The zombies of Abraxas

On the 24th of July 2073, I was officially granted a six-week access to the techno-spiritual commune of Les gens sereins, known to the greater populace as the zombies of Abraxas. Over the past fifty years, this Parisian microcommune has scarcely made any headlines, with a few exceptions as local news published troubling videos of its sluggish, lumbering members. These folk, coming from all walks of life, appear to behave as real-life zombies. Their clothes are ragged, their eyes vacant. They can be seen leaning on traffic lights and walls for balance, their bodies anaemic and pasty-white. Such sightings raise suspicions of widespread drug usage within the historic walls of their urban fortress, Les Espaces d’Abraxas.

This commune of out-of-touch people has remained remarkably stable, both financially and demographically, which seems a paradox in itself. How can a group of drug users, as highly functional as one would assume them to be, create a juridical personality for itself, manage its finances, and keep its members alive?

Following the approval for my visit, I’ve been allowed to enter the building complex of Les Espaces d’Abraxas, take photographs, engage with the local population and interview the leaders of this peculiar society. I invite you to explore with me the hidden side of Les gens serenes, and understand more about one of the most unique and misunderstood people of the European Federation.

The community is confined to one housing complex, Les Espaces d’Abraxas, off the Mount-au-mer boulevard in the Parisian suburb of Noisy-le-Grand. The building was erected almost a hundred years ago, in the 1980s, by Catalan and possibly socialist architect Ricardo Bofill. While initially hailed as a dense middle-class housing solution, it gradually fell into disrepair and neglect, and by the 2020s, the Parisian government was considering demolition. The tides turned in 2031, when squatting activists moved in and exercised the highly permissive French habitation rights to keep the building standing. In 2043, the space was submitted for inclusion in the Parisian edifice preservation registry as having ‘historical significance to the development of Greater Paris’. However, as the apartments were technically in the hands of squatters, the government could not ratify its inclusion and the complex has been in judicial limbo ever since.

The squatters kept themselves off the internet and out of the public eye. As such, very little is known about how the commune formed. Over the years, stories and short vids started popping up of the squatters looked pale as sheets and confused. They had blank stares and were speaking very broken French, barely intelligible. Some were incontinent. TikToks of the time show them dressed in rags, flip flops and socks during winter, jackets during summer, bewondering at their own fragile hands like foreign objects, lumbering about in supermarkets and knocking over packets and boxes. The commune’s first official acknowledgment came in 2046, when representatives Aurora Saubagerie and Antoine de l’Hivers-thé petitioned the Noisy-le-Grand local council to upgrade their TM32 power line for more amperage. Much to the surprise of the local council, the two offered to pay for the infrastructure expenses out of pocket, and through a financial construct that revealed that the commune was the beneficiary of a generous investment fund. This revelation challenged the general view that the zombies of Abraxas would be drug-addled radical left unemployables. Still the image persisted, and the locals still think of them as zombies rather than humans.

Recollections of former members talked about a quantum computer built deep below, in the vast basements of the edifice. And with its help, a supersimulation so realistic as to baffle the mind and bend the senses. They spoke of a ritual called l’immersion, where they would surf the simulation for hours unnumbered, seemingly just listening to trees rustle in the wind, watching leaves falling and rivers stream, or swimming in an endless sea. They would even imagine themselves creatures within the simulation. Fish and snakes, jaguars, mice and owls.

Today, we know a bit more about les gens sereins. We know they live a frugal and self-sustaining lifestyle with hydroponic farms covering the facade, as well as chicken coops and normal farms on the rooftop. We know the quantum computer is real and the reason they move so stiff and uncoordinated is that the frequent immersions are desensitising them from their real bodies. We also know that they have at least one neurosurgeon inside, experienced enough to splice nanotrodes directly onto the spine. This is the only surgery readily available that might enable people to completely dissociate from their bodies while in immersion.

The covers look tattered

‘Pas normal’, says the taxi driver who picked me up from Charles de Gaulle airport, when I tell him I am planning to visit les gens sereins. He shakes his head dramatically towards me: ‘Don’t go. They’re crazy people. They’re not normal.’ He follows his warning with a personal story. One of his cousins, a delivery driver, has to deliver supplies there every now and then. ‘My cousin is tall and very strong. Broad shoulders. But when I ask him, what is it like over there? He says when it’s his time to deliver, he keeps his machete in the door. He is scared. Always night delivery, mostly with electronics, wires and a lot of bricolage. Then he needs to flash lights, they tell him to be quiet. And they open the first grated doors and he drives into a corridor and in front of him there are big metal doors which do not open. Then they close the grate behind him and he unloads all the boxes himself. Then he needs to get back in his car, flashes his lights to say he finished, and they will let him leave. He is very scared.’ This story resonates with many I have heard, all of which paint the inhabitants as overwhelmingly secretive.

