Posthuman Blues

Fireworks wriggling madly skyward like phosphorescent sperm cells, showers of diminished light playing across the crystalline surfaces of office towers. 2003 dies, moody and faded: a discarded accessory. The future inches nearer -- not that it has ever ceased moving nearer, but framed suddenly in a symphony of muffled pyrotechnics and blazing sky-bound chemicals, it seems abruptly and oddly tangible; a presence sensed in the gut and the knot of tissue somewhere between the eyes. A numbing temporal caress; a tectonic shiver. A collective pang of loss and hope and tangled fear. And then the fireworks end and you have slipped through some phantom orifice into a world marked by a brand-new number, bulging with portent. Terra incognita. This slippery thing we call the future, eluding our faculties like a photon engaged in quantum dialogue with itself.