THE MANIFESTO

From the very beginning, I noticed something strange in their eyes. A new gleam, with icy reflections, that seemed to let them in on a secret. Inside the exhibition stand, my friend and I moved between the brand's display cases — though one wasn't supposed to say brand: one was supposed to say group. One of these frozen-eyed hostesses had told me so at the entrance, before explaining the reason for their presence: the association, in full expansion, was installing one of its outposts in our city. Construction had already begun on a large hotel, abandoned for several years — soon, it would be called Astel.

We approached a circular booth, where a second hostess, dressed in chrome grey, offered to let us try their new catalogue. Having come by chance, I shrugged, but my friend slipped away and insisted I follow the woman into the booth. It would give us ideas for work, he argued, as he let me disappear behind the curtain.

In the dim light, I observed the one whose name was Ruby: she was busy plugging objects into a round chair, and when she turned around, she asked whether I was familiar with the Astel catalogue and their wireless organs. Faced with my ignorance, she sighed deeply, placing her hand over her heart, full of pity for my past and full of hope for my future. As she prepared to change my life, another hostess entered the booth and observed me with deference: the two of them chatted, their mouths opened, but no sound reached my ears. When we were alone again, Ruby explained why.

With Astel, she told me, our organs detached from our body to become portable and rechargeable. Curiously, she spoke of this Astel in the third person singular, and at that point I did not know whether it was a brand, a group or a person, but Ruby took my hand in hers. She launched a short promotional video, which stipulated that Astel had drawn inspiration from hearing aids to create an auricular device: by integrating a miniaturized recharging system and a neural interface, he had developed a wireless ear that he had implanted in himself. Watching for my reaction, Ruby touched her earlobe and had me stroke it: "You see," she murmured. "I have a wireless ear too."

The film continued, projected onto the cream wall. Astel had then designed wireless eyes, inspired by retinal implants, and in both cases, it was not simply a matter of enabling the deaf or the visually impaired to see and hear; it was a matter of seeing and hearing what Astel gave one to see and hear. Ruby, still holding my hand in hers, asked whether I understood what that meant, as she plunged her eyes into mine. I pulled a face, a sign that I was not sure. But I realised that for her, I was now the deaf one, the partially sighted one. It was I whose natural organs were confined to the dull poverty of the physical senses.

At the end of the film, I was about to leave the room when the second hostess crossed my path. Again, the women spoke — both young, smooth and strange, a few centimetres from me, with their chrome berets and their diaphanous eyes — and I understood why I could not hear them. Without the digital ear, I could not perceive their digital words. A whole world was unfolding before me, but without me, on another signal, by the grace of another wavelength. And this, evidently, made the hostesses laugh, as they shot me provocative looks while biting their lips — as if I had to give in, to gain access to their world.

While the other hostess opened cupboards, satisfied at having made a sale, Ruby reconnected to my frequency. She explained that she had been entirely replaced: as a guinea pig, she had first acknowledged that it was better, to have the machine's eyes. Then that it was better, to have the machine's nose. Then that it was better to have its tongue. Then... Ruby stopped. The video I had seen did not yet reveal everything. She confided to me, exclusively, that most phenomena, most stimuli, would henceforth be digitally transformed: certain tastes, certain foods, would be digitally modified, and in order to enjoy them, one would need a wireless tongue. The same would be true for certain sounds; the same would be true for certain bodies. What currently appeared as an option would soon be indispensable to avoid finding oneself isolated from the new frequencies of social life. To avoid being left behind. That was the beauty of this technology: it would divide the world in two and make itself indispensable to the other half. And, according to Ruby, I should not waste my time.

However, I could not actually try them. That required major surgery, powerful amputations, but Ruby had no regrets about hers. She pointed out to me, on a wall table, a pistachio green sponge cake on a small ivory-white plate. When she invited me to take a bite, I perceived no taste whatsoever. Ruby continued: if our tongue became wireless, she explained, our friends would need a wireless ear in order to understand us. Vice versa, if their ears became wireless, we would need a wireless tongue in order to speak to them. Before long, one would not be able to live without wireless organs, at the risk of being alone and literally inaudible. Listening to Ruby, one would become increasingly dependent on this emulsified, heightened sensation of food — with no chemical alteration whatsoever, only a cerebral reality, modifiable without limit. Our wireless organs would transform our bodies in each of our sensations, to make them more beautiful, more fulfilling, more appealing to the whole world.