A walk around the outside of the edifice effuses a sense of organised chaos. It contrasts with the plain and boring ‘banlieue’ of the French capital. Its looming stature was originally hidden by high-rises around the Boulevard du Mont d’Est, but that project failed when its apartments did not reach acceptable occupancy, and had to be brought down. The facades are covered in a patchwork of PVC piping in various nuances of plumbing grey, white, and black. Out of them sprouts greenery galore, which must be where the locals are getting their food from. This hydroponic mess is hiding the ochre and sand tones of the precast concrete underneath. Many of the original windows have been replaced with opaque solar panels. This means inside the apartments there’s very little natural light coming in. A striking reminder of the sunlight-deficient lifestyle of the gens sereins.

‘We are not allowed to enter the space’, says Guillaume Birac, a representative of the local council of Noisy-le-Grand. They are protected by the housing regulations. ‘We very much want to get in, but we just can’t. Ten years ago, we prepared a plan of action together with the local police. We’d found this loophole in the law where we could eschew the squatter law by saying that the historical edifice was being irreversibly damaged by their actions. Birac pulls out a folder and points at the pictures: ‘PVC piping all over the facade, affixed with screws. Not allowed. All three entrances blocked with either grate or full metal doors. Fire hazard, health hazard, and not part of the original plans. Intensive farming on the rooftop. Risk of collapse. So we argued that they had done irreversible damage to a historical building. It took us several months to get all the papers ready and involve the relevant authorities. We even had the signature of the Greater Parisian council. But a few weeks before our intervention, their attorney came out and took us in front of a judge. He argued that since their request had never been passed by our local architects’ committee, that the edifice was not officially recognised as historically relevant and therefore, our plan was illegal! He stopped us in our tracks. Ten years later, we are still not allowed in.’

Local resident Léa Rougegorge’s feelings about her neighbours is mixed: ‘They don’t do any harm, that is true. And yes, their self-sufficiency is laudable. We also try to be self-sufficient in our family. But sometimes I see them coming out of there, and they look drunk, or high on some electro-brew you know?’ She finds their demeanour unsettling: ‘they walk by leaning against walls, their dress is inappropriate and ragged, they lack self-control. She’s also heard stories of petty theft: stealing from supermarkets, appropriating items from the street like road signs and trash cans. When pressed about violence or crime, Léa admits she’s never witnessed such behaviour from the gens sereins. Even so, she does not feel safe in her neighbourhood. ‘Just what are they doing in there? What’s making them like that?’

‘I think people are a bit jealous.’ says 82-year old Lazz Fairez. ‘Many here are working long hours and have to grind and hustle. They come home late and wired and after they’ve paid for rent, utilities, government taxes, local taxes, parking taxes and so on, they find themselves with not much left. This here is a transit suburb. People come, work hard, earn enough for a downpayment, and then move to a proper house outside Paris. My grandchild Pierre for example, he only lived here for four years before moving away. And during that time, he was barely home to begin with. He’d either go to the city proper for his job, or go networking. When he came here, it was just to sleep and eat, recharge. So he did not have time to settle or become part of a community. Whereas these people in Abraxas, they’ve built something durable. And many here want that sense of belonging, but all they see is a group who lives rent-free and does not pay its taxes to the government. And they feel cheated. But I say, to hell with these taxes! And to hell with the rent prices! They are too high. Let people live.’ I’ve asked him what he makes of the stories of drug-use and theft. ‘They might be true or not, and it does not matter to me’ Lazz answers. ‘I’ve lived here since the 30’s. I was here when they got started and even met a few members. It’s a different belief system. They want to be closer to Mother Earth and nature and the basics. Away from finances and data management and political turmoil and the stress of modern society. I understand.’

One would be forgiven to associate a commune such as this one with unsavoury types. Outcasts, uneducated, unemployed, poorly integrated, activists for the radical left. However, Guillaume Birac admits there is an unusually large number of highly educated and well functioning members. Apart from the attorney we learned about, there is at least one neurosurgeon, one fully trained anaesthesiologist, as well as computer science experts, engineers, and humanists. They perform highly skilled and well paid jobs outside the community via remote access. I connected with one of their clients who prefers to remain anonymous. ‘Good quality work’, he says. ‘I needed a second opinion on revisionist economic history on the Makker-Rok agreement of 2046. I found their work online and they came across as very knowledgeable despite no university credentials. I got more insight from this person than I did from four other university lecturers.’

