Rytius Records (Substack Edition), Ch. 13

Chapter 13. Ex Nihilo and the Exclusion of Possible Pasts

13. Ex Nihilo and the Exclusion of Possible Pasts

There were no circumstances under which Tellem Ralph, Fila’s old friend, would have missed Fila’s daughter’s naming ceremony.

Rytius was still in the home of Prince Appall back when Tellem, one of Fila’s boys from home, was also Fila’s friend and helper, sourcing materials, trading records, finding documentation, calling upon those who might have or know more. The first time anyone ever had what would come to be called a listening party, it was at Tellem’s Crib, his own record store, then devoted to records in the sciences, technology, and economics, opened after he recovered from injuries sustained during the discovery: he and Fila had taken tube packets of gunpowder and plenty of fuses, but the packets were too large for the door, even with the debris. They blasted a section of concrete off of the I-beam crossing the door and it hit Tellem in the quadriceps, just above the knee tendon. It was a curiously undamaging injury, considering the velocity and mass of the shrapnel, and it was miraculous that he walked on two legs ever again, let alone that he hobbled into the main hall of the library, triumphant, three stories above, three stories below, an authentic oldentime collection of technical and economic knowledge. So now Tellem swung and clacked a black walnut cane with an air of affectation, though he never mentioned his injury.

The issue that long ago evening, October 10, 2133, was a series of periodicals called the Lancet, a medical journal, whose series, like that of all the journals Tellem had then recently found, quite inexplicably ceased in 2035. The question Tellem raised was loaded in such a way that friends would understand and forgive his small transgression, because they knew what he meant. Which is to say that his first observation was that this journal, the Lancet, published a collection of articles each month, and had for more than a century. A recordkeeper named Cococreem Jennings, a nutritionist at New Ark General, and therefore sensitive to a certain kind of medical development, noted that there was nothing special at all about a journal publishing for a long time. Tellem didn’t respond, but continued with his second observation, which was that the collection of articles was usually themed around some medical or scientific issue relevant to their audience. A recordkeeper named Erron asked whether this thematic principle of publication was notable compared to other journals of the time, if Tellem knew that. Tellem answered Erron first a clear no, but not because every single journal he discovered ended the same year, but because, while out of those hundreds of technical, economic, business, and scientific journals he had discovered he had only been able to skim through a couple dozen, every single one was organized according to the same principle: some sort of general theme for the issue which, while not absolutely exclusive of material outside the theme, definitely weighs heavily in the issue. Tellem continued with his third observation, which was that the medical journal at issue had no overriding thematic interest lasting longer than a year or two at any time ever. He paused and asked his loaded question whether that did not immediately rule out any medical or biological cause of the great rip in time that was whatever occurred summer 2035.

Those gathered fell silent and, according to Fila, a recordkeeper named Kloz Munro muttered a profanity to himself, stood up and started clapping, firmly, insistently, and the whole group rose to celebrate Tellem’s achievement. His simple question demonstrated the power they sought and the glory they lived for: the power of even a cursory glance at the mere form of the mere history of a single medical journal to clarify historical perspective and thereby create actual substantive historical knowledge. There could have been no worldkilling plague.

But why load that particular question, and not another? What if Tellem had been thinking about something—anything—other than cataclysms in human history? There was clearly nothing to justify plucking pandemic from the universe of possible nonevents…  Did the material itself—a stack of magazines—demand this negative, inverted approach? Was there something beyond the magazine-stackness of the material to justify it? Tellem had violated the rules of the game by leaving those questions unanswered. But the results were astonishing.

So Tellem went through his records seeking this sort of knowledge, and he found it. He then asked for help, and those who joined him took the same backward path to knowledge, and they found it. There were no indications of catastrophe along any of the familiar lines one might expect from a basic working knowledge of twenty-first-century history. Tellem’s work, the exclusion of possible pasts, remains the indisputable triumph of recordkeeping to date and its only publicly heralded achievement. It was also the limit of what could be achieved with Tellem’s formal historical method. And he knew it.

The posse he raised among the recordkeepers threw themselves into their work with the desperate enthusiasm of millenarians rearranging their prophetic calendar. They were determined to isolate via the accumulation of exclusions the cause of the chasm in history. Of course, to fill out any space of unknown mass and extent is a task of unknown work and duration. It can be no surprise when one comes to discover that it takes a je ne sais quoi, some Fingerspitzengefühl, a couple hints, a little English, some topspin, a push in the right direction—some notion of the shape of the universe one seeks to map.

The gentlest push when investigating unknown domains is any hypothesis what will be found. Which is to say, one requires some sort of speculation on what may have happened, and the material may not tell you that it did, but it may tell you that it could not have happened. Via this method, one must invent theoretical events in order to exclude them. One forms a speculation, and goes to disprove it. Of course, the font of speculation is the imagination of the entirely unregulated individual subject, and subject to all the dangers to knowledge that subjectivity entails.