After cleaning her hands with hand sanitiser, Ruby opened a box in which a globe, connected to a cable, was blinking with a warm blue light. An eye, right there, was charging. I rubbed my chin and asked her the price. She laughed in my face: they could not be bought. Astel was not a brand. Astel was a group, a club, a society. One had to become a member in order to benefit from it. In that case, I said, how much did one have to pay to become a member? Again she laughed: it did not work like that. With Astel, what was at stake was an awakening, an initiatory journey, and applications were meticulously reviewed: being a consumer would not be enough to consume, and it was itself a privilege to be permitted to pay. But if I was genuinely interested, she went on, if I was honestly convinced by Astel's discourse, then she encouraged me to make the necessary steps at their next outpost.

In closing, Ruby asked whether I suffered from any particular problems. What fears and desires lived inside me? What sufferings, what innate and acquired pains, what epigenetic trauma? What failure from my past, what shame, continually drew my mind out of the light and prevented its true fulfilment? To keep it simple, I told her I often had trouble sleeping. Ruby smiled at me: by connecting my organs, I could become master of my own infrastructure. I could manage each piece of my data, switch off any of my pains. I could take control of my system.

I placed Ruby's wireless eye back in its receptacle. So that was what was new in their eyes.

Every day I finalised the integration of our new mass of bodies at Body Google. And every night, scootering home, I heard Astel resonating inside my chest. I did not deviate from my route; I continued to the end, scrolling on my phone. But one night I stopped. Because the great light emanating from the building had disappeared. And it was its darkness, its silence, that now drew me in. I stepped off my scooter without making a sound. I thought about putting my phone into airplane mode, and even about leaving my old USB drive in the handlebar basket: I did not want Astel to see me. I did not want him to hear me. And so in complete darkness I advanced, leaving all my geolocators behind, as if for a moment I were extracting myself from my digital shadow to find again the man who wanted me to make his eyes my own.

I followed the perimeter discreetly, making my way to the rear. Beyond the main building — constructed in a U-shape, with an imposing dome at its centre — a garden descended to the edge of the estate. At its far end stood a house. To mark the boundary between the two spaces, a swimming pool extended all around the residence, like a turquoise band threaded with fountains. Perhaps my idea of coming offline had worked, for there was no one left. Most importantly, in the street I noticed a section of the barrier that did not rise as high as the rest — and for what Astel could show one to see, for what he could give one to hear, I climbed inside his home.

In the complex, I drew close to the turquoise boundary traced in an arc around the house at the back of the property. Not a single light emanated from the windows, neither here nor from the immense dome behind, which towered over me from the heights of the garden. My phone was switched off, yet I heard a signal inside me, repeating faster and faster as the pool and its cascades drew nearer — like the moat of a fortress. Beyond it, alongside the cascades, I could see the glint of pergolas, gazebos, lawnmowers and air-conditioning units; there was even a barbecue. It was a strange sketch, a frozen drawing, of a family home, a nocturnal memory. Reaching the edge of the pool, I stopped. I could not see a way around it. But I could step across.

The basin must have been a metre twenty across, perhaps a little less, and the fountains spurted up beneath my nose, grazing the tips of my hair: I simply had to wait for them to pause for a few seconds to seize my chance, and when they did I took my run-up. But a movement in the shadow on the other side stopped me. And not one movement alone: three. For dogs were passing, from the pergola to the barbecue. They moved up along the garden one after another, and quickly others fell in behind them; there were ten. Perhaps twenty.

I took a step back: all the dogs had the same form, that of pale-blue labradors, one of which, at the rear of the pack, sat down and fixed its gaze on me. Without attracting the attention of its companions who continued on their way, it let itself fall behind, and with a soft whistle I called to it. At first it checked the growing distance between itself and its friends, then took a hesitant step toward me. I called again, and as it veered in my direction — illuminated by the blue of the pool between us — I saw its muzzle clearly: it was a mechanical dog. With glinting, icy eyes. And a tongue, which it let hang as it came to meet me, that was black.

