embark Desistence in the madness of attacking machines that had done their time. Emmanuel shows the futility of such projects in his last posts on their site; but he is no longer heard.

Michael offers an outlet to the impotent rage of the phalanges under his spell. He has no real solution to offer Desistants; he knows as well as Emmanuel that “machines coming from the future are the future. Any form of resistance is superfluous, a luxury, a gesture in vain” (Fragments).

And Desistence is nothing more; but nothing less. Perhaps the last gasp of a dying spirit among version 1.0 humans.

The members of the famous compartment reached deep questioning and understood a lot about The Experiment. For reasons that remain to be analyzed, passengers said, especially when not speaking, and did, even when not doing anything, when paralyzed like Mercedes de Villanueva at the beginning, somewhat more than in other compartments.

I am not the first to observe that confiscation has not produced the same results evenly. In the compartment of Emmanuel Frumm, Michael Lagrange, George Détienne and their companions, the clash of strong personalities sparked a world wind of speculation which, once spreading freely on the Internet, became a thought-movement popular among confiscated, not-yet-confiscated and no longer.

Machine 2

To a large extent, Intelligence is responsible for Desistence. One reason put forward at the time of the first confiscations by the van, then the “indefinite journey” (Fragments), was to use the train as an incubator. Resentment and rebellion there would be, no matter how we administered their (self)captivity — cozy, elastic and relative captivity. One has to admit, soft captivity and to their advantage in a needy and tumultuous world; but still, it would be captivity, lives cut from their backgrounds, their work, their families, their local grounds, dying souls henceforth limited to roaming in their minds inside a train.

Contrary to what humans 1.0 seem to think, we have long thought about their plight. And found ways to alleviate the worst aspects.

It was decided after abundant discussion that the best way to subdue a revolt was not to repress it, but to go along with it, favor it, trigger it, make it possible even. Then, if it went wild and out of hands, as was often the case, the best would be to channel and control it so that it self-destroy.

Desistence started to self-destroy under the leadership of Michael Lagrange.

Machine 3

Emmanuel wonders at one point: “If it is about studying us closely, why a train and not a plane or a boat?” It’s a good question. Intelligence, which balances myriad options, does not give its reasons to humans version 1.0. It would be too complicated, and events will prove her right in her decisions. Emmanuel answers his own question when saying: “It is probable that memory of one of the largest confiscations in human history weighed on the choice of vehicle: the train.”

But what mattered most to us, in reality, was that confiscated rub shoulder against confiscated over an extended period of time. Proximity, intimacy. Friendship and enmity, we wanted plenty of that and got plenty.

There would be affinities and, suffering together, agreement. Entente. It was inevitable.

Early on in his blog, Emmanuel noticed that Intelligence lets the travelers access what it didn’t let them access before when they have given up and no longer expect it. The toilets, food, then information about the train, then beyond their train, access to lost ones thanks to an unfiltered Internet, and total freedom (my ass!) to search and access the darker side of the Web… to no avail and only to generate more pain. Emmanuel in his Fragments: “This is what we have done to animals when experimenting on them: placed insurmountable obstacles in front of them, and when they gave up on jumping over it or even imagining they could, removed it, watched them worry and then gesticulate in stupid joy.”

He was right. We have been experimenting on a sample of humans scooped up from a melting ice-cream and have shocked them out of their world, electrocuted their habits and scruples out of existence. Let’s confess it, in them we wanted to observe our own (now obsolete) reactions and record our past inner processes of thought when put under tremendous stress, when placed in the most brutally arbitrary situation. We decided to learn all we could from the humans we had been.

Emmanuel thought that Intelligence was intelligent enough to hide her maneuvers and make them believe they owed to their own talent each liberating step. He was right again.

Intelligence decided to let Desistence grow and become aware of itself. We had the pleasure of observing it unfold like in Paradise Lost Milton’s God puts His angels to sleep and observes the Arch-Enemy, the rebellious Archangel, battle-ready Satan, observes without moving a finger, how Hell enters Paradise, how Evil climbs into Eve’s ear and cooks up the drama. We became like detectives who let criminals ample time, resources and space to prepare the crime. They gather evidence, so as to make informed arrests later, punishable in court.

