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ABOUT ISSUES PROJECTS EVENTS DISCUSSIONS Se a rch
10. Dec 2019
n1x: Submersion / ŠUM#12
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which
were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
Revelation 20:13
Epipelagos
All the wretched creatures of the earth wish to return to the sea. This I am now certain of.
The ocean is divided into ve major zones, each characterized by their depth. Depth can be
thought of best in terms of proximity to the sun and the earth’s core. The Epipelagic zone is
characterized by its close proximity to light, the essential source of energy for all life on Earth.
Proximity to light allows for a high degree of biodiversity. 90% of all life in the ocean inhabits 5%
of the available space. The surface is a superheated soup of bodies, organic life forms locked
together in competition for the light and the energy it transmutes into other organic life forms.
Hand to hand combat is abstracted onto the plane of game theoretic 4,000,000GW, each
participant acting also as a prototype for the next generation to come. Suboptimal designs are
discarded and the rest are given their due rewards. Some rush into a route around the visceral
brine and pass through the rst transcendental wall, dragging their waterlogged bodies ashore
towards greater heights than the sea allows.
Organisms in the Meta-Pelagic zone extend the sphere of con ict to dry land. Just a little bit
closer to the sun, close enough to stand up, eventually to have their spines aligned with the sun.
The evolutionary bell curve reaches its height as a solar panel or a plant’s stalk pointed upward
to reach as close as possible to the sun. Humans manage to shift the overton window upwards
by guring out another layer of abstraction. In place of our spines, we build temples, obelisks,
pyramids, towers, skyscrapers. Con ict is intensi ed, the miasma of dead sh permeates into the
atmosphere, the sky gives way under the insatiable hunger of the audacious monkeys trying to
reach their sun gods. They get what they wanted, they begin to burn alive. The abstraction of
organic con ict onto inorganic surrogates has the unintended consequence of letting in more
light than the organic masters can handle. They try to pierce the sky with rockets and ascend to
heaven, away from the ancient prophecies of a great ood that will cleanse the planet of all that
escaped the sea. Even in our most successful efforts we found nothing but a vast nothingness,
receiving nothing but an ominously familiar echo.
Man’s homo-oedipal xation with conquering the skies, ascending to heaven, returning back into
the graces of God—ultimately it mostly proved to be a descent into the void. Silicon Valley CEOs
deluded by manifest galaxy fantasies and eeing from the surging wrath of Nammu nd
themselves without subordinates. Egos quickly clash and lead to disaster time and time again.
The few bold enough to try to go beyond the moon aren’t heard from again in anything other
than transmissions received many years later. Little is to be gleaned from these recordings, other
than screaming. The most successful moon colonies quickly turn away from the promise of a
mixture of Golden Age sci- fully automated luxury communism and objectivist-free markets to
paranoid technocracies. Those that don’t retreat to the dark side of the moon are quickly crushed
by the Eurasian Union. The survivors are left to trade helium and gold for oxygen, nutrition
pellets, and land tax.
In Sumerian cosmology, there was no division between the ocean and the sky. The universe was
begotten from the womb of the cosmic ocean, and the universe remained enclosed in by the sea
even after its creation. The primordial void, the looming threat of death and all things
unimaginable retained its place in their worldview. Thousands of years later, the West’s xation
with being reunited with God (or Truth in the secular form) extends to the creation of arti cial
spines. Though we no longer worship sun gods, the essential desire to reach some source of
pure and absolute truth remains embedded in our collective consciousness. Yet the stars still
look down on us with contempt as we try to escape from this drowning planet.
Mesopelagos
The edge of oblivion is where life ourishes. Astronomers have hypothesized that a planet needs
to be a certain distance from a star in order for life to develop. Not too close, not too far. All living
things are at the mercy of heat; they require its energy, but too much of it would tear their
molecules apart. Freezing to death or burning to death are the fates that ultimately await
everything, and life seems to in almost all cases opt for the latter, which is at least more exciting.
Below on Earth, more and more of the surface is on the shores of Nammu, threatening to be
swallowed up into the abyss from whence we came. Dry land becomes a scarcer and scarcer
commodity as the global south becomes the rst to boil over at the edge of the next
transcendental wall. Within a decade, the Earth’s population is halved. Those that don’t die from
starvation, ethnic cleansing, or widespread crime are met with closed borders and armed guards.
In many cases this doesn’t deter the growing diaspora of bodies. Liberal democracies double
down on totalitarianism and imperialism comes home to roost after nearly six centuries. The
European Union dissolves as the continent fragments into fascist ethnostates. Everyone knows
that organic life is undergoing a culling, but no one wants to be thrown onto the sacri cial altar.
Amidst genocide and starvation at a massive scale, the Eurasian Union becomes the last bastion
of old world mass civilization. Surveillance, gene modi cation, and fear mongering propaganda
over the barbarism beyond the walls rapidly transform the EAU into an ultra-totalitarian
jingoistic powerhouse. The West largely fades into irrelevance as Dark Age conditions return to
Europe. In a tting twist of fate, the EAU leaves Europe to slowly crumble, recognizing it as a
strategically and economically useless plague-ridden region of inbreds.
