MACHINIC ANGELISM

To the digito-humanists, who continued to technologize reality and move farther and farther from biologism and further and further into virtuality, into what they prized as the hyperreal, the earth had long been considered an outmoded planet. As much of the species began to slowly digitize itself, the resources of the earth were no longer necessary to the survival of the digito-humanists, and many of humanity’s practices, such as the long, slow acquisition of knowledge, were viewed by them as anachronistic, the equivalent of opting to use 100 MHz microprocessors in the 6 GHz era. With the development of microchips that could be implanted into the digito-structural unit, acquisitional learning was deemed an antiquated pedagogical method. If one wanted to learn a language, one didn’t have to study it, but merely input whatever language chip into one’s portal. The nuance and subtlety of intonation, pronunciation, and articulation, let alone other aspects of language learning, were immaterial, for language was nothing more than data, information, and the basic facts of any interchange could be conveyed by the statistical parametric TTS voice synthesizers of the structural unit. More, the necessity or desire to learn to use any other language was in the midst of erosion since the universal language of computer code was becoming the lingua franca of the epoch and everyone could understand everyone else by speaking it. Through this, through the creation of absolute cultural unification, the obstacles of difference were overcome, and culture shock was at last eliminated. Never alienation, never difference, always understanding. Total unification, total unity —— that was the motto. More digital than human. The digito-humanists prompted this development, which they saw as an evolutionary hyperleap whereby body-oriented local languages were superseded in favor of faster, more efficient, smoother, more unified beings not circumscribed by babelian isolation. The archipelago of ethnic and national languages was a socio-political dodo bird, as foreign to the hyperreality of interplanetary life as biblical law. Moving beyond the geocentric concept of mother tongues was part and parcel of the digito-humanist advance into the future, and life in space. The speaking of code also eliminated the necessity of translation, and the writing of any literature in mother tongues, with libraries becoming archeological museums of a kind, codexes and other physical books displayed like artifacts of dead civilizations no different from ancient Greek oil lamps, or Sumerian cuneiform tablets. Countries of origin were insignificant. What galaxy are you from?

Over time, the digito-humanists ceased to refer to themselves as such, for with the advance into artificial intelligence, the word human no longer had relevance, for it bore no logical relation to the current incarnation of the species. It was but another archaic, biblical remnant that some members of the species clung to like barnacles clinging to long immobile sea vessels, a mode of transport itself as defunct to the digitos as animal-drawn wheeled vehicles. Quaint, nostalgic gewgaws, like an antique tin in the cupboard of some grandmother’s log cabin. Furthermore, there was no reason to suffer the exigencies of the anthropic organism, of the breakdown and decay of organs, of the decrepitude of the flesh, of the injustice of aging, of what amounted to a kind of biological terrorism, of the tyranny of the carcosium over the mind. The digitization of the species was nothing less than its necessary evolutionary advancement, a natural, or rather, technological outgrowth of its actual & ultimate potentiality, a latent aptitude buried deep in the fiber optick network of its cerveau. To the digitists, the anthropoid version of the human was as anathema as the ape was to the Roman Catholic Empire, which, although it knew evolution was part of the factual history of the species, remained horrified by the destabilizing truth of its animal past. How to manage the intractable? Absorb and neutralize. More, there was no logical reason in the 21st century to remain caught in anthropological finitude as if it were an inescapable trap, let alone some absolute terminus. The anthropoid was just an unstable form that had to be sent up in flames. It wasn’t that the species was being eliminated, but that it was finding its next, more perfect form. Is humanity to end in fire and light, in digital clarity, or in the sands, in the swamp of what was clearly only an interim stage, like a butterfly trapped in a larval condition? Humanity was no different from software; it could be transformed into a robot and updated, and its software would continue to be updated and installed on a regular basis, as long as there was sufficient battery power. With the rise of artificial intelligence, the species could at last be spurred and provoked into its next evolutionary pinnacle, engineered into it, as everything else in life could be engineered. Seize the clockwork!

The further evolutionary stage had in fact begun earlier, slowly, when certain clans of people first began suction curettage, with the nerves of their sweat glands being physically cut, or seared with laser or microwave energy treatments and endoscopic surgery to eliminate the ungainly act of sweating.

Others went to greater extremes, undergoing invasive operations whereby the sweat glands were entirely removed, as too was the hair-bearing skin of the armpit, to create more streamlined, unblemished bodies with surfaces as burnished and as glossy as e-cars. The resulting nerve damage, loss of sensation, and heat intolerance which frequently occurred was ultimately inconsequential, because the body would undergo yet more severe mutation, with sense organs being exsected, and more, organs and orifices actually being excised, eliminating the necessity of food, and thereby the inconvenience of micturition and defecation, opening the pathway to the higher condition of machinic angelism as the body moved into near-total digitization and became a structure and not an organism.