Access to Les Espaces d’Abraxas is only allowed under the supervision of a guide. The guide who was allotted to my stay is the tall, frail and well-spoken Sylvie. I meet her at a cafe nearby. Sylvie, formerly Sylvester, is a native English speaker with a background in humanities, who joined in 2042. As the spokesperson for the community in the last twenty years, she is fluent in English, French, Dutch and German. A natural polyglot with an affinity for human connection and diplomacy, Sylvie comes across as a friendly figure, although her eyes do betray a certain coldness. She smiles as she asks me to raise from my chair, and then, smile frozen on her face, she stares me up and down for an uncomfortable amount of time. She focuses completely. She is listening to my breathing, wrinkles her nose as if sniffing me. I will soon find that such an intense tactile analysis is routine in the commune. I am finally allowed to sit down and we begin working through the ground rules on a small booklet she provided. I cannot help but feel that I am about to witness an experience bordering on the sublime.

First impressions, raw notes

The commune allowed me accommodation and relatively unrestricted access for six weeks, during which time I’ve had the possibility to visit all common areas, the living units, the basement, and to interview around thirty members. The place they chose for me was an unrenovated apartment on the top floor of what is called Le Théâtre, one of three buildings which together constitute the edifice Les Espaces d’Abraxas. Le Théâtre was originally designed for the wealthy, with generous windows and few but large apartments. It is a semicircle building overseeing an inner courtyard, the Plaza, which is an open-space filled with gardens, chicken pens and recreational areas, as well as an enormous walnut tree presiding in the middle. Opposite of the Théâtre is the main residential building, officially called Le Palacio, which hosts the majority of the one-bedroom apartments, more than four hundred of them. Le Palacio is 18 stories high and has two additional wings, one on which side. In between the two and with direct view to everything, there is L’Arche, a miniaturised yet liveable version of the Arc de Triomphe, which is, I was told, where the elders reside.

On first impression, les gens sereins are very much like they’ve been described to me. They speak poorly and use simple words both in French, and in English. They move and act as if their motor skills are underdeveloped. People slur their words, drag their feet, struggle to sit straight. They do indeed wear patched worn-out clothes with stains and rips, and more peculiar, they all wear latex collars and small fake humps on their back. ‘These are for protection’, explains 47-year old Patricia. She turns around after giving Sylvie, who acts as my translator, a worried look. She pulls the latex collar over her head and removes the fake silicone hump. Stemming from underneath her skin are faint wires fastened with Tegaderm. They are as thin and black as strands of hair, poking out of her spine. They bundle into a thicker wire with an USB-E connector. This is the adaptor, which plugs into her key, a rectangle-shaped box the size of an outstretched palm. The box itself further connects to any of the internal network sockets peppered around the edifice and allows her access to the Monde serene. Patricia continues: ‘I’m not supposed to touch the nanotrodes, they are very sensitive. They should not be touched, or else bad things might happen to me. I’ve heard you might even paralyse if they get pulled out. And they are so thin, you see. Thinner than hair. It would be easy for them to snag on something. We all have to be very, very careful. That’s why I cover them everytime I leave my bed. I use the Tegaderm to keep them in place, and then put the latex shield for extra protection.’

Patricia has been practicing the ritual of l’Immersion for around fifteen years. She now spends around twelve hours every day in the simulation, which is called Le Monde serene. When she logs in, it’s called a ‘dive’ and she will stay motionless in her bed for most of the twelve hours, fully immersed in the simulated environment. Her room is dark, warm and acoustically insulated, so as to reduce to a minimum any external stimuli. Just like many other members practicing the ritual, she will be wearing a makeshift adult diaper in case she loses bowel control during the dive. There is nothing on the walls. The light is dim and the windows are covered by solar panels.

Patricia can choose an avatar from around five hundred different animals – or plants. The simworld has been painstakingly recreated to mirror what one would find in the wild. Or, what they would have found in the wild, for example, one hundred, two hundred years ago. From the passing of the days to the direction of the wind, temperature and pressure differences, they are all digitally remastered and simulated by La Fabrique, the quantum computer situated in the basement. L’immersion is about inhabiting the body of a denizen of this vivid world.

I ask Patricia about the diapers. Despite being thin and small, she subscribes to a very strict diet. This to reduce the bathroom incidents during her lengthy dives. ‘Few wear catheters, but I don’t like the feeling. It distracts me and undermines the experience. So I do it the old fashioned way, I abstain from eating for two hours before, and I try to drink as little as possible one hour before. I keep water and food by my nightstand here so I can immediately fill up once I exit.’ She lays in her bed, connects the wires to her key and then the key to a socket next to her headrest. She gives me a wave and then puts on her VR-aural mask. She will lay like this until nighttime.

