The DIVERGENCE 10: NUCLEAR MISHAP project takes a real event – the dropping of nuclear warheads from a B-52 bomber on US soil in January 1961, at the height of the Cold War – as its starting point to imagine the consequences of this accident in 2000 and 2039. The scope of the text, which lies somewhere between real history and alternate history, is to denounce nuclear technocracy, the cult of secrecy, and the sacrifice of civilian victims. The poetic dimension lies in the means chosen: a simulation of the phenomenon of nuclear fission, according to the rules of physics, applied to a work of literary fiction.
The video clip shows the 10th experiment (the successful one) involving the collision of two text nuclei, or fission products, which releases energy (the energy that binds the designer of this device to readers, the web, electronic artifacts, etc.) and two to three letter neutrons (nuclear physics establishes the number of neutrons released at 2.47, one in three of which may be lost).
These 2 to 3 letter neutrons will in turn be absorbed when they collide in 84% of cases with the text nuclei already present. A model (lasting 18.97 seconds) created using the Obsidian application allows us to visualize the process, which is also a metaphor for the fragmentation of fiction (i.e., its fission). We see the sequence of text nuclei leading up to the final text, which we imagine, in turn, being bombarded and destined to disappear (to be forgotten). The soundtrack of ‘divergence 10’ is the sound of a Geiger-Müller counter reacting to an increasingly strong radioactive source, until the counter reaches saturation. The image simulates the bombardment of ionizing particles.
The adoption of a deterministic focus, made possible by the computer interface, thus places the engineering of this fiction, literally, nowhere: in the microscopic in silico of computer circuits, in the invisible flow of information rushing through intercontinental web cables, in the in vivo brain of its designer and readership, and in the infinitely large scale of the incident recounted, since this ‘nuclear mishap,’ this ‘nuclear incident,’ is very real – only the follow-up is fictional, albeit plausible.
The project is part of the subthemes Writing After – Catastrophe, Memory, and the Archive of Loss, Disrupted Realities – Poetry and the Politics of Truth.
Author
Bruno Lecat
Bruno Lecat, born in France in 1966, is an author, visual artist, and translator. He explores signs in detail, paying close attention to their materiality. In 2022, he published Archéologies ferroviaires (Railway archaeology) (Éditions Jou), a geopoetic journey that aims to restore to readers what capitalism has stolen from them. The same year saw the publication of an artist's book, Matière noire (Dark Matter) (Éditions Ubik Art), an exploration of black and white through clear lines and tachism. In 2024, he devoted an essay to the poet Christophe Macquet, Approches de Dâh, Dans la nuit khmère (Approaches to Dâh, In the Khmer Night) (Éditions Moresa), and in 2025 he published Le sang de Méduse (The Blood of Medusa) (Éditions du Canoë), a translation of the Mexican writer José Emilio Pacheco, as well as Varionymes (Varionyms) (Éditions Moresa), fragments on accidents involving proper names. The exhibition Sous les seuils (Below the thresholds), in November 2025 near Montpellier, showcases his work. Bruno Lecat publishes regularly on his website L’œil a faim (The eye is hungry).
