You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly. You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
alternatehistory.com
Prologue
“The entire universe is composed of stellar systems. In order to create them nature has only one hundred simple bodies at its disposal. Despite the prodigious profit it knows how to make from its resources, and the incalculable number of combinations these allow its fecundity, the result is necessarily a finite number, like that of the elements themselves. And in order to fill the entire expanse nature must infinitely repeat each of its original or generic combinations. Every star, whatever it might be, thus exists in infinite number in time and space, not only in one of its aspects, but as it is found in every second of its duration, from birth until death. All the beings spread across its surface, big or little, animate or inanimate, share in this privilege of perennity.
The earth is one of these stars. Every human being is thus eternal in every second of its existence. What I write now in my modest ccc. I wrote and will write under the same circumstances for all of eternity, on a table, with a pen, wearing clothing. And so for all.
One after another all these earths are submerged in renovatory flames, to be re-born there and to fall into them again, the monotonous flowing of an hourglass that eternally turns and empties itself. It is something new that is always old; something old that is always new.
Those curious about extra-terrestrial life will nevertheless smile at a mathematical conclusion that grants them not only immortality but eternity. The number of our doubles is infinite in time and space. In all conscience, we can hardly ask for more. These doubles are of flesh and blood, or in pants and coats, in crinoline and chignon. These aren’t phantoms: they are the now eternalized.
There is nevertheless a great defect: there is, alas, no progress! No, these are vulgar re-editions, repetitions. As it is with editions of past worlds, so it is with those of future worlds. Only the chapter of bifurcations remains open to hope. Never forget that all we could have been here, we are somewhere else.
Progress here is only for our nephews. They are luckier than us. All the beautiful things that our globe will see our future descendants have already seen, see now, and will always see in the form of doubles who preceded them and who follow them. Children of a better humanity, they have already scoffed at us and mocked us on dead earths, passing there after us. From living earths from which we have disappeared they continue to condemn us; and on earths to be born, they will forever pursue us with their contempt.
Them and us, as well as all the guests of our planet, are born over again as prisoners of the moment and place that destiny assigns us in its series of avatars. Our perennity is an appendix of its perennity. We are but partial phenomena of its resurrections. Men of the 19th Century, the hour of our apparition is forever fixed, and we are returned always the same, at best with the possibility of happy variants. There is nothing much there to satisfy the thirst for what is better. What then is to be done?
I haven’t sought my happiness; I have sought after truth. You will find here neither a revelation nor a prophet, but a simple deduction from the spectral analysis and cosmogony of Laplace. These two discoveries make us eternal. Is this a godsend? We should profit from it. Is it a mystification? We should resign ourselves to it. But isn’t it a consolation to know ourselves to constantly be, on millions of planets, in the company of our beloved, who is today naught but a memory? Is it another, on the other hand, to think that we have tasted and will eternally taste this happiness in the shape of a double, of millions of doubles! Yet this is what…..”
Blanqui put the manuscript down, after hearing his secretary’s footsteps. Easily recognizable, for their perfect timing, it sounded almost Prussian, almost. “Camarde Président, your guest for tonight have arrived.” Blanqui sighed, always so formal. “Tell them I'll be ready in a moment, I just need to file some documents away.” After Pierre left, Blanqui sighed again, hopefully Jérôme brought Louise and Isabelle along with him. The constant talk about his little Commission and its lack of finances was getting a bit tiresome. He'd rather, to his own surprise, would enjoy some family time instead of constant politicking. Who would have thought, after all these years, that getting into power was actually the easy part….
Somewhere in the infinite universe, an old tired man pauses his writing to look out of his cell's window located in the fort of Taureau. He stares into the dark. foggy sea, tiredly searching for a future, a past that was never to be. This is not his story.
Notes and Sources Louis Auguste Blanqui, L'éternité par les astres. Librairie Germer Bailliére, 1872, Paris;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor
People Jérôme Adolphe Blanqui (1798-1854) / In This Timeline (1798-1892)
Louise Julie Chaigneau (1808-1888)
Marie Isabelle Jane Blanqui (1850-1912)