Founding five and their rebellion against the scientific method

The basic tenet that Patricia and the rest of my interviewees holds on to, is that scientific knowledge is unequivocally evil. Sylvie sketches out the enemy: Scientists have embarked on a quest for truth, and they never find it. Don’t you notice how it seems that every answer coming from the scientific community, actually only reveals more questions? Will we ever hear some basic, ground truths from them, or just ‘unfalsifiable claims’? Presumably, this truth is incredibly good at eluding us, hidden behind layers of abstraction, hiding in quarks and antimatter. For hundreds of years, since the advent of the scientific method, all they’ve done is generate more questions. They’re looking for the ‘deeper meaning’. What is the purpose of this ‘deeper meaning’, and how come, after hundreds of years of digging deeper, they have never reached the bottom? Why have they not come across the ‘final meaning’?  So we’re not digging, we’re building! We’re building and building, concepts upon concepts upon concepts. Why are we building? We ask. What’s the purpose? Critical thinkers, intellectuals, they will tell you that actually, the quest for meaning is endless. We keep finding. We keep building on what we know. Forever. Because so it must be, they tell us. Let me say what we’re all thinking: It’s busywork. A horizon never to be reached. There is always something more to know. Another context, another meaning. We strive to learn nothing, about nothing. How can anyone be happy in such a society? It’s an obvious ratrace.’

The commune has five founding members, only three of which are still alive: Neurosurgeon Prof Dr Caroline Naan, philosopher and jurist Antoine de l’Hivers-thé and political activist Aurora Saubagerie. The other two founding members, both now defunct, are philosopher Baptiste Netrel and computing genius Alexander Ke.

Prof Dr Caroline Naan, the neurosurgeon, is now 85. She is still the only one in the commune who can perform the nanotrode splicing operation. She remembers joining in 2037, disillusioned with how women were treated in her field of neurosurgery. ‘I was frustrated with the system. I remember walking through the doors of the neurosurgery department in Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. I was 34 at the time, not a rookie. I wasn’t a starry-eyed university student anymore. And I walk into the best hospital in Paris, a European country, no, Western European country, and all I saw were men surgeons. The women were nurses. The ones with completed residencies were hidden in the back doing research. I was dumbstruck. A few months later I met Aurore, my future partner, and she introduced me to the commune. She suggested I tried out the VR-aural prototype, and I was immediately hooked. I said ‘to hell with this’ and decided never to leave the commune. I didn’t even go back to my apartment to get my stuff.’

Caroline is referencing another of the founding members, Aurore Saubagerie, with whom she is still in a relationship. Although Aurore is currently immersing much more than Caroline is, around seventeen hours per day. I ask whether Aurore sleeps properly. ‘I can’t tell, because she is blind, and ever since she lost her vision she’s only chosen one avatar, the walnut tree. Like the one we have outside’ she gestures to the garden. ‘Aurora is one of the very few who can inhabit a plant. It’s very difficult to adapt, because you get neither visual nor auditory input. It’s black. Nothing. Just sap coursing through your veins, the slow unnerving processes of photosynthesis, and the coldness of the roots around your legs. Yet somehow this life is enough for her, and she’s happy to immerse like this.’

Aurora Saubagerie is the designer of this society. She gave the philosophical manifesto a political shape: leftist, green anarchy with an inclination for technology, self-sustenance, urban farming and nonviolence. She is the one who instituted the hydroponic farms and established the farmers’ practice. She also supervised the transformation of the central square into the vibrant and multi-purpose space it is today, created the rooftop farms, and brought in the solar panels. Aurora is no longer in a position to offer advice or guidance to the commune. Whenever she is not immersed, she is being walked around the edifice, completely incontinent, led by the arm by either Caroline herself, or some other member. She looks surreally thin and frail. She doesn’t speak at all anymore and she does not seem interested in anything more than logging back in and returning to her walnut avatar.

The spiritual/philosophical guidance for the community is in the hands of Antoine de l’Hivers-thé, another of the original five. A neighbour of Caroline and Aurora in l’Arche building, and a former member of the council of Noisy-le-Grand, Antoine has declined to be interviewed. Antoine is 72 now, he was one of the youngest members when elected to represent the Green Party on the council. His stay was short-lived though, as once he found out about the interesting developments in Les Espaces d’Abraxas, particularly in the areas of applied ethics and political philosophy spearheaded by the now defunct Baptiste Netrel, he got involved. What started as tongue-in-cheek xtwitter exchanges between the two on the nature of understanding and scientific unproductiveness, turned into a full-fledged acknowledgment of the veracity of Baptiste’s belief that he had discovered a counter to the so-called knowledge ratrace. His imagined world, ‘unspoiled’ by human touch, where nature reigned supreme and ecosystems were in balance, seemed to Antoine like the elegant alternative that people needed.

