=The Afterhuman Manifesto=

Wherever you are right now, stop, take notice of the situation, and try to determine, first-off, if you are alive or dead. Try to determine, right now, if anything you do or say is in the least way, or can ever be mistaken as, remotely genuine. If the answer is yes, you’ve been warned.

           

You’re sitting, perhaps, at an all-night diner, at two a.m., between one place and another, drinking coffee, chain-smoking cigarettes, divorced, middle-aged, bankrupt, pot-bellied, going bald…or not, at least, not yet.

You’re the ex-wife of such a man, possibly.

Or the son. Or daughter.

Are you in your mid-twenties or early thirties, feeling rootless, without direction, as if your life is going nowhere, or, even worse, heading inexorably in the wrong direction, which it invariably is? You’re even younger, perhaps, feeling confused, hopeless, lost, trying to fit in, talk to people , find that special someone, and you cry in the dark sometimes wondering if you’ll ever find what you’re looking for?

You won’t.

You are older, maybe, or just plain old, and if so, let’s say nothing, nothing at all, shall we?

Whoever you are, it’s now time to move on.

If you want to speak your heart, don’t. If someone wants to speak their heart to you, don’t listen. That’s how contagion is spread.

Sometimes say “either,” sometimes say “or,” but not strictly fifty-fifty.

If someone asks for directions, give the wrong one’s, intentionally if possible.

Don’t take stands, metaphoric or otherwise.

Buy a white lab coat from a uniform supply store: the idea is to gain access, anywhere, automatically, anonymously.

Have business cards made: false name, cell, and e-mail addy, of course.

On a street corner, any corner, look around, vaguely.

Wear contraceptives one day, but not the next, and always when no sexual encounter is possible.

Post links to non-existent websites.

Model yourself on nature, in particular, blizzards, but in an abstract way.

Discard, unthinkingly, any letter that carries with it the instructions “open immediately.” Tune radios, if necessary to have them on at all, hopelessly between stations.

Distrust, and categorically reject, any program, strategy, etc. whose motive, expressed or implied, is a return to whatever might be meant by the terms “sobriety,” or “recovery.”

Take that pill—if you have it. If there is a drink in front of you, drink it.

If things are fake, make them faker.

If things are violent, make them more violent.

If things are dead, make them deader.

Get a tattoo: an Egyptian-style ankh and the slogan, in Bookman Old Style script that says, dead chic.

Do whatever comes after whatever comes after whatever is happening right now.

If you believe the script you are reading, do not panic.

This is an emergency: Dial 1-800-SUICIDE.

Dial 911.

When someone answers, wait a heartbeat as if about to say something, and then hang up.

Like this.