Metapatterning for Disconnection

<p>For Théodore Ostrom a physicist researching dark matter at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory becoming posthuman both evokes <em>terror</em> and excites <em>pleasure</em>.</p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> </span></p><p>The terror is easy to understand. The days of <em>the human</em> may be numbered.</p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> </span></p><p>Following the return to his Beijing apartment during a global speciation event Théodore Ostrom receives a call from an automated legal service informing him that his family has died in a motor vehicle accident.</p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> </span></p><p>What about the pleasure? The exhilarating prospect of getting out of the old limits of human life its uncertainty its impermanence and opening up new ways of being <em>other-than-human</em>.</p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> </span></p><p>In the hours leading up to his family's virtual funeral Théodore Ostrom speculates over his complicated relationship with (0) who has already <em>transcended</em> without him. Having no choice but to decide whether to become posthuman or to remain human he writes <em>Metapatterning for Disconnection</em> a deracinated monologue that embraces extinction in an attempt to achieve a final if not total catharsis from the human condition.</p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> </span></p><p>BRANDON TEIGLAND is a Canadian speculative fiction writer largely concerned with pioneering the posthuman as a literary phenomenon inviting the reader to construct significance out of ruptures juxtapositions and implied links.</p>