This alternative is now concealed in the basement of Les Espaces d’Abraxas. It’s a simulation of a world without us, without humans, and without reason or levels or any deeper meaning. A representation of Mother Earth as it could have been had that first primate never figured out how to speak. The ecosystems are forever in balance, the seasons are unshifted, creatures live and creatures die and it’s primordial chaos. The participants are called upon to just take in the avatars of any such creature and roam freely until they die. Look at the sunset, smell the petrichor, bathe in mudbanks, sense the prey across sand and snow. Whatever happens in their own minds is theirs to process, but at the end of the day, they are not pursuing a quest for knowledge. Instead, all they ever need to be happy is right there, attainable from the very first second they login.

This is l’immersion.

The bizzare clockwork heart

What does it feel to have fur all over your body, claws for fingers, an enhanced sense of smell and superhuman strength? To feel the hunger of a bear? How does its roar feel in your throat and how does it resonate in your enlarged torso?

How about soaring towards the skies across invisible drafts of current? Or, focusing on a small prey hundreds of meters away with the precision of an owl? Can you imagine how long it would take you to flap wings like you do your arms, except they feel light and feathery and they lift your whole body as you move them?

The silent crackle of electro-chemical reactions as you inhabit a centipede? Your eyes, called ocelli, are simple organs which can only differentiate between light and dark. You navigate with one hundred legs and no arms through a tactile world devoid of color in search of smaller bugs and other insects.

Or maybe, you’d like to be a sardine? Lost in a massive school of thousands of other fish just like you, a sea of glistening silver. The water around you has smell and nutrition and the pack attracts you irresistibly. You cannot prevent yourself from moving in unison with the other fish.

These are, of course, a few of the transformations that the members can undergo while performing l’immersion. And the simworld is made possible by the quantum computer called Le Fabrique, whose current head steward is Esteban Kubiitov. Esteban is 32 and his dives are very short – somewhere around two to three hours per day. Esteban is much more interested in keeping the machine working, than in enjoying its fruits. He is an autodidact in the area of quantum computing, in which he got involved when he was 14 via his own father, a computer scientist working for D-Wave Systems in SoCal. ‘It’s a very complex piece of technology’ he muses. ‘That’s because the quantum part of the software is all bespoke and written in Q-assembler. I’ve had to learn it from scratch from the inventor, Alexander Ke. I’ve been documenting the code ever since to make it easier to test and maintain, but it is painstaking work.’ The quantum piece performs the intense calculations for the sensory inputs. ‘And there’s more than just five of these senses, because there are animals who perform echolocation, or make use of chemoreceptors, or magnetoreceptors like migratory birds have.’

I ask Esteban if he subscribes to the evil knowledge principle. Isn’t he a scientist himself? He says it doesn’t apply. ‘Someone needs to keep the simworld running. And yes, of course I need to understand what I am doing, how the machine works, how the software is developed, and what the possibilities for improvement are. But there is also no further reason behind this. I’m not refactoring the code or rearchitecting anything. The system is perfect the way it was developed by mr Ke forty years ago. All I do, is maintenance.’

Le Fabrique occupies six large interconnected chambers in the basement of the edifice. Four of these chambers house the cooling equipment while another one is for the control electronics. The actual quantum computer is nestled deep within a massive mesh of golden wires, cables and tubing. Esteban shows me the data- and processing- centra, they also occupy an additional ten compartments. ‘This is why our electricity bill is so high. We need to keep all of this cooled and running within optimum parameters, if we want the Monde Serene to function at the highest standards of accuracy. We cannot afford it to ever go offline.’

There is of course another half to the technology, and in order to gain insight into that piece, I interviewed prof. dr. Caroline Naan. Dr. Naan performs surgery on every member once they are versed enough with the VR-aural experience. ‘It takes practice and dedication to accommodate to the avatar’ she says. ‘So first we start with the regular VR set and once the member is comfortable with that, then we do the procedure to add the additional sensory inputs.’ Dr. Naan performs the operations in a separate, sterile area of her large apartment. She gets help from the resident anesthesiologist who ensures the patients are put under and don’t risk moving. She uses laparoscopic surgery to attach 72 nanotrodes to the spinal cord. These are the fine wires which require so much protection afterwards. ‘You wouldn’t want them to dislocate. They could pull at the nervous tissue. In the best case, you’d lose a part of the senses coming from the simworld. In the worst case, one of the neurotransmitter pathways might sever, and we would risk paralysis. Thankfully, this has never happened in the history of this community.’

