The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq, Gavin Bowd

prophet had nothing of the homophobe about him. The ass, the cunt: according to the prophet, everything was good. He was there in person, all dressed in white, to greet me with an outstretched hand at the Zwork airport. I was their first real VIP, and he had wanted to make an effort. Up until then, they had only had one very minor VIP, a Frenchman as well, an artist called Vincent Grelsamer. He’d had, nonetheless, an exhibition at the Pompidou Center—of course, even Bernard Branxène has had an exhibition at the Pompidou Center. So he was a half-pint VIP, a Plastic Arts VIP. A nice boy, by the way. And, I was immediately convinced on seeing him, probably a good artist. He had a sharp, intelligent face, and a strangely intense, almost mystical look in his eyes; that said, he expressed himself normally, with intelligence, weighing his words. I had no idea what he did, whether it was video art, installations, or what, but you got the feeling that this guy
really
worked. We were the only two declared smokers—which, in addition to our VIP status, brought us closer. We did not, however, go as far as smoking in the presence of the prophet; but, from time to time, during the lectures, we went outside for a quick smoke, which was quite soon tacitly accepted. Ah, VIPness.
     
     
    I hardly had time to settle in, and make myself an instant coffee, before the first lecture began. To attend the “teachings” you were supposed to put on, over your usual clothes, a long white tunic. I obviously felt a little ridiculous when I pulled the thing on, but it didn’t take long for the point of the accoutrement to become clear to me. The layout of the hotel was very complex, with glass passages linking the buildings, half-levels, and underground galleries, all with signs written in a bizarre language that was vaguely reminiscent of Welsh, which in any case I didn’t understand a word of, so much so that it took me half an hour to find my way back. During this lapse of time, I came across about twenty people who were making their way, like me, down the deserted corridors and who were wearing, like me, long white tunics. On arriving in the lecture room, I had the impression that I’d started off on a spiritual path—even though this word had never made the slightest sense to me. It made no sense, but there I was. You could indeed judge me by my appearance.
     
     
    The day’s orator was a very tall, thin, bald guy, impressively serious—when he tried to be funny, it was quite frightening. I called him Knowall, and he was in fact a professor of neurology at a Canadian university. To my great surprise, what he had to say was interesting, and even fascinating in places. The human mind, he explained, developed by the creation and progressive chemical reinforcement of neural networks of variable length, from two to fifty neurons, if not more. As a human brain contained several billion neurons, the number of combinations, and therefore of possible circuits, was staggering—it went way beyond, for example, the number of molecules in the universe.
    The number of circuits used varied greatly from one individual to the next, which sufficed, according to him, to explain the countless gradations between idiocy and genius. But, even more remarkably, a frequently used neuronal circuit became, as a result of ionic accumulations, easier and easier to use—there was, in short, progressive self-reinforcement, and that applied to everything: ideas, addictions, and moods. The phenomenon was proven for individual psychological reactions as well as for social relations: to conscientize mental blocks only reinforced them; trying to settle a conflict between two people generally made it insoluble. Knowall then launched a pitiless attack on Freudian theory, which was not only based on no consistent physiological foundations, but also led to dramatic results that were directly contrary to the chosen goal. On the screen behind him, the succession of diagrams