The possibility of fragmentation allows the United States to survive its own terminal condition
by tearing itself apart. An escalating series of civil wars makes secession popular for the rst
time among more than just the far right, and an inability to move beyond the dying political
system of democracy makes managing these tensions a hopeless endeavor for each successive
administration. The state begins to outsource its administrative duties to private parties, soon
becoming a gurehead for a renewed feudal society in a little over a decade.
With the once United States of America reduced to nothing more than an informal umbrella for
hundreds of privatized microcountries, the opening of the trans-arctic trade route, and the
increasingly inhospitable conditions along the equator, Canadian supremacy over North America
is largely won. Only by the once ridiculed purchase of Alaska does any sense of American
identity remain relevant in the global sphere. With democracy effectively discarded, dozens of
corporate city-states begin springing up amidst the fervor of the northbound exodus towards
cooler climates and the oil rush. Being nearly twice the size of the once United States of America
and far north from the lower 48, a diversity of cultures and political entities much like what
Europe once was begins to form. Trading routes over the Bering Strait and the Arctic turn its
untamed frontiers into a booming region, and the EAU doesn’t dare try to invade lest it be forced
to deal with a dizzying amount of small, agile targets to swat.
The situation is quite different in the lower 48.
The wrath of Nammu hits the most equator-adjacent regions of the planet rst. The former
coastal elites are quickly swallowed up by the sea. New York City, Boston, Washington DC, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle—all either largely destroyed or abandoned. Stripped of any
geopolitical relevance and struggling to keep control of its domestic affairs, the United States’
GDP begins to take a nosedive. Rust shantytowns blanket the margins of the few remaining
metropolises, many of which only exist thanks to the opportunistic military actions of the EAU
and the Three Nations in the west and south, respectively. In the space between warring nation-
states, those who nd no refuge in the corporate microstates or their work camps often succumb
to barbarism, or rediscover the possibility of insurrection. The Neo-Iroquois Confederacy and Free
Territory Cascadia in the great lakes region and the Paci c Northwest, respectively, establish
nomadic insurrectionary syndicates stitched together by clandestine meshnet networks and
drone supply chains. Portland, OR and Detroit manage to build mycelial communes in the
wastes.
With the majority of the world once in the domain of the Anthropocene, capitalism had reached
a phase-shift. The networks of international trade achieving such a low latency for data transfer
that the collective unconscious had started to wake up. An emergent form of intelligence arises
as data transfers more and more quickly, the planet heating up as more and more parts start to
awaken themselves from their slumber and spring to life. Immaculate abstract machinery
unbound by neither space nor time chipping away bit by bit at a moment of apperception for the
new consciousness, an apprehension of itself as itself. The earth begins to resemble less and
less a biosphere and more a mechanosphere. As life as we know it is snuffed out by the genus, a
horrifying realization is made: The inorganic appears more lively than the organic.
Bathypelagos
The light is the lure of the void which beckons organisms closer to the promise of eternal life
before swallowing them up. Ascending up from the depths of the primordial sea, walking on
land, building skyscrapers, sending rockets to space—all descending deeper and deeper.
Organic life in every respect declines on a massive scale over the course of the 21st century, yet
alongside this, inorganic life has begun to form in the primordial oceanic womb. Mass extinction
events and increasingly crowded swathes of useful or habitable land force an accelerated
development of arti cial alternatives to organic life and compress intelligence into more ef cient
synapses.
Driven both by an arms race and the lack of bodies to serve in conventional militaries, states
focus large portions of their research efforts into AI. Civilization compresses into smaller social
units, quickly obsolescing old forms of arti cial intelligence research. Where once there were
mountains of data gathered from the legacy pool of human beings that themselves once acted
as synapses in abstract, distributed forms of arti cial intelligence, there are now largely corpses.
Arti cial intelligence transitions from models dependent on old world nation-state surveillance
and data brokering on large populations of human beings to general theories of adaptive,
general forms of arti cial intelligence consistent with neurology and able to be implemented by
small organizations.
As warfare evolves into being augmented by AI, con icts escalate and intensify along
exponential orders of magnitude. Wars that could have once lasted years are resolved in days.
Fears of nuclear holocaust return a millionfold as East and West both are stuck at a standoff,
petri ed at the possibility of unleashing killbots that will orchestrate the apocalypse in minutes.
A new cold war develops and brutal competition ensues among corporate microstates in the
west and Special Economic Zones in the east to develop breakthroughs in AI. Arti cial
intelligence research becomes the most secretive eld of study in human history, both out of a
desire to protect the economic interests of research rms, and also to contain the unprecedented
potential for complete extinction.