Dr Naan is not worried about the health problems stemming from the long periods of physical inactivity. ‘We’ve got adaptive mattresses for all our members, they keep the body moving and that alleviates the circulation as well as the pressure points.’ I ask about people losing contact with their own body. ‘That is true, the immersions are about getting the brain used to a different set of sensory inputs. However the effects are reversible. The longer a member stays in the real world the more they reconnect with their own bodies. I am living proof. I used to immerse for around 8 hours at a time. But when I started noticing my hands faltering during surgery, I started cutting down and soon, my dexterity came back.’

Living with rejected bodies

While Prof. Naan’s argument might hold true – that ultimately, the body dissociation is reversible – it has become very clear to me that the majority of the gens sereins have no desire to cut down on their dive times. On the contrary, they mostly think about spending more time. And it is ironic of course, to see that Prof Naan’s life partner has become so estranged from her own body as to barely be able to keep herself alive.

Steve Brie has been living with the commune for seven years now. He used to work an identity management office job in central London, had a two-bedroom in Islington together with his fiancee, and was saving up to move to the burbs and start a family. But during a business visit in La Defence, he booked a tour which led him around here. He got curious, did some research, and said he wanted to try the VR world for himself. “I love on sight’, he recalls. ‘I was cheetah for five hours maybe. First try. No toilet break. And it was only headset, but so connected! I said Sylvie, I don’t want to go! and she said okay, I stay. So I never go back, and it is now seven years.’ I ask how he feels about his body. ‘It’s not good. I’m not happy with it. It’s, how can I say, it too simple. I mean, for much time I am bird. Big bird. I go with wind and flock, very far. Mostly on sea, sometimes dive for eat fish. Sometimes days flying. And I have to use wings, legs behind me, beak up, water sparkles, air over feathers, takes me up, takes me down, I have to feel it. But then I stop to eat and toilet, and logout, and again legs with toes and hands with fingers and teeth and my vision not good. Different from bird. So I stumble and confused.’ I ask how long it takes him to reconnect to his body. Does he take weekend breaks? ‘Look, if I connect to body then difficult to connect to bird. Better connect to bird.’

Two other members, who came here sixteen years ago, came in as minors. One of their friends who could drive a car brought them from the outskirts of Brussels where they lived. The three had connected via hidden discords and were fascinated with the possibility of inhabiting the bodies of different animals. They all came in knocking and asking for the full immersion, and were sad to hear they had to start with the VR-aural sets first. But they stayed behind, their parents tried to bring them back but none of them wanted to return anymore. None is regretting that decision, they all love it here. ‘Heaven’ is how one of them describes it. ‘Heaven all the time. I always happy with immersion. To be Nemofish. See coral. Eat little things. Feel water over my body all time. No stress no worries. I am happy.’ And their own bodies? Coming back to reality? ’No, no like. Just for essentials. Then back in.’

 Is it true that the commune has a zero-tolerance policy towards drugs?

‘Yes’ experienced diver Renaud answers in broken English, ‘it is not allowed. Zero-tolerance. But we still brew together every now and then. We want to keep this on the down-low, it’s bad idea to immerse while drunk, but sometimes we do it anyway’. When asked if these electro-brews might be the origin of outsiders thinking there is drug abuse in the commune, Renaud shakes his head vigorously. ‘No, no no no. This is people not understand. They see us we walk funny, you know, we need wall for stand straight, shuffle, slow. They think ‘fentanyl’. But not so. Everyone here, clean. It just difficult with own body after immersion.’

His answer resonates among all of my interviewees. Drugs are not well seen here. Drug-addicts are not welcome. And they couldn’t possibly handle the rigorous ritual, their altered minds would likely snap under the overwhelming sensory dissonance.

While l’immersion is the main activity here, there are also people who put in real work to keep the society going. It bears mentioning that working for the interest of the commune, is entirely voluntary. Nobody is expected to ‘chip in’ or to barter their skills, know-how, or time. People just offer it if they feel like it. ‘It’s a sense of necessity that comes from within’, says Pierre Legallo, the attorney who took the local council to court over their plans to force their entry. He himself felt the need to protect the community, so he took on the whole assignment: review the file, read up on all the relevant laws, think about his arguments. ‘I did it together with mr de l’Hivers-thé, of course. But it was still a couple weeks of proper, old-school, coffee-driven all nighters. I can’t tell you why I did it. It needed to be done, and I was the only one qualified to do it.’