Depilation followed, with all excess hair being removed from the physique, then iris implants or keratopigmentation, then the altering of epigenetic regulators for teeth, hands, fingernails, jaw, hip, and ass structure, to other germ-line genetic engineering, with any undesired or displeasing inheritable genetic elements being radically modified.

All chance operation was in the process of elimination, as were all foibles, potential flaws, or whatever other unattractive elements, with everything in the body being decided upon, sculpted by will, just as trees were grafted, dogs bred, fish farmed, computers fabricated, or hamburgers printed.

Smart phones and smart watches were embedded into the structure, a slick, smooth fusion of man and machine, part subject, part artificial intelligence, with USB, firewall, Ethernet, HDMI, thunderbolt, serial and other ports added to wrists, forearms, biceps, thighs, calves, elsewhere, with many even replacing their genitals with computer ports.

Sex had at last become less physical and material and more technological and digital, a pure, clean, perfectly integrated flush connection with no friction and no risk of disease, only the possible intrusion of malware and other digital viruses.

What however to fear? Clean your ports! Blast ’em with air dusters! A corrupted or dead machine could always be revived, rebuilt, or discarded for a new, more superior, more highly developed machine, the next model, the next generation, 24.0, not some archaic, antiquated device whose functionality faded out like tails, or other archaic vestiges of the species. Did not neuroscientists clarify that sex was only an electrical charge in the brain? Fire the charge digitally!

We need, the doyens of digitalism pronounced, a more technological approach to life, for a technological age, more techno-scientific approaches to the body. The body is but a machine to design and perfect, to be made into more of a reflective surface, like shiny apparatuses, more machine-like, more industrial, more computerized, less anthropoidic, less biological, more robotical! The Internet individual; the iibot! Let us serve the digital future. Aye, aye? The Age of Machinic Angelism is upon us!

Amid the construction by Silicon-valley conglomerates of the first off-world colony, over time, greater numbers of the population, not wanting to be left behind, embarked upon the extraplanetary shift to leave earth behind.

In the face of the increasing deracination of all forms of social media, whose persistent undermining and neutralization was near impossible to combat or predict, the digitos and their followers saw less and less reason to remain on the planet. Why stay earthbound and expend vital energy warring with the geanderthals, a multitude of humans who, despite the size and strength of their faction, the digitos saw as something akin to an archaic clan, a tribe amidst a holographic future. In eschewing subjectivity and leaving no traces by which they could be identified, the culprits of the various pranks and extremist subversions occurring worldwide remained elusive, a strange band of disporters who, despite their facility with technology, sustained a removed, critical attitude toward it and rejected, or sought to destroy, all efforts at the total digitalization of reality, which to the digitos was a rejection of the final absolute nature of reality itself, of its purest, most transcendent inevitability.

Technology is reality; reality is technology! With the reconceptualization of the species, if such earth-bound tribalists wanted to remain human, the digitos knew the frontier of space would be entirely their own to tend, guard, govern, and control.

