Were writers and artists somehow reaching from beyond the grave to complete their work?

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“Latin? Why don’t we just say it in plain English’”. “Chris explains, we checked it out with six different focus groups. 80% thought the Latin phrase was intriguing, catchy, and more likely to attract attention than the other fifty phrases they were asked to evaluate. They also thought Latin sounded more important, more official. I suppose that comes from all the Latin terms they’ve heard from Law, Science, the Arts, etc. I guess Aeternus Emendatus sounds more serious than Everlasting Updates.

“Alright”, concedes Matt, “Maybe they’re right. Most people won’t be reading the word anyway. They’ll recognize it the same way they do corporate logos, icons, and phrases like, De Facto, or Carpe Diem.

They called a Presser to announce, The Aeternus Emendatus Commission. The Press was interested in this mysterious new commission, but gagged on the name. They quicky started calling it the Aeter Datus Commission. The name stuck. The most reliable focus group is always the public.

With the name settled, they moved on to organizational planning.

Christopher Morgan, and Matthew Autry Benedict, had been hand-picked for their roles by the head of the Presidential Commission - Jerome Pierson. Jerome (or Jerry, as he was better known to the President) was a genius at getting things done. Jerry Pierson had expanded a small trucking company in 1956, into the behemoth Pierson Enterprises. Mr. Pierson was no digital expert, but he was really good at focusing on problems, and getting them solved.

Jerome was some thirty years the senior of both Chris and Matt. Both had worked for Jerry before in different companies of Pierson Enterprises. This group of three had been tasked to unravel this current mystery that was befuddling digital experts, everywhere – unauthorized, strange updates, that seemed to be proliferating unendingly.

IT specialists, who generally prefer precise terms, had been referring to the problem as, “those damned updates”.

From now on these digital anomalies would be studied as a unified phenomenon, under one name – Aeter Datus. The Commission was authorized to spend as much as they thought was needed. No budget had yet been set. Whatever their initial probe revealed would determine future funding.

Step one would be selecting a panel of maverick digital hackers.

It takes a crook to catch a crook.

Chris and Matt started calling friends, who had friends, who knew friends who knew Hackers the Law would like to know, too. All those contracted insisted on iron-clad immunity and anonymity. They got it. The Commission filled them in on what they knew – so far, about the ever-expanding Aeter Datus events.

Dr. Phil Sexton, of Illinois University, was the first to report the problem.

Dr. Sexton was an expert on the work of Franz Kafka. He was checking the University’s new digital offering: The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka. When he reached the end of Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor, one of many stories Kafka hadn’t completed, (though Kafka’s friend, Max Brod, had the uncompleted stories published, anyway). Dr. Sexton discovered to his wondering surprise that the University’s digital copy of Blumfeld, an Elderly Batchelor had somehow been recently completed, and nicely done as well. Perplexed, He called his colleague, Jason Patrick in Australia. The same thing had happened in Australia.

What the hell was going on?

England’s Cambridge University discovered their digital version of The History of the Peloponnesian Wars had somehow acquired an additional fifty pages that smoothly brought the work to satisfying conclusion. The sudden death of Thucydides mid-sentence had unhappily ended the original work.

All over the world – apparently - deceased authors were picking up where they left off.

“Nonsense!”, says Matt, “Boogie-Woogie is no explanation at all”. Jerry Pierson agrees, asking, “What have the hackers uncovered“? “Nothing, yet”, says, Chris. “Damn”, grouches Pierson, “We’ve got to expand our investigative net – any ideas”?

Chris recalls some chit-chat, possibly unreliable, about a lady in the mid-west that seems to have an uncanny ability to coax usefulness out of intractable digital programs. Some call her a digital whisperer. All three agree that every possibility should be explored.

Christina Carroll is brought in.

She modestly tells them she might not be able to do anything about a problem that even the best of hackers couldn’t solve. She agrees to try. By the end of the day she has successfully deleted the Aeter Datus inclusion to Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor.

The exciting news is spread worldwide by an enthusiastic Press.

Next morning the Aeter Datus is right back where it was twenty-four hours before.