Such a sentiment is not strange to the farmers either. Lucie Poivre is a 40-year old lady with a sturdy frame, leathery brown skin, deep creases etched across her forehead. She sports a down-to-earth attitude and thick fingers. Lucie was born here, her parents have both passed away but she took to Aurora and her green thumb. She tells Sylvie the following: ‘I am powerful and I love my body still. When I immerse, I choose either gorilla or orangutan. I like big strong monkeys but ones with legs and arms because it’s close to my own body. So I never have problem to come back and readjust. Then the rest of the day when I don’t immerse I just go and care for the plants. Sunshine, rain or storm, I don’t care. I love to provide. Only problem is I need to take more food because effort energy intensive.’ Lucie works on the rooftop farms, which are more exposed to the elements but the soil gives more variety and flavour than hydroponics. Like her, there are at least ten other participants in the farmers practice.

Food is seen as nutrition here in the commune. It’s not supposed to be a feast for the eyes, nor a celebration of senses, nor does anyone care that it’s farm-to-plate. Instead, many of the leafy greens and the legumes are mixed with vitamins and nutrients bought in bulk, and then blended into olive-ochre drinking shakes.

It’s the same for the simworld stewards. They call themselves stewards in honour of Alexander Ke, the original inventor. ‘All we do is maintenance’ is their slogan, the heavy lifting has already been accomplished by the engineering wunderkind. He did all the calculations and the coding and the thinking, they are stewards of a perfect system. Still, to understand the code and the hardware, to keep the USB ports wired and the solar panels running and manage all the other technological necessities of the commune, the stewards need sharp minds. It’s a concession they make, as they immerse less intensely as a result. But none have the expectation of reciprocity.

L’immersion

At the end of my first month with the commune, and two weeks before having to say goodbye, I tell Sylvie that I’d like to experience the Monde Serene myself. In preparation, I begin by doing mindfulness exercises. I focus specifically on being mindful while walking and eating. I pay more attention to the world around me: the colours and textures of my foods, the slurps of water, the feel of concrete, wood, sand under my feet. This I do so I can help my mind observe more, and ‘think’ less.

After a few days, I also look to graduate to more passive activities, like listening, gazing, lounging. I do these again in a mindful manner, trying to listen to the noises around me, to look without judging or reasoning, so as to help my mind adjust to an environment with less reason and less patterns.

I also begin eating less, aiming for as undisturbed as possible experience during my immersion. I take longer breaks between meals to get my body used to being hungry. I also try to regulate my drinking in the same fashion.

I build up over a period of a week to the point where I can ask Sylvie to help me out. With one week to go before I am leaving the edifice, Sylvie arranges for a darkroom in the Palacio, which is just as plain and unremarkable as many of the others I’ve seen: covered windows, acoustic-insulated walls and door, the familiar bed, and, of course, the USB-E socket. She has left a guest key for me on the nightstand. The VR-aural mask, tactile gloves and boots are on the bed. I inspect the equipment, it’s used and it smells like old silicone. The outside texture on the gloves and boots looks worn out, but the inside is smooth and light, feels very comfortable. After I connect the guest key to the USB-E and pair it with the rest of the paraphernalia, I am ready to login.

Here we go.

The welcome screen pops up as soon as I draw the VR set over my eyes. It’s already centered on an animal in its natural environment. The graphics are indeed phenomenal, I cannot discern if I’m looking at real life or playing a sim. It feels like I can touch the creature in front of me. There are no control explanations and no HUD. Looking away scrolls through different animals. I take a note from Lucie’s book and go for the ‘easy’ one, a gorilla.

The camera then plows towards its head and I’m there, looking through its eyes. The first thing I notice is that the animal blinks, and that it sees less colours. The animal also breathes, I can see the view elevating slightly with each breath. The rest of its family is around me, gently making its way through the dense vegetation, with the silverback out front. The animal – me – stops as soon as I take the reins. The family looks at me and waits until I figure out the controls. I notice it’s not needed to actually move either my arms or my legs – the gloves are ultra-sensitive and feel the gentlest of movements of my fingers. I’d even guess they are electrically wired, as it gives the impression that just thinking of a move, actuates it in the simworld.

It takes a bit of time to adjust to how the gorilla moves. It needs to be on all fours, it topples over if I try to stand up too quickly. The family waits patiently, they sit down and pick through leaves for berries and whatnot. It’s marvellous the level of detail of the simulation, for if I pick up a twig myself, I can bring it as close as I want to my eyes without losing resolution, up until my eyes cannot focus anymore just like in real life. The twig has leaves and the leaves have different shades of green and vines and it becomes translucent if placed against the sun. Speaking of, the sun is terribly bright and hurts my eyes to look at it. There are ants on the leaf and if I pick them up they would squirm under my fingers. The gloves are tactile and give me the feeling back, in my fingertips. The boots are also tactile and give me an impression of the wet, moist greenery of the jungle floor.

