Posthuman Blues

Exterminate all rational thought

A friend produced the following "cut-up" (a text-collage technique pioneered by William S. Burroughs) based off a recent excerpt from my forthcoming nonfiction book and part of a science fiction story published by "Alternate Realities." There are some great juxtapositions here and there...

to the same observatory. the sand with its glowing backwash. This time, there was no mistaking the It looked something like an enormous big-headed visage of a classic Gray, metal brain embedded in the center extending a hand to clutch a sphere of a gray, convex disc. Bulbous or disc inscribed with ASCII computer code. objects lined the central structure like The message, readily translated by armchair cereologists parasitic growths, each glowing a different convinced they were dealing either with an color. What I initially mistook for ambitious hoax or irrefutable proof of alien landing gear were actually bright, metallic intelligence, was cryptically intriguing. It tentacles that flexed and curled in reads: "Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts unknown gesticulations, sometimes grazing the sand & their BROKEN PROMISES. Much PAIN but or dipping (cautiously, it seemed) into still time. EELRIJUE. There is GOOD out the tainted sea. We joined each there. We OPpose DECEPTION. COnduit CLOSING [bell other on the beach just as sound]" the strange craft rotated and glided casually away from us, tentacles bunched at its sides like trained snakes. Then, suddenly, there were more of them: hundreds, silhouetted against the bleary ellipse that was the sun. They made no sound, but the that while humans used radio telescopes to We had known what was coming communicate with possible extraterrestrials, the aliens choose since the Halo disaster. Our remaining to communicate via grain-based telegrams. While this time together was like one of didn't indict actual aliens as the messengers, the vertiginous waves that hammered the it did suggest a long-term hoax. Concentrating shore at night, unseen but for on the 2001 Chilbolton face, investigators applied the odd, skittering crabs. 3. When Gaussian blur filters to reveal a startling the machines began descending, I was human likeness. Although very low-resolution, the Chilbolton at first convinced someone had survived face was an actual photograph, achieved by the orbital cataclysm. The machines didn't flattening grain stalks to produce an effect look like anything I remembered, but identical to half-tone printing. Hoax or then again it had been a "real," the Chilbolton images constitute two of long time; our isolation dilated the the most technically impressive crop formations since flow of days, confusing circadian rhythm, the phenomenon received wide pubic exposure melting away the imaginary partitions that in the early 1990s. But they were delineate night and day. The first exceeded only a year later, when another machine descended late one morning, stirring "cereoglyph" appeared next natural color, but glyph-like designs with boards and wire, inserted a harsh, not-quite-right blue like something their initials as part of their designs. out of a bottle. That night, Online analysis of the crop formations as we cooked mollusks from the was fast and furious. Graphic designer Chris vantage of the shallow, earthen seawall, Joseph produced the first digitally accurate "bit-by-bit" the ocean actually glowed, rivaling the version of the Arecibo message, clearly demonstrating Halo's ubiquitous yellow. When we began how the Chilbolton image reproduced the format vomiting, the realization of what was originally transmitted in 1978. Attempts to decipher happening to us came like the the message's alleged origin resulted in one slap of cold water, leaving us particularly strange insight: where humans had placed numb and alienated from one another. a schematic of the radio dish at Retreating into private worlds, we sat Arecibo, the agency responsible for the apparent with our knees clutched to our "reply" had inserted a simplified version of chests for hours on end, eyes an intricate crop formation that had appeared tearing from the smoky, chemical haze a year earlier in the same that drifted across the shore. We area. The implication seemed to be had never explicitly spoken of it. if something actively perishing could be The Chilbolton face, though fundamentally human-like, said to have urgency -- and was also likened to a Gray alien once more we were alone and by some observers due to the deep, naked, basking in an embrace that unfathomable black shadow beneath the brow. lasted until the dull yellow of It crossed few minds that the morning. 2. We knew the ocean crop face was not intended to represent was poisoned, of course. Even after either the quintessential alien face or the the smog had descended it was Face on Mars. Perhaps it was hard not to notice the lurid simply a face -- maybe even a scabs that flecked the water's surface. clever dot-matrix reproduction of its creator, assuming Once, while fishing, I had come the Chilbolton formations were human-made. It wouldn't across the sunken wreck of a have been the first time crop artists charred pod of some sort, still have inserted a subtle signature into flashing brief, animated logos for forgotten their handiwork; the infamous hoaxing team consisting Halo industries. The water around the of "Doug and Dave," who demonstrated to downed pod was noticeably blue -- the media how they could create extensive not the ocean's minimalist image of the Halo's slow disintegration, our muscles one of the presumed extraterrestrials. Not surprisingly, tightening as fragments succumbed to gravity it featured a short body (in and plummeted to the horizon with comparison to the crude human image transmitted a faint dopplered roar that reached in 1978), an oversized head and conspicuously us only many seconds afterwards. Once large eyes. In other words, a we had seen a Halo fragment Gray. Even while crop circle researchers (or "cerealogists") explode in mid-air; we instantly curled debated the origin of the two into ridiculous fetal postures as we strange formations -- both of which were waited out the explosion. Thunder issued most unlike the characteristic circles and fractal from the ocean as chunks of designs that have baffled cerealogists -- the debris punched the surface, blasting out Cydonia community was attempting to integrate the new clouds of acrid steam that eclipsed formations into a Martian context. Heavy the Halo like a heavy gauze shadow over the eyes of the stretched tight over the night sky. crop-face recalled Viking frame 35A72, leading to As the steam faded, the Halo the assumption that the face in the reappeared with seeming renewed urgency -- crops depicted the Face on Mars. Another example of cross-germinating memes appeared The world had emptied and, for in a field in England in 2001 all intents and purposes, we now across from the Chilbolton Observatory. Consisting had it to ourselves. At night of an elaborate dot-matrix face and binary we'd make love while the Halo schematic, the crop formations were instantly regarded flowed silently overhead, burning yellow-white and by some as evidence of alien intervention. throwing thin shadows across our sand-encrusted Proponents argued that the artistically rendered bodies. The tide would come crashing face looked something like the Face in after the day's yellow-brown had on Mars. But the schematic design, shrunken to a knot on the while not as visually enchanting, captured most horizon, chilling us, hissing and churning of the attention. Whoever made it, between entwined limbs. Tiny crab-like creatures it was clearly modeled on a emerged from the hard-packed sand, eyestalks SETI signal transmitted from Arecibo, Puerto Rico glinting, and waded out onto the in 1978. Encoded in the rectangular glyph chilly beach, avoiding us. We would are tantalizing references to alien biochemistry, a lie on our backs, the sand diagram of the aliens' native solar system, molded to our bodies, and watch