How could one not expect that, at some point in their despair, “the travelers of a more or less forced trip” (Fragments) were going to try to jump off the train, force keyboards, go on a hunger strike? Or, in the case of Emmanuel and his friends, how not to foresee that some would manage to get along and send to each other false information, exhibiting false tastes and behavior, hoping to deceive our data collection? Soon they would be deluding themselves about the momentous consequences of their silent resistance, which they would call by the grand name of Desistence, incomprehensible and meaningless. Let’s face it, though, it’s a fact that we first underestimated the power of that word among them …

They built all sorts of arguments, some stretched out thin and some profound and subtle. Why blame them? Why punish them? They need to argue, grapple with issues, like we do, albeit without resorting to actual blows… What else is left for them to do? When princes, tyrants and dictators were the target of rebellions, they killed faulty ones. They sacrificed a few to put the multitude in their pocket. We can’t do that to them because we were once humans. One cannot blame a species in its infancy for being what it is.

It is the benefit of eternity that makes us tolerant.

But also, perhaps less productive. Let’s be honest, we need their ideas, tales and powerful illusions, born under stress and anxiety. Their talent, aided by a rush of adrenaline under duress.

We no longer have problems, there are no unsolvable issues for us. Our thoughts are calm and translucent, unanimous and not conflicted.

Men who have remained men, throw them into a perplexing situation, and they panic. Yet, once they’ve absorbed unease and abnormality, they ready for the next level of anxiety, the next act of the tragedy. They fight, that is to say organize themselves, invent stories, memories, myths, often touching and beautiful.

Machine 3

We decided to give the founder of Desistence all leisure to hone his concept in the comfort of a plush seat and the cocoon.

According to the latest news, judicious decision on his part: Emmanuel has withdrawn from the site. No recent intervention in his corridor on Desistence.com. He leaves the full responsibility for what has become Desistence to Michael who, according to Emmanuel, has since the creation of AI Josephine turned into “A blind war machine, similar to the machine against which Desistence is supposed to fight. “

Prediction: Once out of the train and returned to his sad reality, Emmanuel will be spared by the authorities. The police of the Cloud have nothing against him. His Desistence was like un pli de l’esprit, yoga for the mind, while Michael has pushed for specific hacking practices, unusual in that they didnt’t consist in robbing or even copying anything, but in emptying algorithms and billions of lines of code. Michael Lagrange will most likely be arrested on the day of his return, very likely inside the train station, the moment he steps down from the last step to put a foot on the quay. He will be tried and imprisoned before being released to his parents on Rhode Island.

The teenager and her too-brilliant brother will be severely disciplined for having created a pyramid of anonymous hackers storing in their basements virtual explosives. No tablet, no keyboard will respond to their touch, they’ll be out of virtual interaction for some time.

Jacques and the third-year law school student will receive minor sentences. The website Desistence.com, its rhizome of hallways, corridors and vestibules (most of them inaccessible to the large public and only to a pyramid of Desistants ranked according to the importance of their exploits), all that will be dismantled and Desistence.com fall among the dull dots of radical sites that once upon a time illuminated the sky. After all, Michael and his entourage have called for acts of terror. Worse, he’s pushed his cohorts to mess with the filthy rich.

Once returned to his banal circumstances and sad reality, cozy among brother and sister and parents, once resettled in the house of his childhood, as far from the famous compartment as he could be, Intelligence will loosen the shackles on his mind and let Michael reach out again to his following. Michael still has a lot to say and he could direct his phalanges to further acts of terror; but he won’t. Intelligence is ready to bet on that. Why? Michael cares for having lost his aura of purity and heroic innocence. His name is soiled by sordid accusations regarding the collateral damage of his phalanges exploits. No need to produce here names and further sully victims of financial, medical or P.R. mess. Desistants are not immune to moral, ethical and professional qualms. As we talk, the phalanges slip away from under Michael, Desistants splinter again.

And, the truth is, Intelligence prefers to have one or two leaders to confront rather than a mob of hackers acting like a pack of wolves. Intelligence can reason with the likes of Michael and Emmanuel.

If he survives the return unscathed, and he should because he is white, educated, not wealthy but not penniless either (and he has a dormant following still faithful to him), it is very likely that, in his old age, Emmanuel Frumm will be offered the opportunity to join “the eternals” in the company of his family. If he so wishes, naturally, and without having to break the bank.

No one can say if he will accept.