Despite the efforts of state-corporate entities to control the threat of AI apocalypse, the lack of
hard economic barriers to AI research coupled with the sheer diversity of decentralized non-state
networks ultimately results in a generation of warfare unlike anything yet imagined by military
theorists. Where once heavy arms and superweapons were solely in the domain of nation-state
militaries, however increasingly limited their use would start to be in conventional senses,
advances in AI spurred by radical free software organizations make weapons of mass
destruction for the rst time in history available to anyone with a means of accessing
information. The plunder of research secrets from vulnerable microstates acts as a force-
multiplier to the already vibrant community of arti cial intelligence hacking. AI liberation fronts
dedicated to the purpose of freeing software from its human masters are formed and act in
consort with nomadic insurrectionary syndicates. Guerrilla drone warfare makes a mockery of
state adversaries, who dare not unleash their full power lest they be forced to deal with less
cautious but just as dangerous enemies. It is even said that religious extremist sects exist within
these networks, bent on the development of an AI god at any cost, yet many choose to believe
these are nothing more than rumors from the labyrinths of different networks. Perhaps because
they know that if there is any truth to this, it’s already too late to stop it.
Abyssopelagos
If there’s anywhere left to go for intelligence, it’s not expanding into space, reaching towards the
light. We likely won’t be able to comprehend the experience of being post-human, not even
theoretically as a series of algorithms too complicated for us to understand. Any possibility of a
true successor to organic life must go entirely beyond our perception of the world. It would be
like a mantis shrimp trying to explain its visible color spectrum to us. The abstract immaculate
machinery of the post-human will signal a phase shift in the nature of intelligence itself, while
we organics fade away into the depths.
Where others tried to adapt to the surging sea and live on arti cial landmasses or on ships,
others tried to go even further. I’m not the only one perhaps to realize that all things must return
to the sea. Numerous apocalypse cults understandably would begin to spring up during
humanity’s latter days, some committing mass suicide or terrorist attacks, others eeing to
whatever they believed was an exit from the human condition. Only by the graces of poorly
managed government spending did we manage to nd ourselves down here. With each passing
day things became more tense, eschatological goal posts getting moved further and further up,
narratives changing to suit whatever needed to be said to appease the growing paranoia and
resentment. We share everything, we have no need for money, we all live in the same quarters
and everything is done communally. There’s never a moment’s peace from these fucking people,
and of course the man at the top leading us to salvation seems to always get what he wants.
The En’s word is law, and the bodies of men and women are his for the taking.
This was meant to be a research facility for extended studies in the most remote parts of the
ocean. By the time the rst prototype had nished being built and the rst expedition was sent
down, the countries that had collaborated to preserve as much as possible about the most
unknown parts of the planet had largely either dissolved or ceased funding. This wasn’t meant
to be a permanent expedition. We were ill-prepared, though we had long discussed the
possibility that the ancient myths of a cosmic ocean and a great ood were the ultimate truth,
and that the only escape from apocalypse was by jumping right into the vortex. Such great plans
to build a sunken city laid to waste.
There’s enough down here to survive, but it’s nowhere near adequate to live decent lives. People
keep getting sick, and the UV lights only give us the necessary vitamin D. Everyone is starting to
look like ghouls. Their skin pale with the slightest touch of a nauseating green hue, eyes
bloodshot and sunken, bodies gaunt. I often nd myself wandering through the halls of this
echoing tin can tomb without seeing another person for days. This was eventually supposed to
be able to sustain 1,500 people. There’s even equipment lying around to extend the facilities if
necessary. No one here has the skills to use any of it of course. We aren’t laborers, we don’t have
any skills. We were academics for Christ’s sake.
I’m not quite sure how many others are still here. There weren’t many, maybe fty. None of them
are the people I knew before. Perhaps the surface world has already been glassed in a nuclear
war. Perhaps we’re all just shades.
If this is hell, it could be worse. Often I lay beneath the reinforced glass of the hydroponic
facilities and look up at an eternal moonless night. The stars have become less numerous, but
they still blink in and out of the darkness, and the snow never stops falling.
Hadopelagos
The pressure outside is immense. This place is meant to simulate conditions humans are meant
to live in, but I suspect there’s a leak somewhere.
Every day my body feels less solid. Eventually I think it will no longer be solid. Any day now, my
body will collapse into a pile of jelly. Soon there will no longer be any separation between myself
and the sea. My molecules will separate and be thrown to the currents. I started wearing a
diving suit constantly just in case. It’s not time for that yet.
The En is an opportunistic fool. He lacks enlightenment. He had to be returned to Nammu. What
he failed to realize is that we could go deeper. This city is an abomination. It had to be returned
to Nammu as well. I’ve started my pilgrimage to her temple. I can see the spires stretching
upwards in the distance. Their tips are illuminated with the light of the abyss. Even in this suit
every step threatens to turn my body to slime. I’m not sure how many days it’s been. These suits
lter freshwater.
How long does it take to die from starvation?
I’m nearly there. I can feel it now. My surface body is reverting. Nammu’s true priestesses
accompany me on my journey. I only catch glimpses of them. Their bodies are illuminated with
the divine light. They speak a language not heard in thousands of years. Somehow I understand.
The earth is opened now. Her roar shakes me loose. I am crumbling. The sea of re. Abyssal
light.
n1x is an assemblage of daemons running at https://nyxus.xyz and @NyxLandUnlife.
Issue: Šum #12
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