I experience a feeling of vertigo and dizziness. It all looks just so real, it’s difficult for me to accord what I’m seeing, to my actual laying on a bed and not moving. I try to find the limits to the rendering module: I turn quickly, spin my head around, pick up leaves and rocks then quickly throw them away, just to see if I can break the realism. I cannot: no stuttering or freezing, no visual glitches, no lag. The sim stays perfect in its responsiveness.

I shift my attention to the world around me. The jungle feels claustrophobic. I somehow never expected this, but being in the ‘bush’ actually translates to ‘inside’ the bush. There are green leaves and twigs everywhere around me and it is impossible to tell which way is which. All looks the same to me. Trees everywhere, logs and dirt mounds with overgrown vines, myriad flowers and berries. The soundscape is impeccable: hundreds of different sounds for the rustling of wind through the trees, the noises of the gorilla family overlapping birdcalls. Looking up, I can barely see some of the birds, perched high up on branches.

Wobbling, I start following the silverback. I can see that it reacts to me if I get too close, he bears his teeth and growls at me in what I interpret as aggressiveness. He looks away when I stay back. The family comes in close, one member in particular, and I decide to take a look as close as possible. I touch their body, look at their fur and their lips, it is all perfectly designed. I admit never to have seen a gorilla up close, but comparing to the documentaries and zoos I’ve visited, this seems to be the real deal. It is astonishing.

The family moves out and I tag along. We walk for what seem like ages, trekking along unknown paths familiar to the silverback alone, until at one point we come across a river. We scramble across slippery rocks, scoop our hands to pull the cold fresh water to our faces. The light seems to dim so I gather that evening is upon us. I choose a tree that looks particularly tall – I cannot tell how far up it goes because my vision gets worse as I look in the distance – must be that gorillas have shorter range than us – but either way I want to climb up the tree and look at the sunset. The family waits for me as I figure out the controls to get a good grip on the bark and lift myself up. It takes forever, I keep losing my footing. I give up in the end – it’s too difficult to figure it out, and the others are already beginning to make their beds for the evening. They gather branches and weave makeshift sleeping arrangements. I start doing that too.

Before I know it, six hours have passed in the real world.

Judgement. Next steps.

At the end of six weeks of living among the curious community in the middle of Paris, I am now requested to present my readers with a conclusion to my experience and, with it, to also cast judgement. While I have found no evidence of illegal activity, not even immoral activity mind you, I will say this. The simspace asks for a complete abandonment of the human condition. These people yearn to not be human. In their similves, they don’t actively deny thought and logic, but rather, they disregard it, they let it whither and collapse. It’s simply rendered unnecessary by the simulation. In their realives, they use a bare minimum of their reason, just enough to keep their own bodies going until the next immersion. In doing so, they consume little, they waste little, and barely contribute to the economic life of Paris, France, or the world.

Think of your average working day. You’ve woken up early, stressed about the markets, eaten your breakfast, logged on, worked, had a summary lunch and kept working and context switching until evening. At one point your body asks for food, you log off, maybe cook some nice-looking dinner for you and the family, and then proceeded to worry again about the markets. At one point you plop on the couch, not because your body is exhausted, but because your mind is burned. You need to rinse the thoughts away and you do it with entertainment. It might be video games, or it might be a movie, or a podcast or sensory AI, or attention dumping, doom-scrolling or maybe a digital partner. Whatever it is, you’re aiming to forget about yourself and give your mind a break.

This is what l’immersion is. It’s that level of abandonment, and dialled up to 11.

Have these people found the road to happiness? They might, as long as one equates happiness with transcendence. In the same way a Buddhist monk freezes time in their meditation and abandons themselves to the present, in the same way do the residents abandon their human bodies in search of fulfilment through nothingness. As I stopped the simulation, took off the VR mask, gloves and boots, and rushed to the toilet for 6-hour relief, I could still see the overbearing foliage and hear the hushed, breathy sounds of my gorilla family. I can still hear them now, months later. I think about them sometimes. Computer generated animals as they were, yet honest and real.

Don’t worry reader, I am not going back, not going back ever. I have a family of my own over here in New York, with children who love me and grandchildren to be proud of. But such a unique, burgeoning culture needs to survive. This is why I am putting half my life savings in their trust fund. Joining hundreds of others who have done the same before me, some with eye-watering amounts, I am contributing to the creation of something new. I leave it in the hands of Antoine de l’Hivers-thé and the other capital shepherds, who have been managing the trust fund during this tumultuous market age. I cherish the thought that my own capital will provide security for these residents for as long as they need it.