Svetislav Basara - The Cyclist Conspiracy

However, Schizophrenia is not just a battleground, far from it. It is also the center of intellectual activities in the Grand Asylum. Two large buildings are constructed next to each other so that they are also divided into two halves by the border that divides the region. These are the Thomas Aquinas School of Theology and the Sigmund Freud School of Social Sciences . At the theological school, endless discussions are held about axiological and teleological problems, which is — according to the Basics of Psychoanalysis — good, because thereby the theologians are distanced from God and his Commandments, which are beyond human abilities. “Theology is good,” it says in the Basics , “but God is cruel and inhuman.” On the other hand, at the Sigmund Freud School, extensive research is done with the aim of proving the non-existence of the Soul and the spirit as entities independent of highly organized matter.

The advantages of this kind of organization are obvious and undeniable. Freedom of choice is the highest principle. Everyone can choose and create their biography according to their own desires. If X wants to be a hero, the ROMA III computer meets his needs; his life is unmistakably programmed in that direction, and as the crown of that life there is a heroic death — either in front of a firing squad or in battle — whereby X takes up his honorable place in history. In fact, there used to be heroes in earlier societies as well, but they were deprived of satisfaction; death deprived them of the enjoyment of their post mortem glorification. Thanks to the computer, the matter has been changed from the outset; many years before he dies in battle, the hero gets an insight into the events that will happen in the future. Because everything is programmed and everything is known ahead of time.

In terms of their vertical coordination in time, things are like this: In one part of the Region of Schizophrenia, a faithful copy of Troy has been built, where every Achilles and Nestor can do battle; next to Troy are the ramparts of Jerusalem being assailed by Crusaders; nearby are the battlefields of World War I, where the combined forces of the Western Roman Empire attempt to overcome the allies and correct the course of history.

Under the Region of Schizophrenia lies the Region of the Guilt Complex.

THE REGION OF THE GUILT COMPLEX

In spite of the perfection of organization, it is expected that occasionally an uncontrolled expression of emotion will occur, and unforeseeable affects; in the language of lawyers — a crime. If a murder or robbery take place outside of the organization, that is, if someone does them of their own accord, the guilty party will be punished, but in a humane way, unique to the Grand Asylum.

In such cases, one of the people with the corresponding diagnosis takes the guilt on themselves. The Basics of Psychoanalysis are unambiguous: if someone is convinced that they are guilty, then there is no doubt that they are; at the very least, they long to be guilty. Legal systems seek for a guilty party, which complicates matters; it is simpler for a guilty party to seek for guilt. For several reasons. Someone might commit a “crime” and not feel guilty. It is ultimately inhumane and non-tactical to force him to accept the guilt and corresponding punishment, thereby increasing the collective tension and frustration while, on the other hand, there is a rather large number of people with heightened feelings of guilt, with no chance of making their guilt a reality. To accomplish this, after the judgment has been passed for the corresponding “crime,” the guilt is published. The interested party responds, takes on the guilt and goes away to repent. Justice is satisfied, and no kind of violence has been done. This has obvious advantages over the “legal” systems in which crime was also allowed as long as it was part of the plan, but in which the culprits were forced to serve out a sentence even though they did not want to, while the citizens suffering from feelings of guilt were “treated” with medicines or left on their own.

There is one other possibility: the GULAG micro-system. The fact is that many people are not aware of their feelings of guilt. Such suppressed neurosis can be controlled only if the patient is confronted with their guilt; that is, only if they undertake treatment convinced of their own innocence. The objection can be raised that it is malicious to utilize such “inmates” for doing the dirtiest of jobs, but then it is not taken into account that the “inmates” are in the camp voluntarily, and that the systems must function. “Horror and suffering are inescapable in the world,” it says on one page of the Basics , “it is important that a man accepts them by his own free will.”

THE REGION OF TOXICOMANIA

Alcoholics and drug addicts in this region are supplied with sufficient quantities of alcoholic drinks and narcotics, grown by the ecologically minded types in the region of the Great Kolkhoz. In that way, the crimes usually connected to such affinities are completely eliminated. The unavoidable troubles in that region will be settled by a police force composed of people with sadistic tendencies. That is the best solution: the ratio of masochists to sadists is exceptionally skewed in favor of the latter (20 %: 80 %); since their needs must also be met, they are recruited into the abovementioned police and they abuse disobedient alcoholics who, as a result of their chronic intoxication, have a high pain threshold. Paradoxically, on that floor one finds one of the most important scientific institutions of the hospital — the Institute for the Study of States of Expanded Perception. Delirious patients are brought to the offices of the Institute. The ROMA III computer, connected to encephaloscopes, synthesizes their visions and nightmares onto videotape. After scientific analysis, the goal of which is (after finding the chemical-biological causes) to logically explain expanded perception and denounce the claim of the existence of some kind of world “beyond,” these tapes are shown in theaters as entertaining films.

However, the connections between departments and floors are quite busy and never stop. As opposed to classic societies in which the social classes are clearly divided and are closed entities, at the Asylum such a division is not sustainable. Everyone must be connected to everyone else; everyone must do everything. That is the only possible way to get rid of contradictions. Pyromaniacs work together with firemen; criminals with police (anyway the guilt is placed on those who have chosen it). That is why the coat of arms of the city — a triangular shield with a tower from which fists are raised toward the sky — has the slogan GENS UNA SUMUS.

All relationships are maximally relativized. So, every official from the first floor, whose place on the hierarchical ladder is high and whose power is great, at the department of schizophrenia must pay imperial homage to every Nero and every Caesar, no matter how many of them there are. This is justified in the following way: the official chose power and it is available to him, but all those Caesars chose to be emperors and one must treat them as emperors. The very idea of the empire, to be honest, has been surpassed; the possibility is excluded that some sort of Alexander the Great could lead the country to war, but if someone decides to cross the boundary of those thirty-odd square yards that belong to the emperor, he comes under the emperor’s rule.

Yet, in the depths of the Asylum, in the regions where one finds the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant simulacrums of hell, off-limits to everyone, the ROMA III computer will be at work. Programmed to systematize evil, seemingly in the service of evil, with time it will come to a cognition long ago forgotten by people, to the cognition that God exists. And thus, analogous to humans falling away from their creator, the machine will turn against its human creators; during a single night and day, that entire grandiose world of lawlessness will disappear in the self-destructive flames of the computer, of the machine that has understood that its name, the name of the three previous Babylons, is the Satanic inversion of the word AMOR into the name of a city — ROMA.