The feverish pace at which they worked, the energy they had, and the regular plodding success of their exclusions spoke for themselves. Their modest slogan was that they were clearing the foundation for the creation of new knowledge. Small successes suffice to fortify those devoted to the life of the mind, and there were those who thought Tellem’s strategy was ok, as far as it went, though he was dishonest about its potential to peer across the event horizon, to pull knowledge back out of the rip in time after which they had been fated to live. They disagreed with those who thought Tellem’s demagogy, in claiming such ambitions for so crude a method, was reason enough to kick him out and denounce him as a misleader, or even to physically exile him from what was then still called Newark.

There was a single formal inquiry into whether there was any basis for exclusion from recordkeeping, but the truth is that there had been no direct debate over the method of past exclusion, and, the group had not even concluded the previous year’s debate over subjectivity in the creation of knowledge, the memory of which was still quite fresh. There were definitely no grounds for exclusion because there were no grounds at all. Tellem’s group began calling themselves the Speculative Historians, and the fracture went unset.

Tellem never participated in any public debates on the validity of his method, nor were the fundamentals reopened. He would not debate publicly whether recordkeeping was the same activity as speculative history, though, according to Kloz, he has always insisted, informally, that it is, or at least that “it should be.” Which is no answer at all.

“The simple truth is that the olden ones had a power too great for their grasp,” Tellem continued. The subject of the debate up to that point is unclear.

“Could be, could be…  But you haven’t gotten around to the issue,” Sosoface Ferndale, a private courier from Monmouth, pressed the issue.

“I’m saying, the olden ones could split atoms, and fly around the moon, and manage riven populations as formless masses, pressing the people like clay into the empty places around the market-tested wireframe axes of their power sculptures. That’s taking too much of God’s power.”

“Yes, God is a jealous God,” Sosoface agreed.

“Indeed, and this is at least part of the reason why we don’t even know what happened. Consider the implications of the fact that we have this blindness in our history. A wall past which we cannot see, touch, or feel, past which no living memory remains.”

“We arise out of a sort of darkness. You state the problem well.”

“I’m trying to solve it, if you listen to me. Remember how I phrased the problem to start: the olden ones had a power too great for their grasp. Didn’t you show Frankenstein recently?”

“No, it was Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Sosoface answered.

“Well, same difference, in any case, though I myself prefer original sources. Or as close to original as you can get for the thing being investigated, which in this case is popular mentality and understanding of the danger of scientific and technical prowess escaping the control of the creators, and in those days, the people felt that they were among those responsible for such things, though they also felt incapable of rising to the responsibility.”

“Alright, go on then.”

“I can argue that all social horror, in actuality and in literary and other representation, is a version of the sorcerer’s apprentice. It is all about systems going haywire, leaders destroying themselves and their lands on the basis of the very strategy that brought them to power, individuals rationalizing themselves out of their minds, marvels turning monstrous,” Tellem threatened rhetorically.

“I can’t see what you’re doing here, but I’ll grant you all of that,” Sosoface said.

“So that’s all one one hand. One the other hand, let’s go back to that wall in history, shading that darkness out of which we emerge. It means something. Just by itself, it means something for what we do. We are people of culture and learning, and we live for the joy of placing ourselves in the flow of history. We feel ourselves…, no, we know ourselves to be the only ones capable of rising to the responsibility of recovery, recognition, and hopefully one day restoration of the best of the past. But God has made it so that we cannot possibly have it. We cannot ever establish real continuity. This is a message in itself.”

“I know one thing: we all want to know what you think it means,” Sosoface said, tiring of Tellem’s rhetoric.

“I got some ideas about what he thinks it means,” said D-Man, teasing Tellem.

“Yeah, me too,” sighed Sosoface.

“Listen, you all want to act like you don’t see this elephantine impediment to understanding in your face, you so-called recordkeepers. You seek to know the past through its artifacts, and you should know this best of all. This is the problem with your method, which is hardly a method at all.”

“Still ain’t answered the question,” announced Sosoface.

“Got to the point neither,” said D-Man.

“It’s going to sound crazy coming from me,” Tellem warned those listening, for he and Sosoface had gathered an audience, “but you can’t penetrate this mystery with data. You can’t get the proper perspective collecting these messages in bottles.”

“Regardless of the epistemological difficulties involved, in principle there is nothing preventing historical speculation on artifacts. We do it all the time,” said Sosoface, glad finally to have a target.

“That’s what’s in all the notes,” agreed D-Man.

“Exactly. And we put all the arguments in commentaries and record all the sources in appendices and you know how all this goes and how we build on each other’s work,” concluded Sosoface.

