Hello friends.

Today, I wanted to share the synopsis of one of the books I’m working on. I am working on two books at the moment together under the working title of “The Mirror Project.” The first is a translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s medieval epic, “La Teseida,” and the other, a sci-fi novel based on this story, is called “Cousins.” I will soon post some information about the first project, which continues to progress well.Today, I would like to share a little about the second project, as I hope to make it somewhat open sourced throughout the writing of it, and would like to give an idea of what is being done to anyone who would like to participate in the project by giving feedback or otherwise sharing ideas. This post is a record and reference to those involved, and a way to plant the seeds of contemplation in future readers. This is a longer post, so buckled up!

Cousins

“Cousins” is based on the many popular stories written about the founding of Athens by the mighty and virtuous hand of Theseus. Many great writers have written this story by varying titles which emphasize different parts of the story. Boccaccio calls it the marriage of Emily, Chaucer the Knight's Tale, Shakespeare the Two Noble Kinsmen, etc—the stories overlap, but generally speaking Theseus goes about conquering and colonizing Attica and then local islands. This story takes place in Mexico about 100 years into the future. Earthquakes and flooding have divided it into islands that mirror the Aegean City States. Government systems have morphed with corporate, cartels with scientists, military with education. Mexico City becomes a symbol for what is happening worldwide, but has become rich territory for successful radical experimentation. It’s like a more heavily radicalized Hong Kong, Monaco, Singapore or even the Vatican, a city-state that has been split by a few major factions which are now coalescing around Theseus (in my story, “Theosis”), who appears to be a nexus of order and implicitly promises Utopia. The UN has allowed it to continue as an experiment largely because of the advancements in science and technology that have come out of the area. It is a sociological story primarily concerned with the ideas around how to solve issues related to climate change.

The story itself is about two high ranking intellectuals who are taken prisoner from the neighboring Thebes (here UNAM, a huge university campus in CDMX), and who, according to the classical sources, fall in love from their prison with an Amazon, Emilia. In my version Emilia is not marked by her beauty, but by her genius in psychopharmaceutical virtual reality interactions. The cousins discover Emilia’s work in pharmaceutical drug and neurotechnology while imprisoned, and rather than falling in love, both want to collaborate with her, as they are both AI programmers who have been looking to make integrated VR programming and need a psychopharmacologist, and neuroengineering technician with knowledge and resources.  

Eventually a contest is set up between the two to vie for the opportunity to work with Emilia. Whoever wins gets to develop with her, and whoever loses has to help the winner to complete the projects. There are a lot more details, for example escapes from prison, espionage—this is just the bare story.

There are maybe four other important notes that are important for framing the story. First, is that I as the author create a version of myself that is a natural language computer programmer who creates an AI that builds the whole story, supposedly a new version for each reader. Next is the identity of the narrator who is, like my fictional author, a programmer, more precisely, a historian from the future collecting artifacts to input into a kind of interactive, gamified heroic virtue education program. The book is divided into 144 chapter units of programming, divisible moments of the story, plus contextual information, pieces of journalism from the time, art criticism, etc. Another piece of programming is called Homo Solaris described below. Yet another is the explicit and abundant use of wisdom texts and epics. In particular, I make use of Octavio Paz, San Juan de la Cruz, Dante, Statius, and of course the great writers of the original tale Shakespeare, Chaucer, Boccaccio. These become embedded in the virtual reality systems as well as in the day to day language and psyche. 

Homo Solaris

Homo Solaris is my attempt at creating a “light” version of Samuel Beckett’s work, primarily inspired by the trilogy of novels. Where Beckett operates in decay and darkness, a natural reaction to his place in the literary canon, I believe that there is an implicit invitation in his work to react to his pessimism with a minimalism that is more hopeful and regenerative.

Homo Solaris: the Latin name invokes the authority of the Ptolemaic Roman times as well as the ages since the great taxonomy of life, paleoarchaeology, and evolution have come into their fields. It is the abstraction of the human into the post-human, built as a pharmacological and virtual reality simulation, this set of language is programmed to interact with hardware implants in the brain, and software related to language AI. Homo Solaris is not like a story in a narrative sense, or at least, it isn’t experienced as such–rather, it is experienced as a hypnotic and hallucinogenic spiritually transcendental flavor of being. To run the Homo Solaris program means to identify with the future of humanity as the Godhead to worship and to direct all Earthly efforts towards manifesting. The blissful apotheosis with Homo Solaris quickly becomes extremely popular among those who can access this virtual reality and obtain the correlated medicines. Not only is it experienced at vast dilations of time which offer rest and respite from the extraordinary real world challenges, but it also affects the users in 12 psychologically in profound ways. For one, it aims explicitly to make people happier and more optimistic in a time when suffering reigns supreme as the shaper of the human psyche. The other effect of Homo Solaris, however, is that the people who use it come to find greater joy in their participation within their community. They are taught in the program to find the bright spots within each situation and each person, that for every verbalization of moral conscience, there is a definite action to be taken for the benefit of all. I want this experience to be one that causes people to widen their perspective and experience of human connection by dealing in heavily abstracted networks of association and senses. In short, it is a controlled, interactive, synaesthetic and semi-narrative experience that practices and improves people’s sense of love, and develops healthy, prosocial traits. 

Notes on form and function:

I want to make every page of those 144 sections be able to yield some tangible piece of contemplation, regardless of whether they know the plot. I want every title to do the same. In that way, I feel as if trying to write a very strange kind of compartmentalized wisdom text which is clothed as an epic narrative. I’m realizing something else. I originally started this as a dystopian cyberpunk noir thriller, but am realizing that might not create the kind of experience I want to encourage in readers and collaborators. Slowly this is turning into the story of a Utopia, though in the end, I hope to shirk both definitions as something that is both and neither. I wanted to create an anti-war novel without violence. I now realize that is not possible for this story, though I do try to show restraint and thoughtfulness in those moments. Neither do I give my true depiction of what I believe will happen in the future. My true predictions are far more vague than the hyperbolic images I present in the book. The mediated frames of narrators in the novel distance myself and provide some autonomy for the ideas to work themselves out.

Finally, the trend so far in writing this book has been to finish one book at a time of each book in the mirror project. Both have twelve books total and I am approximating the first complete versions of book one at the same time. These will of course face serious revisions as time goes on, but I am finding it easier to write both together as they both have influenced one another in ways I’m finding fruitful. I am unsure of how to release these online, but my hope is to establish a schedule, perhaps a book per month, alternating each project for 24 months until both are completed.

Outro

I am looking forward to continuing work on both of these projects. There is a team of writers, artists, and philosophers that have committed to assisting in bringing this novel to life, and for that I am grateful, and for them, if nobody else, I will not fail in doing my best work. I read Don Quijote earlier this summer, and reread Peirre Menard, and both reminded me of the incredible ways that literature creates its authors. I do not just want to write these books, but become the person that is capable of writing these books. In the coming months there are behavior commitments, life projects, goals, directions that I will be working towards that are all related to becoming the author of these texts. I look forward to sharing that with you all and must acknowledge ahead of time the tremendous support of friends and family in endeavoring to accomplish these tasks

Thanks for reading, stay tuned!