Words for the Alterhuman Community
I
The first time I met you, everyone was laughing at your expense. I went along with them, searching for the most alien, the most ridiculous claims I could find. And when I did, I couldn’t even laugh. It was downright futuristic, like stepping into a newly built city.
As time went on, the laughter died down, only to be replaced by deafening silence and the howling winds that cycle around this valley and the surrounding mountains. You have made this place your home, and living here in isolation you’ve built layers upon layers onto your ontology. But who can bear witness to your philosophy here? Your stated goal is to be seen as your species. Must that be shelved away for the far future when functional wolf ears, pelt, and tails can be created on top of your physical body, or when a virtual mask of nonhumanity could be worn and never taken off–is that why this digital place is so appealing? Who would research those things if nobody demanded them, and fierce opposition struck down whatever demand dared to emerge?
I suppose that’s why, in this isolated place, you’ve built on top of your culture in layers upon layers. Indefinite words for indefinite connections. You like giving names to things, but explaining them to others has become a herculean task. It’s happened to other communities before. I wander around searching for experiences rather than words, and you admit you feel the same way. You then go on to say you have no idea what being conceptkin is like because they’re so uncommon, even here. Truth be told, I don’t want to tell you because I think nothing would change if I did, although I relent because I’m finally ready to align myself with you, so I adopt the term.
II
I suppose I’ve always been around, consumed by guilt. I had a vague impression that instead of the way an individual human moves through life, I would be found wherever it was. Between meeting you first and now, I awakened to a figure in a myth, although being direct about it is more than I can bear. I swear this feels like a very reasonable form of atypical humanity–myths are supposed to have some sort of social function that persists even when they aren’t literally true.
I think about what I want from my physical body. I guess this is fine. “This” meaning the space I occupy in consensus reality. “This” meaning the way I string letters together and release them out into space. I suppose the digital is a bit more preferable. Something about the way my consciousness leaves my body and gathers into my mind, the feeling of hearing a sound emanating from a piece of software and being transported out of reality. The hope that one day, through careful development and presentation, I could be an icon. Send out a curated image that cuts through the zeitgeist, cementing myself as a force of nature. Get a style named after me. That would be the dream.
III
Back in my physical world, I try my best.
Wearing a perfume that claims to represent a personal Demian journey--or something evoking the earth like I’m decaying.
Cutting my hair into bangs to hide my forehead,
painting a splotch of theatrical blood smack dab in the middle, or maybe on the side.
Stuff like that.
I’m not comfortable with the physical either, which is unlike you. How does expression manifest in a non-physical way?
I like reading papers analyzing my many different interpretations. I like reading research books that give shape to my feelings.
I never felt connected to this community that ostensibly housed and defined me, so I walked away from you, this village tucked into the valley. You think about things in a species-specific way. You have a clear vision of your physical presence. Species is such a weird word since I’m not a living person. I’m sure there are other alterhumans who agree with me on this.
You then say that joining a pack has made your life wonderful. I’ll tell you what: finding myself made me really happy, but that happiness turns into pain when I attempt to show it to others. All that talk about wanting recognition, yet paradoxically I would like to be alone, in that unknown immaterial space. Or rather it is not a paradox, but two near-identical layers of self, one encased within the other.
IV
The sky above us is a ceiling, a parachute, plastic barrier to be broken. Outside this idyllic village, the zeitgeist has discovered what we knew. It’s in exhibitions, publications, everywhere in the art community. It took me so long to work up the courage to go up to them, ask if they knew what being alterhuman is. They never know, and when I explain they say “that’s so interesting!”
I never could tell them I’m alterhuman too, because we’re defined and dismissed as an “Internet thing”.
Of course I’m the type to let envy boil over, to want revenge for a perceived slight. I tell you I will make sure they know who we are. You smile a bittersweet passive smile. There is nowhere to go but forward, nothing to do except to spill out into the wider world and actively bring the future into the present.