Despite the disappointment, at least something was accomplished, because Christina also discovers original digital versions can be retained if titles are labeled: Original Version. Christina deletes the offensive Aeter Datus many times over, with the same result – except that the cycle is getting faster and faster. In a matter of days, the renewal becomes instantaneous.

Public speculation runs wild.

Are Dylan’s “Ghosts of electricity” howling inside these Aeter Datus events? Fantastic theories abound. Necromancers, UFO-ologists and theologians all have their own opinions. The most colorful theorists are asked to explain their ideas in three-minute bites on nightly news shows.

The more plausible of them are asked to explain in detail, with a presentation before the Aeter Datus Commission. None of the ideas prove productive. The initial confidence that enough time & money can solve anything is dissipating day by day.

Six months later, Jerome Pierson – disappointed, and disgusted with this first failure in his long career – resigns his commission.

The Commission is put on hiatus. By the end of the year it’s terminated. Though the Commission is out of business, Aeter Datus events continue – with an additional twist – artwork.

Emile D’ Rochebrune, Curator at the Louvre has reported changes from the original in digital copies of several paintings by Rubins, Caravaggio, and Delacroix. he also notes there may be more; their inventory is ongoing. Soon after, The Prado in Madrid reports alterations to their digital reproduction of La Maja desnuda plus another unspecified Goya, along with Velazquez’s Portrait of the Infante Don Carlos. Other Curators around the world declare the same thing happening in their Museums as well. Academics convene international conferences. What does it mean? What’s to be done? Some sort of qualified institutional stance needs to be determined – soon !

The Public yawns.

Academic alarm slowly turns from outrage at Aeter Datus vandalism to increasing interest in what the vandal/vandal’s renovations may have added to the original works. After all, every original was intact. Nothing written or painted had disappeared. Nothing was lost.

Was something gained?

The question was engaged by a swelling group of scholars who specialized in analysis of Aeter Datus content. This stuff was pretty well done. If done by Hackers, they must be really proficient at the Arts as well as hacking. Careful examination revealed nothing beyond what the deceased originators might have been expected to do had they lived longer.

Although questions of whom and how, continued, Scholars were now more interested in how these Aeter Datus additions might extend the Canon.

Two such scholars were Christopher Morgan and Matthew Autry Benedict.

The collapse of the Aeter Datus Commission had not dimmed their interest in the Aeter Datus phenomenon. They now joined the discussion of value, instead of cause, or criminality. Some were surprised by their switch of focus. Those who knew both men well were not.

Although both had made admirable careers in business, their Ph.D.’s and real passions, were in the Liberal Arts. Both were happy to be back in the business of intellectual studies.

Both contributed much to the effort.

At one point in the midst of academic assessments of value, they serendipitously recalled two anecdotes that went further toward explaining causality than toward parsing value. Chris remembered a story about a man being arrested for vandalism at the Louvre. It seems he had been caught defacing Picasso’s Femme dans un fauteul. After being hauled away by the Gendarmerie, the man turned out to be Picasso.

Upon hearing this, Matt recalled a famous remark of W. H. Auden: “A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned”.

Might what be true of poets be also be true of writers and painters, generally?

Were writers and artists somehow reaching from beyond the grave to complete their work? It was a tantalizing question. Answers ranged from interesting and bizarre, all the way to theologically challenging. No answer was accepted by everyone, but very many were intrigued by the question.

Wouldn’t we all like a do-over for one thing or another? Was the mid-life role conversion of Chris and Matt another kind of Aeter Datus event?

No matter cause – value was now accepted. The study of Aeter Datus work is nowadays part of the canon in academia, everywhere.

Museums have taken to hanging copies of the altered digital versions next to the originals, with learned placards of explication placed between them.

All new printings of the affected original writings include the Aeter Datus alterations, along with exegesis for both. Ph.D.’s are awarded to scholars of Aeter Datus.

Hollywood is producing a film about the Aeter Datus phenomenon with the subtitle: Second Thoughts from Beyond.

It’s a brave new world for the Humanities.

Perhaps a better world.

By K. L. Shipley

Website: https://www.eclecticessays.com