Already the other dogs were surprised by their companion's disappearance. From a distance they probed me in silence, holding me suspended before their rows of blue eyes gleaming in the dark. It was then that the front door of the house opened. A man stepped out. For a moment he stood on the porch, as he signalled the dogs to return to the back of the house: he said nothing to them; he simply extended his hand toward them. A precise, repeated gesture. Like a password. And when the dogs had gone, he remained there, scrutinising me.

— Soon you will have no tongue, he told me. For you will have my tongue. Soon you will have no vocal cords, no oral cavities, not even a glottis. For you will have mine. And soon you will hear what I am telling you. You will truly hear it. Because you may think you can hear me now... but at this very moment, I am saying something quite different from what you might imagine. Pronouncing a truth, on another frequency, of which you have no idea. And you cannot hear it.

He opened his mouth, slowly and completely parting his jaw, miming words that did not reach me. The fountains had stopped and one last dog remained there, contemplating our silhouettes from a distance — his plunged in darkness, mine bathed in the reflections of the water. "You will come to me," he added. "You don't know it yet, but you will come to me. On the real frequencies. If you don't, we will cross paths. We will look at each other. But we will no longer speak. You will think you are still in our world. But you will no longer be."

He drew closer, stopping at the pool's edge. Despite my efforts, I still could not see him clearly, blocked by the fountain jets which had resumed. "What are you looking for?" he asked me. "What are you looking for?" At that moment the fountain finally fell and he appeared to me clearly. He had a feminine face, and yet very square. Despite his broad forehead and imposing jaw, his features were fine and his skin beardless. He appeared innocent and clean, his eyes soft and open, his hair black and perfectly combed. He had a small mouth with an asymmetric smile — always restrained, yet frank in its expression. His voice remained low, not necessarily cavernous or hoarse, just low enough because he spoke slowly, articulating carefully, with a natural musicality in his voice. Ruby had not lied to me. Astel was a man.

For the first time, I crossed the main entrance — a semicircle of tinted glass rising from a white slab. At the centre of the glass, between the curtains that concealed the door, stood the reception staff: they lounged against the walls, slightly unkempt, busy discussing their private lives at this late hour of the evening. When they saw me arrive, their attitude did not change. I was not particularly elegant; I felt greasy and dirty, but the way my hair formed a silver wave must have passed for an elaborate hairdo, for the staff cast an unconcerned glance at my invitation and let me in.

Inside, I entered a vast oval room with brilliantly white walls, dominated by a dome in the ceiling. Between the high tables, the metal columns and the chrome rails, the crowd was distributed unevenly. I wandered without recognising anyone, simply collecting whatever remained to eat and drink: apart from the ten o'clock shots, my stomach was empty and sex had made me hungry — to the point where the canapés might have satisfied me. But they had absolutely no taste at all. And similarly, a strangeness I had not yet located became clear to me: the place was silent. And yet people were dancing; people were laughing; people were clinking glasses. They were simply hearing a music that I could not hear; they were eating food that I could not taste. I therefore set about exploring the place, discreetly tapping the walls and columns with my foot, and curiously nothing here was a projection: everything was authentic.

Regularly I passed groups of strangers, busy chatting or sniggering, and sometimes one of them would glance at me, to which I would not respond. As I advanced, pushing the heavy frosted-glass swing doors, each room became less and less crowded, more and more hushed. From the rows of tables I gathered that they were laboratories, and taking a long corridor at the opposite end of the entrance, I reached complete silence. I then opened the door — lighter this one, wooden and sliding. I saw, under a yellow and warm light, Astel, seated on a Chesterfield sofa.

— Most people are starting to go outside, he told me. They are coming back from the operating rooms. They are beginning to test.