“But you won’t ever be open to the deepest meanings of what you find,” Tellem said.

“You just want to jam your prophecies into the fragments you find. And you don’t want to take the time to arrange those fragments, to actually tease out the relationships they themselves declare,” Sosoface said, just laying it all out. He did not expect Tellem to argue forthrightly or even coherently, but he knew from exactly which perspective, frame of reference, and point of view Tellem was coming.

“Let the man finish,” Fila said, coming up behind GJ.

“Thank you, brother,” said Tellem.

“More than brothers. Friends,” Fila smiled warmly.

“That’s the truth, Ruth,” Tellem’s smile waned and he held Fila’s gaze for a moment. “I think you might like to hear this, too, boo, ’cause as I was saying, I think I may, I think I might, have found a vein of bright pyrite.” Tellem rubbed his hands together, pantomiming greedy glee. Olden slang for pyrite was “fool’s gold” because of its appearance (ignoring the fact that it can indicate real gold nearby), so among the Speculative Historians, pyrite became slang for a new source of speculations, a new field in which to begin reaping pasts.

“Oh, yeah?” Fila asked. “How long have you been working on it?”

“’Bout five, six months,” responded Tellem.

It wasn’t that a silence fell, but that those gathered loosened their grip on their own conversations, and began to let silences linger so that they could overhear.

“I haven’t heard anything about it,” Fila said, surprised there had been no gossip, controversy, or bragging about a half-year project, presumably involving new artifacts and documents.

“Well, you wouldn’t. This one’s special,” Tellem winked. “But I phrase things a certain way for a reason,” he continued, dramatically. Tellem was enjoying himself again. “My man Fila knows what I mean. Us old-school fellows, right? Anyway, the reason I put the danger the way I did, is because I believe the olden ones really did do it to themselves and ourselves, in a way they weren’t expecting. In fact, in a way that just smacked them clean upside the head. There’s only one possible past that explains both the wall, the darkness, and the cool placidity of olden-days technical and economic discourse approaching 2035. If you take to heart the inductive-plausibility principle that underlies all our activity, the ethic by which we must always account for the most significant of the most of the thing…  well, if you believe that, as I do…  I say that the arrival of general artificial intelligence is the only event capable both of causing the collapse and cleaning so thoroughly up after itself, imposing silence where there was surely noise—weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

“That’s what you want to exclude now?” asked Sosoface.

“I believe that this is actually the thing that created the gap in our history,” Tellem said.

“But it doesn’t matter if it’s GAI or not,” said Sosoface.

“You’re going to have to explain that one, son,” chuckled Tellem.

“You simply won’t understand that this is not about saving us from catastrophe or recovering the past. The apocalypse already happened. This is about building the future,” Sosoface maintained.

“Out of what?” Tellem asked.

“Out of the past, of course,” Sosoface said.

“So, whats the problem with having an answer to the question?”

“If this is the answer, and let’s stipulate that it is, so what?”

“I think you don’t understand how important this is.”

“Why? Why is it important? I just asked you. It’s true. AI destroyed the world. So what?”

“Do you know how long we’ve been seeking the answer to this question?”

“Since sometime around the end of the North Atlantic Wars.”

“That’s right, but it’s not right, and you know damned well what I’m talking about. This ain’t no little piece of poetic literary cultural trivia. This is important.”

“I’ve asked you why twice. Make this three times.”

“How can we move into the future if we don’t know the past?”

“Because we’ll make the same mistakes and all that?” Sosoface asked.

“Exactly.”

“The answer is to think even through platitudes and not to believe that we understand something because it sounds familiar. We can’t possibly make the same mistakes, or even the same kind of mistake, because the world is entirely different. If you propose that we might be in danger of making mistakes that are somehow similar to those of the past we’d have to have a discussion about what similarity means, and I know you don’t like stuff like that,” Sosoface said.

Floweria said “Oops,” and somebody giggled.

“And even if we do need cautionary tales, we can discover them by treating the records with proper respect, discovering what they mean, instead approaching them arrogantly seeking to find.”

“Very nice. Remember, I’ve been at this just as long as you.” Tellem had been at the work much longer than Sosoface, and this was one of the frustrations of arguing with Tellem. Sometimes he was unexpectedly generous, and this surprised opponents who expected bad faith at all times. It also made his opponents waste energy trying to scope out his angle. He had an unethical mode of presentation, in which he relied upon commonplace constructions and well-worn associations, while never quite constructing or making them himself.

“I know,” Sosoface admitted cheerfully.

“We’ve excluded hundreds of pasts. What have you done?” Tellem took it to the mat. This, of course, was not a genuine challenge, but an attempt to close discussion and save face.

