by James C. Clar
In his 1940 story, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Jorge Luis Borges envisions one of the strangest invasions in all of literature. No armies march across its pages. Nor are there exploding munitions or monstrous alien creatures harvesting humankind as food. Instead, the invading force is one volume in an obscure encyclopedia series. Borges’ tale quietly asserts that ideas themselves can function like viruses: they worm their way into human consciousness, replicate through language and belief and, gradually, overwrite the code that informs reality itself. Decades before malware, or notions like “memetic contagion” proposed by Richard Dawkins and others, Borges foresaw the terrifying possibility that a sufficiently seductive system of information could, in effect, usurp the world it ostensibly claims merely to describe.
To begin with, let us recall that viruses operate by hijacking the machinery of living cells. Unable to reproduce by themselves, they inject their genetic material into a host which, against its will, as it were, replicates the invading virus. The original functions of the host are bypassed. The virus rewrites the cell’s instructions to serve its own agenda; one that includes further replication and, often, complete dominance.
Computer viruses are so-named because, by way of analogy, they work in precisely the same fashion. Alien (malicious) code infiltrates a system and embeds itself within existing structures and programs. Left undetected or unchecked, the viral code takes control by replacing legitimate operations with whatever its own programmed logic (or agenda) happens to be. Borges’ story illustrates these exact biological and technological processes narratively and metaphysically. In Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, an elusive – and entirely fictitious – encyclopedia article “infects” civilization until reality itself begins operating according to the fictional logic and content of that entry.
The story begins unremarkably. Borges and a friend stumble upon an article devoted to a place called Uqbar in Volume XLVI of the Anglo-American Cyclopedia. The article strikes them both as authentic, yet no other reference sources subsequently consulted acknowledge the region’s existence. Nor in fact do other copies of Volume XLVI appear to contain the entry on Uqbar.
Here we have the initial point of viral contagion; the intrusion of one minor textual anomaly into an otherwise stable informational system. The intrusion is noteworthy also because of where it occurs, in an encyclopedia. Such texts are generally trusted to describe reality accurately. As we shall see, in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, that process is reversed or usurped. The text does not reflect reality – reality begins to reflect the text.
Indeed, Borges soon discovers that Uqbar was only a vector for the far more elaborate and pernicious fictional world called Tlön. Gradually, entire volumes appear which describe in minute detail Tlön’s mathematics, language, literature and philosophy. The amount of invented material produced gives the fictional world incredible persuasive power and authority. Borges tells us that “contact with Tlön and the ways of Tlön have disintegrated this world.” Note that the extent of the invasion is belied by the innocuous manner of its progression. The infection is not spread by violence but rather through continued intellectual exposure. History has already fallen under the spell of Tlön’s logic. Biology and mathematics are next. Eventually, the author predicts, “English, French and mere Spanish will disappear from this planet.”
The philosophy and metaphysics of Tlön are so powerfully viral because they deny stable material existence. The people of Tlön’s southern hemisphere, Borges reports, “are congenitally idealist.” For them, matter is wholly subordinated to language, perception and thought. Such ideas work their way into Earth’s culture because they are at once elegant and coherent. They offer an attractive alternative to the often-messy ambiguities of material reality. Human beings slowly become accustomed to Tlön’s logic. Over time, the structures of ordinary reality begin to dissolve. We are in fact told that those structures “hankered to give ground.” Humankind desired infection, that is to say, because the culture of Tlön was so aesthetically appealing.
This process is best illustrated in the story’s discussion of hronir, objects created either through duplication or expectation. On Tlön, lost objects can reappear; “produced by suggestion … [or] … brought into being by hope.” In a world where metaphysics is “considered a branch of fantastic literature,” the boundary between imagination and reality collapses entirely. For Borges, this is nothing less than epistemological contagion. Once enough people accept Tlön’s premises, the world itself begins functioning according to those premises. Fiction ceases to be fiction; it becomes, in essence, reality.
In many ways, the climax of the story occurs when artifacts from Tlön begin appearing physically on earth. At one point, Borges describes discovering “small and extremely heavy cones, made of a metal which does not exist in this world.” We are eventually told that they are “images of divinity in certain religions in Tlön.” Such manifestations are the equivalent of viral code executing successfully within the host system. The overwrite has begun. The imaginary world of Tlön has breached the barrier separating text (fiction) from material reality. The machinery or “program” of human culture now rapidly succumbs to invasion. Schools begin teaching the languages and philosophies of Tlön. Scholars devote their lives to elucidating every facet of the imaginary planet. In perhaps the most chilling sentence in the entire story, Borges simply states, “the world will be Tlön.”
Bringing us back around to my original thesis, this transformation mirrors not only biological infection but infestation by malicious computer code as well. A computer virus ‘succeeds’ when the host system accepts the false (alien) programming as legitimate. In Borges’ story, Tlön spreads because its internal consistency and beauty are more compelling than reality’s multitudinous contradictions. A single encyclopedia entry, in other words, functions like executable code embedded within human civilization. Once activated by reading, reflection, repetition and interpretation – like clicking that one link in an apparently innocent email – it restructures the operating system of human thought and culture.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius foreshadows a world in which representations become more powerful than the realities they purportedly represent. The Anglo-American Cyclopediadoes not merely describe a fictional world, it generates it through recursive acts of dissemination and belief. Borges’ anticipation of modern anxieties about information systems, AI and computer manipulation here is nothing short of remarkable. Today, digital algorithms shape and reshape political realities to suit the ends of those creating them. Conspiracy theories and computer-generated scams proliferate online and human perception is mediated – and altered – by virtual environments and simulations.
The final scene of the story is in this context deeply affecting. While the world around him is being transformed, Borges sits patiently translating Sir Thomas Browne’s “Urn Burial” into Spanish. He knows it will never see publication. His effort thus represents both resistance and resignation. The virus has irrevocably overwritten the system. The world is now operating according to the logic of foreign code. Borges’ dire prediction has come true. The world has now become Tlön, indeed!
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Bio:
James C. Clar is a teacher and writer who divides his time between Upstate New York and Honolulu, Hawaii. His short fiction, book reviews, author interviews and articles have appeared in print as well as online (incl. previously in Sci Phi Journal).