It was strange to contemplate him like this, from above, in that clarity. With his square face and smooth skin, with his narrow blue eyes, with his short curly and extremely black hair: he struck me in that moment as disarmingly fragile. I remained silent, and seeing that he invited me to advance, I drew close to the window at the far end, whose venetian blind I lifted. Outside, on the lawn, the guests were dancing — again without my being able to hear them: it was as if nothing about others was any longer perceptible or shareable to me.

— The operation is simple and painless, added Astel, still motionless on the sofa. It is reversible and takes only fifteen minutes. We have performed hundreds of them this evening. We will perform thousands.

— You say that as if I should envy them, I replied. As if I should want to be operated on, so I could hear them and talk to them. As if I were not relieved that one could enter a world with no point of connection with others.

— I know what is inside you. I know what pulses. I know you are still looking for something. Someone.

With a single look he contemplated me, and seemed to see what no one had seen until then: my perspiration. My smell. My ugliness. And yet he did not regard me with pity. He regarded me with desire. And so, even though I was not wireless — not yet, at any rate — I understood what he was telling me without uttering a word. He wanted me to follow him.

Along the corridor I accompanied him, careful to remain behind him. I was not afraid of him. But I wanted to observe him, I wanted to watch him move, in his black shirt with its three buttons open over his beardless chest, in his blue jeans. We entered an operating room — a grey circular space — where on the walls hung posters of happy men and women, laughing at having become entirely wireless. Astel explained in what way certain operations, like those of the eyes, could be reversed. He spoke to me, seated on an examination table, legs dangling, relaxed, while again I scrutinised him from above: his eyes seemed so flat, so simple.

Two types of integration existed within their movement, he confided, and to make it clearer, he used the example of a house. When one wanted to transform an old home into a smarthome, when one wanted to connect its blinds, its lights, its security cameras to the network, an individual integration was available. One could change a bulb, connect it to the wi-fi, and transform the fitting into an intelligent device. When, conversely, one wanted to create a home automation system, in which each device would become synchronised with the others, one had to create a central hub. The devices were no longer directly connected to the wifi; they were connected to the bridge. The principle was exactly the same for Astel. To change an eye, an individual integration sufficed. But to become entirely wireless, an ecosystemic integration was necessary. And there, all turning back was impossible.

This evening, for the guests, it was only a matter of individual and reversible integrations. The trial was free, entirely painless, and before leaving, those who had undergone the test would have a choice: they could either validate the trial period. Or go back, and in fifteen minutes flat, the Astel team would perform the reset operation. Before the surgical instruments, all directly connected to an articulated arm, I thought back to Tessa's scan, to Ruby's words: to join Astel, one had to accept being broken by him. One had to open up. From this point on, Astel no longer personally supervised the operations. Yet he was offering to make an exception for me. I had nothing to lose, I thought, my eyes adrift in the fake portraits of movement members on the walls. Nothing to salvage from my humanity, nothing to cherish from the emotions that had crossed my senses and corrupted my organs. I accepted.

Astel invited me to sit in the ergonomic chair, where I rested my body after that interminable night. First, my left eye had to be scanned — since that was the one I had chosen — and reproduced with a 3D printer via a proprietary biomedical software. If I wanted to change the colour, I could, though it was rare to opt for such a choice in the case of an isolated operation. I reflected and that was precisely what I chose: a pale blue eye, opaline, in contrast with my light brown, almost green ones.

Once the printing had been launched, Astel proceeded to anaesthetise my left eye, and a simple nanoparticle spray was enough to numb the area completely. Then, when my eye had entirely switched off and I could see nothing, Astel triggered the operation, monitoring the robotic arm as it performed the incision. The mechanical system inserted an ocular speculum, and within a few minutes my eye had been removed and placed in a container to keep it alive. On the silver surface of a control panel, I followed the operation, until Astel pivoted it out of my sight.

Throughout, he described each stage to me with a positivity that had grown chilling: I had become, in his view, a body without a future. A body without possibility. But that would change, he promised. It was beautiful, listening to him, to see that I was not afraid. As if he knew I no longer had anything to lose. As if he knew I had already lost everything. “I will regenerate your senses,” he murmured as he inserted my new eye. “I will purge your perceptions; I will detach your organs. And I will restore their natural freedom.”