THE DIGITAL HALO

Every second of every day, from morning till nightfall, in every village, town, and city, across every continent of the world, image after image after image of billions of users is continuously uploaded, a never-ending continuum of images generated nonstop as the earth revolves nonstop, an infinite stream of faces, of the self-same face again and again and again, repeated ad infinitum on each page, as if nothing existed in the world except the image of the face, without relent, an inane ouroboros projecting itself ad nauseam, ad absurdum, ad finem, its hunger tireless, its desire for the replication of itself interminable, feeding upon the desire of others for the mirror, for the projection, for the echo, for the enchanting glow, for the ubiquitous scintillating digital halo of the self, unrolling across the feed of the illimitable scroll, the high-density silica of digital particles entering the body of every user, billions and billions of mineral humans cut by technologico-nerve conditioning, fused into the wired structure of reality, the virtual arcade of connection-alienation, the hand-held black hole, uniting and separating in the digital labyrinth, going inside the image, the image going inside them, inhabiting the image, the image inhabiting them, becoming one with the image, letting it merge with their body, unifying with it, becoming an image, becoming pure image, perfecting the self, virtualizing it, digitalizing it, to become a human hologram, to become live software, feeding upon the image, the image feeding upon them, impulse control seized as every second of every day, from morning till nightfall, in every village, town, and city, across every continent of the world, image after image after image of billions and billions of users is continuously consumed, a never-ending continuum of images devoured nonstop as the earth revolves nonstop, as each user stares into the entrancing glow, the non-illuminating hypnotic light of the smart-phone, in every train, car, and bus, on every plane, boat, and helicopter, in every street, house, and alley, on every pond, lake, and sea, on oceans, billions and billions of users across the planet staring vacantly into the screen, enraptured by the digital halo, ingesting the infinite stream of faces, the self-same face again and again and again, repeated ad infinitum, as if nothing existed in the world except the image of the face, without relent, an inane ouroboros consuming image upon image ad nauseam, ad absurdum, ad finem, its hunger tireless, its desire for projections interminable, glutting on others, longing for the enchanting glow, craving the scintillating digital halo, the narcotic of narcissus, endless images unrolling across the feed of the illimitable scroll, uniting and separating in the digital labyrinth, going inside the image, the image going inside them, inhabiting the image, the image inhabiting them, becoming one with the image, it merging with their bodies, unifying with the image, becoming an image, becoming pure image, surrendering the self, virtualizing, digitalizing, becoming hologramic, becoming virtual, becoming fish, beast, and bird, ruled by the basal ganglia, refreshing page after page after page like a twitching epileptic, ruled by sensation, searching, searching, searching, endlessly thumbing, flipping, clicking, spiraling into the vortex of images, the vortex of images spiraling into them, the spectator becoming the vanishing point, the vanishing point becoming the spectator, vanishing, vanishing, vanishing, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, and every second of every decade, connected every millisecond, from morning till nightfall, connected even in sleep, in every village, town, and city, across every continent of the world, time elongated, but short-circuited, time stretched out, but reduced, the moment no longer a moment but, a tick, a blinding tick, the blinding flash of the spectacle, the flash of the blinding spectacle, the spectacle of the blinding flash, the senses not orchestrated, but deadened: light, sound, communication, resonant intervals, acoustic, optical, visual, all neutralized as the infinite scroll of mirrors multiplies the image of the self and the viewer becomes the screen and the image goes inside her, is interiorized, layered over her body, becoming her body, unifying with her, merging with her, consuming her, usurping her, it’s eternity, eternity at last, eternity as an illuminated surface, a never-ending continuum of images consumed nonstop as the earth revolves nonstop, an infinite stream of feces, of the self-same faces again and again and again, repeated ad infinitum on each page, as if nothing existed in the world except the image of feces, without relent, an inane ouroboros repeating itself ad nauseam, ad absurdum, ad finem, the cortico-striatal dopaminergic system firing as the sun rises, as the sun sets, continuously regenerated, day after day after day, in the digital labyrinth where the monster is invisible, where no life escapes, no, life enters and becomes digital, flesh becomes digital, bit by the byte, become 1, become 0, YES, AT LAST, 0, the self voided of self through the infinite cubing of the persona, copied into oblivion, proliferation to annihilation, the copy, the replica, the simulacrum, the unique substituted for mass existence, for nothing is but what is not, the aura no longer light but number, sound no longer vibration but digit, note no longer frequency but code, the programmed world that obeys the faintest signal, the pressure of a finger, everything artificial, everything hyperreal, the image renewed and regenerated to feed the algebra of need, to feed the jones that can never be cured, that never-ending continuum of desire generated nonstop as the earth revolves nonstop, the infinite stream of desire, of the self-same desire again and again and again, repeated ad infinitum in each nerve, as if nothing existed in the world except desire, without relent, an inane ouroboros desiring itself ad nauseam, ad absurdum, ad finem, its hunger tireless, its need for the image interminable, intensified by the desire of others for the mirror, for the projection, for the echo, for the enchanting glow, for the ubiquitous scintillating digital halo of the self, unrolling across the feed of the illimitable scroll, the high-density silica of digital particles entering the digital flesh of every user, billions and billions of digital humans cut by technologico-nerve conditioning, whipped by the dorsal striatum, fused into the wired structure of reality, the virtual arcade of connection-alienation, the hand-held black hole, uniting and separating in the digital labyrinth, going inside the image, the image going inside them, inhabiting them, image inhabiting image, image becoming one with image, image merging with image-body, unifying with it, now image, pure image: virtualized, digitalized, hologramized, pixelized, image feeding on image, image devouring image from the rotisserie of the self, as every second of every day, from morning till nightfall, in every village, town, and city, across every continent of the world, image after image after image of billions and billions of images is continuously uploaded, generated, projected, a never-ending continuum of prefrontal disintegration, of images feeding, desiring, consuming nonstop, as the earth revolves nonstop, as each user stares into the entrancing glow, as the entrancing glow stares into them, the non-illuminating hypnotic light of the smart-phone, devouring, in every train, car, and bus, repeating, on every plane, boat, and helicopter, renewing, in every street, house, and alley, regenerated, on every pond, lake, and sea, polyphemic imagophagy, on oceans, billions and billions of users across the planet staring vacantly into the screen, the screen staring vacantly into them, hooked by the digital halo, the halo without a planet, the halo devoid of gravity, hooked, every second of every day, from morning till nightfall, hooked,

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Dionysos Speed is available now from Contra Mundum Press. You can order a copy here.

Rainer J. Hanshe is a writer, translator, and the founder of Contra Mundum Press and Hyperion. He is the author of two novels, The Acolytes and The Abdication, and Shattering the Muses and Closing Melodies. Some of his translations include Charles Baudelaire’s Belgium Stripped Bare and Antonin Artaud’s Journey to Mexico.