DEMONOLOGY
557
the planet." The Senders represent a nightmare of total, meaningless
manipulation by mysterious forces from without.
The Divisionists, on the other hand, are a force making for
mass homogeneity. They multiply in their own image, by making
"replicas" of themselves, and of course "every replica but your own
is eventually an 'Undesirable.' " A fairly straightforward satire on the
forces of conformity in society (very similar to the theme of that
arresting science fiction film,
The Body Snatchers).
The nightmare
end of this process is that eventually there will simply be "one person
in the world with millions of separate bodies." Again, it is a threat to
all independent, differentiated forms of life. Part of the great drive
toward the "one all-purpose blob." In opposition to these formidable
forces there is only one party-The Factualists, who are against
all
the
rest. They deplore the Divisionists because replicas are a "menace to
life on this planet." More passionately they are against the Senders,
because of their abuse of telepathy. "We oppose, as we oppose atomic
war, the use of such knowledge to control, coerce, debase, exploit or
annihilate the individuality of another living creature." They see
the Sender as a sort of voracious void. "The Sender will be defined
by negatives. A low pressure area, a sucking emptiness." Sending is
"evil" irrespective of what is sent, since it annihilates spontaneous
life and reaction. "The Sender is not a human individual. ...
It
is the
Human Virus (all viruses are deteriorated cells leading a parasitic
existence ... every species has a Master Virus: Deteriorated Image
of that species). The broken image of Man moves in minute by
minute and cell by cell.... Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals,
bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of the Human Virus.
The Human
Virus can now be isolated and treated."
The forces of evil, then, work through Liquefactionists, Division–
ists and above all Senders. And they are opposed by the Factualists.
Presumably this party resists the other forces by undertaking a dis–
passionate scientific analysis of what is going on in the universe.
("It was only the intervention of the Factualists that prevented the
Senders from putting Einstein in an institution and destroying his
theory.") This would tie in with Burroughs' own interest in science,
and the cool way in which he now assesses and describes his experi–
ences with all types of drugs. The paper he wrote for
The British
Journal of Addiction
(see the appendix to
Naked Lunch)
is the deposi-