The speculum was removed, the robotic arm switched off… yet I could see nothing. That was normal, Astel reassured me; he had to verify that the wireless eye had been correctly connected to the cerebral system. He briefly inspected me, then carried out a few tests on his smartphone with a phlegmatic air. At last he nodded and proceeded to the activation. And my new wireless eye opened. And I saw.

Everything all right? he asked, as I sat up and looked around me. At first I noticed no great difference. My left eye possessed no particular capabilities; it displayed no additional information about objects; it had no augmented resolution or optical zoom, and when we went outside into the garden, at a distance from the revellers, I gained no form of night vision. Despite this, as the minutes passed, I felt a change: the definition was better, the contrast different, the colour clearer, more beautiful, more optimistic. Above all, blinking, I could establish that my left eye was simply seeing things that my right eye could not… such as the precise light of a street lamp switched on at the centre of the estate, or its rays beyond the blue heart of the halo; less flattering details also disappeared, like that damaged section of lawn which on the way in had appeared to me muddy and slippery, and on the way back appeared clean and welcoming.

We crossed the grounds, beyond the lighting of the main building, descending toward Astel's house. At the pool fountains, the mechanical labradors emerged: them too, with my left eye, I saw differently. Certain forms I had perceived as empty — like their gleaming eyes or their black tongues — were now filled with detail, their irises with cream-coloured glints and their palates mint green. As for Astel, he seemed unchanged to me. And yet I already loved him more.

He told me about the trial period, which lasted 48 hours, and that I was therefore welcome to go home with the wireless eye if I wished. But what most stoked my curiosity was what would happen at the end of that trial period, should I not return: given Ruby's account of the movement, I could hardly imagine it granting a subscription automatically. Astel corrected me: that was exactly what would happen. However, this single left eye remained only a sample — in that, Ruby had been right. For my body to become entirely like Astel, a simple purchase would not suffice. What would be needed was a complete and profound metanoia. A total initiation into the networks.

The door opened onto the eighty-seventh floor. A dull clamour could be heard behind large marble doors, and all around, well-dressed people — often in pairs or threes — circulated with a glass in hand. They all had one thing in common: they had connected eyes, and I knew it, because once one possessed one, the eyes of others glowed with a reassuring halo, giving the impression of a privileged bond and of belonging to a community. One participant, phone in hand, was in fact changing the colour of his iris, moving from blue to green and finally to black. I slipped between the people and then passed through to the other side of the doors, into a circular conference room, packed to capacity. It was five in the morning: the meeting was not due to begin until the following evening. So what was happening? And why were these people here?

I scanned the crowd, in the mezzanine and the balcony above me, and recognised no faces. I advanced toward the stage, through the standing audience of the stalls, and before a cinema screen I made out a few movements… but I was unable to tell whether this was still preparation or whether I was arriving at the heart of the show. The guests in any case were neither stopped nor silent, discussing as they might during an interval, and given the strange looks being cast at my natural eye, I drew back to keep close to the walls. In the shadow I found the stairs leading to the mezzanine, where with each step I heard a burst of applause ring out. I quickened my pace, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck shiver at that clamour and those flashes of light, playing behind me at the very edge of vertigo.

At the top of the mezzanine I wanted to take the stairs to the balcony, but pressed by the silence that had fallen over the assembly, I opted for a free seat in the curved left-hand rows, at the second row before the balustrade. On stage, a man was moving, making large gestures without saying a word: he seemed to be rehearsing a speech, and I surveyed the spectators in the balcony above me and those in the stalls below. They were all particularly attentive, to the point of bursting into laughter and then applauding — I turned back toward the stage, where the man had not made a sound. Then I understood: he was speaking with his connected tongue, for their connected ears. We were in the secret of Astel. In his community of Sanctus Gold. This was not the meeting of new members: it was the meeting of the faithful.