Fila could no longer allow Tellem to slide. To have dared to raise, or even to seem to circle around fundamental issues, on a day like today, after having avoided it for literal years and years, was a bridge too far.

“Wait a minute,” Fila said. “I don’t think…that’s not what our work is about.”

“I know it, but listen. Now we’re at a point where, among the pasts that present themselves, we may have scraped all away that are false. All that remains can only be true.”

“You’re switching stuff up again, talking about truth. You and Sosoface weren’t talking about truth, but an answer to a question. Answering that one question is the basis of your entire project.”

“True,” Tellem drawled slowly, laughing, redirecting Fila’s accusation. But he was eager to get back on his favored terrain, and he was hopeful that Fila would ease them back into their corners. “But it’s a fundamental question.”

“Maybe it is, maybe it’s not,” Fila said. “Sosoface is right. You can’t really say why the answer is important, or even why the question is important. You’ve been sliding back and forth between them so much that you’ve gotten them confused.”

“Yeah, my bad,” Tellem retreated. “Honestly, if you see these gray whiskers in my beard you might imagine that I know better than to argue with fools. You’d be wrong.” He put himself up for martyrdom, tireless dogged plodding on behalf of the good and the true. He just cared too much to give up on his comrades whose minds had been hurt in battle with darkness. But he was on the verge of capitulation: “If you don’t see why uncovering the mystery is important, I don’t know what to tell you,” Tellem shrugged and waved his arms in exasperation, and looked around to commiserate with those looking and listening.

“Our comrade here has asked you four times what changes if this mystery is answered that way. I know what you want, Tellem. See, I know you,” Fila said, louder, standing now. He would not allow Tellem to approach, muddy, and then run away from issues he had been avoiding since the very beginning. Not today. “You want to find, after a year or two of frenzied activity that, no, AI could not have been the cause after all. Free to cast your nets again, you’ll keep searching, speculating. There’s always something to drag up. Meanwhile, over the years, you have avoided all discussion of our aims, goals, strategies, tactics, to just plow through thousands of artifacts and volumes, sometimes more than once, blind the whole time to what you’re actually looking at.”

“Well, good evening, folks,” Tellem smiled and turned theatrically to take his leave. “I think it might be time to go get me a good seat and a hot plate instead of this here hot seat in a bad place,” he said, chuckling amiably. Folks opened a space to let him pass.

“Don’t leave now. Listen, you have accomplished a lot. We know it,” Fila wanted to make himself clear. Tellem did stop and turn to listen. Fila continued.

“But you have to know that to us, it’s not clear what your work really means. I think you have to admit that you don’t even really know exactly what your work means, if it doesn’t result in a miraculous mystery solution that bowls everyone over with its clarity and necessity. You have come to expect this, to rely on this future revelation, and you believe it will justify your difficulties plodding, and, yes, of course, explain the suffering and enslavement of mankind. Yes, you are definitely creating knowledge, but your methods are ultimately superficial and inappropriate,” Fila continued.

“You take record collections—sometimes the whole record collection—and, using your wits and what you have learned to date, you bind them together in theory, by posing a property that you believe to hold across the collection. If the past was A, then property x must hold. If the speculation is properly formed, any case in which x does not hold means that past A did not occur. You have made progress, by construction, mathematically. Excluding any one of infinite possible pasts must be counted as progress. The problem is that your method has no way of recognizing the historical necessity of any possible past it fails to exclude. You all have gone through every record we have at least once and still haven’t developed a sense of history, because you ignore the relationships the materials themselves embody and express. If gai was the apocalypse, how would you actually know? You would just keep searching to exclude it forever. Your work can never end, because you’ll never know when you’re done,” Fila concluded. “You do busy work.”

Tellem had already bragged about how many exclusions the Speculative Historians had made, and decided that it would sound peevish and weak were he to repeat it. He said nothing.

“But it is true that you perform miracles, and I’m glad you brought that up. To pull substance from form is one of the ways in which man is like God, remember? It’s not like anything else, and it’s as seductive and dangerous as anything after which man has lusted. Erron’s here today…  You remember his commentaries on the Bible, cross-referenced with his concordance of pre-Lutheran Christian doctrine. God created the world in six days, resting on the seventh because His work was complete. The substance was accomplished. He did not do anything else until He rescued the Hebrews from Egypt, resting again until He sent His son into Rome, where He offered to redeem humanity of sin, and preached that all people are children of God. The substance in that case was an idea. That idea is the basis of all doctrines of equality, liberty, and justice that man has had the nerve to speak. The substance was accomplished, and it is appropriate that God has done nothing since. He leaves to us the desperate compulsion to act when there is nothing to do. Erron calls it the power of mess making. It requires hubris, so it can only be human. But given that it is a perversion of λόγος, as though one were addicted to creation, it is only quasi divine.”