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digital hyperstition

6c. The Templeton Episode

The name of Profesor Randolph Edmund Templeton is inextricably tangled with the secret perplexities of time. It was he who, by way of a yet barely comprehended time-anomaly, provided the model for HP Lovecraft's Randolph Carter ... And yet it was this 'same' RE Templeton who - on March 21st 1999, whilst delivering a lecture at Miskatonic devoted to a rigorous critique of HG Wells - awoke suddenly as the Thing that lurks behind the mask of Immanuel Kant, coincidentally discoverering the transcendental time-machine.

Templeton sits immobile in his attic room, immersed in the deceptively erratic ticking of his old nautical clock, lost in meditation upon JC Chapman's hermetic engraving. It now seems that this complex image, long accepted as a portrait of Kant, constitutes a disturbing monogram of his own chronological predicament. As if in mockery of stable framing, the picture is surrounded by strange-loop coilings of Ouraboros, the cosmic snake , who traces a figure of eight - and of moebian eternity - by endlessly swallowing itself. Suspended from its lower jaw is a cryptic device of intricately balanced circles and stars (ancient symbols of the AOE). Above the sepent's head, a facsimile of Kant is etched in profile, the face fixed in an amiable - if distant - expression. What was it though, that hid behind the death-mask, where it cut-off, below and behind the jaw, false ear, and double hair-line? What was this peculiarly formless body, shadowy neck-flesh, and suggestion of a cervical fin? As he stared, and hideously remembered, Templeton felt as though he knew.

    swarm 1
  1. Nick Land-Meltdown
  2. Kodwo Eshun-Motion Capture
  3. R.Mackay/M.Fisher-Pomophobia
  4. Rohit Lekhi-Futureloop/ Black Bedlam
  5. Ccru-Swarmachines
    swarm 2
  1. Steve Metcalf-Killing Time/Strife Kolony/NeoFuturism
  2. Angus Carlyle-Amortal Kombat/No UFOs
  3. Rob Heath & Christina Paouros-Destination 3000 Degrees
  4. David Cole-Post-Cybernetic Judicial War
  5. Iain Hamilton Grant-Burning AutoPoiOedipus
    swarm 3
  1. S.Livingston/L.Parisi/
    A.Greenspan-Amphibious Maidens
  2. Kodwo Eshun-Abducted by Audio (Live)
  3. Steve Goodman-Darkcore
  4. Tom Epps-The Body of Foucault
  5. Switch-Flee Control
    digital hyperstition
  1. Ccru- Barker Speaks
  2. Melanie Newton-Y2Panik
  3. Steve Goodman- Hyper-C: Breaking the Net
  4. Ron Eglash - Recursive Numeric Sequences in Africa
  5. Ron Eglash - Africa in the Origins of the Binary Code
  6. Ccru - Tales from the Cthulhu Club: The Vault of Murmurs, Leaks from the Miskatonic Bunker-Hotel, The Templeton Episode
  7. Ccru - Pandemonium
  8. Ccru - Glossary
Templeton has long asserted the impossibility of empirical time-travel. Since the ego is bound by its own nature to linear-sequentiality (he continues to insist) neither it nor the organism is ever transported through time. Nevertheless, he describes the Critique of Pure Reason as a time-travelling manual, although of 'another kind.' He uses Kant's system as a guide for engineering time-synthesis. The key is the secret of the Schematism, which - although "an art concealed in the depths of the human soul" - concerns only the unutterable Abomenon of the Outside (Nihil Ulterius). In exteriority, where time works, that part of you which is most yourself has nothing in common with what you are. When Templeton fell into himself that day he found, instead of what he thought himself to be, the Thing (in itself (at zero-intensity)). It was, perhaps, or necessarily, that continuous hyperbody - the Lurker at the Threshold - which HP Lovecraft names Yog Sothoth ...

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