Suddenly, a tension surged within me. I sensed that the spectators, with their connected eyes — which no longer seemed quite so reassuring — were beginning to observe me with suspicion. And so I endeavoured to pretend that I was hearing what I could not hear, that I was understanding what I could not understand, feigning laughter, feigning applause. The man — whom I understood to be Astel's right-hand — left the stage. The lights went out, my neighbour leaned toward me with a benevolent smile: he was seated to my left, on the side of my connected eye, and suspected nothing. But when he spoke to me, when I sat there mute, unable to hear him or even to respond, he began to frown and glance at his friends around him. Quickly they each ran a finger over their ears, then over their tongue, as if these were endowed with an invisible tactile surface — and I could hear them. They had switched frequencies. They told me that this place was reserved for those who were connected. If one was not, one could not hear; if one was not, one could not see; if one was not, one could not know.

Confronted with my silence, my neighbour took me by the wrist and ordered me to stand. "One must be connected," he insisted. "Otherwise, you cannot be trusted." At that moment, the light came back on. Immediately, his friends returned to their seats and signalled to my neighbour, who persisted, to do the same. Astel arrived on stage, his eyes pale and wide open, with his broad forehead and square jaw: he was wearing a white shirt rolled up to the elbows, and jeans with hiking shoes. Already the crowd was acclaiming him, the faithful seemed even to be singing, and I heard neither those hymns nor Astel's words, only the mechanical sounds of hands striking together.

The wireless man looked me straight in the eyes. I was so far from him that I thought it a coincidence. Except that his eyes began to change colour: from pale blue, they turned black. And while he continued to speak without my being able to distinguish a single word, his pupils would not release me… until everyone in the room suddenly turned toward me at once. I did not know what he had told them. But my neighbour, to my left, smiled at me: he seemed to have learned something about me. More than that — he stifled a laugh, at once empathetic and mocking. Then he ran a finger across the tip of his tongue, over that tactile surface used to change frequency, which reminded me of the gesture one made before turning a page. And he said: welcome.

I did not have time to respond: immediately, Astel spoke to me. Hands raised, he was urging everyone to welcome me, encouraging each person to return to the natural frequency of the poor wired ones… When they had complied, with a collective sigh of which I perceived only the bright and weary eyes, Astel resumed his address. How could I have been surprised that he had spotted me in the stands? When he plunged his eyes into mine, he was also plunging into his own.

The rest of the address was delivered on the ordinary frequency of standard humans. I understood that the conference brought together all Astel's employees, directors and investors, each distributed according to their rank. There were the Basic Lux, the Premium Core, the Neural Plus, the Silver Nexus and the Sanctus Gold. And after Astel had mentioned “certain technical glitches” during the recent integrations among the Nexus, he promised a very swift update to the bridge that would enable the long-awaited V2 to roll out. I realised there would be no demonstration here; just as I had not felt a real difference when my wireless eye was added, Astel fully embraced the strange, reticent minimalism of his movement. He repeated it: Astel, in itself, was not an experience one put on display. One did not make a pornographic exhibition of it. It was a learning that was lived from within. Like a secret. An intimate experience. A spiritual one. With Astel, it became natural to be invaded by the machine. It became natural to be connected.

It was on the top floor of the main building, in a circular amphitheatre with a central stage and tiers rising to some twenty metres, that I was about to have my tongue removed. At the start of that ceremony, we were all lit by the setting sun passing through a skylight the same size as the stage, and I was seated in an operating chair, like the dozen other Basic Lux preparing to undergo the rite of passage. Before us, the audience, in the half-darkness, watched us: Astel was not there.

Ruby was seated in the audience. Erik Wilhelm too, as well as the deputy mayor who had been present at the housewarming: at the very top, in the back row, Tessa was crossing her legs, half-lit, the sun only reaching the tips of her feet in her pale-blue slippers with the Astel logo embroidered in white. In a semicircle facing them, a giant robotic arm, mounted on rails, moved from chair to chair. It performed each of the operations, from one initiate to the next, followed by two assistants in white gowns and masks, responsible for suctioning the blood and making the connections. It was my turn: the machine injected lidocaine into the tip of my tongue. It immobilised it with a clamp and, aided by the men on my left and right, severed it at the base. The assistants inserted a tube to limit the bleeding, while I continued to fix my gaze on Tessa, at the other end of the room. Organ by organ, I told myself. Organ by organ, I come to you. My eyes had become like hers, and had found her frequency; my tongue was becoming like hers, and was finding her frequency; my ears would become like hers, and would find her frequency.

Night had fallen on the room; the moon, through the skylight, was already shining; Tessa had uncrossed her legs. The assistants removed the tubes, to allow the machine to sever the frenulum, which now dangled since the organ had been removed. It placed titanium screws in the remaining stump and attached electrical microwires to the nerve endings: at that point the assistants took back control of the operations. They produced, brand new, the Astel wireless tongue, inserted it and fixed it onto the anchors. To carry out the calibration, I was asked to recite initiatory membership texts, and I had to repeat myself several times, sometimes more slowly, sometimes more quickly, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, like articulation exercises. Erik, who had joined us on stage, warned us that the consonants would at first be distorted. That we would lisp, which made the assembly laugh, but that via the application, one would also learn to better control sound: everything would be explained during the Premium Core courses, which it would this time be imperative to follow from the very beginning.

Erik urged the disciples to rise, for it was time to enjoy the true advantages of the wireless tongue. He knew that was what everyone was there for, provoking another laugh from the assembly, and he had no wish to prolong the torture any further: dinner awaited us.

“What is he talking about?” I asked her, while realising, in fact, that I could no longer speak as I once had: my tongue felt lighter, colder. Its surface, too, proved perceptibly different, with asperities so palpable that I began to touch it — “those are the sensors,” Ruby explained to me. “To change frequency. But this is not the moment.” Naturally, Ruby drew close to me as Tessa had slipped out through the back of the room and the movement of the crowd was guiding us toward the front.

We entered a large rectangular room filled with ten-metre horizontal tables with beige-padded benches, all dominated by lamps suspended from the high ceiling. Grey plates awaited us, with at their centre a tiny slice of pistachio green sponge cake. I glanced at Ruby as we sat down side by side: it was, of course, the cake she had had me taste when we had met for the first time in the exhibition stand. At the time, I had perceived no flavour whatsoever. But with my new tongue, I was now open to Astel's digital modifications; I could feel those transformations which, according to him, were meant to render the natural senses derisory.

We must make the most of it, Ruby told me. This food, destined to take the market by storm, was still rare: it was, according to Astel, a metafood, made up of digitally modified organisms, or D.M.O.s. I weighed the small ivory teaspoon, cut a piece and tasted it — but still nothing. Ruby smiled at me: “activate your tongue,” she said, before, with a caress of her index finger on the tip of my new organ, switching it on for me. And then I felt it. As with the eyes, however, I experienced no great difference: the taste was strong, good. The tongue was working, the signals were being transmitted. But I perceived no profound difference from reality.

The evening passed. We were able to taste two further sample dishes: a small bite of chicken in coconut curry sauce, and a chestnut velouté. Everyone was full of praise for Astel, yet for my part I remained circumspect before the normality of the tastes: why use such freedom of digital generation only to recreate, flatly and as faithfully as possible, what one already knew? Why did Astel seem only capable of mimicking what had preceded him?

Tessa had now returned. Once again she was alone, at the end of a table, busy tasting — with some delay — those three dishes that awaited her, side by side. Meanwhile, Erik and the deputy mayor were discussing the movement's policy: the elected official found it curious the way Astel, in addition to adding organs to us, was taking them away. How he was confiscating our own. To make us dependent on his. That was his real sleight of hand, beyond the technological feats. When all humans were connected to one another, the machine would feed on their interdependence: it would function passively thanks to their mutual connection and the data would tend toward infinity. Another wavelength, another language, would generate itself freely. Astel would no longer have anything to do. And no one would any longer be able to do anything without him.

Erik, who saw — despite my silence — that I shared my neighbour's view, shook his head. We were far, he said, from realising how far exactly Astel intended to take us. We were far from realising what the final stage of membership truly consisted of — the one after Sanctus Gold, which was linked to no organ and which no member had yet reached. If Astel was so busy, if Astel was so rare, it was not simply so that one might eat pistachio cake. And it was very much in our interest to remember that.