Christopher Miguel Flakus
Louisiana State University聽
My Vida Al3X2NDRA,
I was delighted to combine photons so elastically after your recent talk on centipede migrations. Your new discoveries in the field of Astro-Archaeological Biology are stunning. But, they got me thinking鈥
What if these never ending post-transhumanists trend wars of belated, deep-dream semi-consciousness never end?
What if we digital critics are finally bogged down, the permutations ever growing and therefore, helpless before a field of play that鈥檚 eternally expanding. Event horizon of graphically designed aesthetics.
Do you know how this subculture, 鈥淭he Cloud Kids of Ceres,鈥 began?
I bet you tacos de sesos y tripa from Mutie Mike鈥檚 if I鈥檓 wrong. Next time I鈥檓 in town, of course.
And this incredible moment in transhuman history, though largely forgotten by鈥ot just digital art critics, anthropologists, art historians, or students would know. Something big that even a lot of them never find out. Why? It鈥檚 just tucked away in there. You know how history folds.
Caught between the folds, I鈥檓 afraid.
Until my book. Mi vida, cuando se estrena! We鈥檙e going to drink Mezcal I’ve imported from Earth and waited a long time to open. Because I found something.
The secret key of how Cloud Kids are directly connected to our ancient past, and are pioneers of transhumanism which, in my opinion, achieved more and long before they so-called Fleshless Liberation of thirty-thirty-nine. That鈥檚 just a moment of galvanization. Some gangs decide to implant machine parts in themselves by kidnapping a scientist. It鈥檚 batshit, so everyone remembers it. But they learned very little, and of course, enforcers were called and the whole gang wiped out along with the scientist. Yeah, zero tolerance and no negotiations. But even that brutality wasn鈥檛 enough. They couldn鈥檛 contain it. Transhumanism had existed alongside and beyond humanity. It isn鈥檛 about being 鈥渂orn in the wrong body,鈥 so much as understanding that the essence of what makes us human isn鈥檛 tied to our bodies. That鈥檚 an antiquated way of thinking, some utter caveman shit. These meat suits? And I鈥檓 as vain as they get, but these days, there isn鈥檛 a single person you know I鈥檓 willing to bet, that 丑补蝉苍鈥檛 had alteration work done.
Now, we鈥檙e all transhumanists. Once, things moved more chaotically.
I鈥檓 speaking not of the many variations of 鈥渓ife,鈥 from the mechanized hybrid man-machines, the uploaded souls, the myriad of consciousness existing in a myriad of different hosts. Where did this jump begin? How did we go from the meat puppets of elder earth and become鈥hat so many of these cults refer to as, 鈥渄ivine.鈥
We leapt forward evolutionarily. It began on Ceres, not Earth.
I shall explain, it鈥檚 a little project I鈥檝e been working on.
A leap forward in human evolution that occurred so subtly that the so-called Authoritarium of the galaxy didn鈥檛 so much as bat an eye.
We were once a hieroglyphic/holographic species made up of raw data, processing centers, basic applications and bioengineering hacks in combination with cutting edge flesh-forge technology. Different subcultures existed, mostly chrome cowboys still swaying their decks and breaking into mainframes, stealing data and becoming what we know today as 鈥淒ata Thieves,鈥 their eyes the color of microchips and their souls half inside the matrix most of the time. Spindly, usually thin. All the stims they take. Back then they were just kids with computer decks that they manipulated with their actual fingers. But amongst these subcultures was one, a group obsessed with 鈥渦nplugging,鈥 taking their bodies and flashing out of them every nano-bit of energy and information and infusing it into a cloud of vapor containing hovering nanomachines. It became something like a brain. The trillions of nanomachines would fire like synapses and that energy, that flash between them. That was them. Their consciousness. They manipulated the cloud, were able to speak through trillions of tiny speakers and do much more than that.
They called themselves 鈥淭he Cloud Kids of Ceres.鈥
They changed their appearance by varying light fields and through manipulation of microscopic electrical machines through whose impulses the new consciousness fired, spreading along like nerves through synapses, moving through walls and appearing visually with the floating (physically just a self-replicating and permutating cloud of vapors, nanomachines, nonfibers and filaments that to the touch left one tingling and moist) was a return to roots instead of the leap forward and 鈥淓volutionist鈥 Demagogy they believed they were returning to the state of being we experience before birth. Their non-form clouds build castles of shame, power, and language which has plummeted our race off the edge of consciousness, pouring ever towards the enormous galactic gap between the dark soul of our collective history and鈥he limitless potential of our variegated futures. They were on to something, these Cloud Kids. It鈥檚 astonishing to me that they鈥檝e been, until my new book comes out I hope, an anomaly overlooked by history.
Whatever steps we take next鈥e must ask these questions and be free to ask them, no matter what choices we make they must be openly and profoundly discussed. The Cloud Kids, remarkably, remain taboo. 鈥淯nplugging,鈥 as you know, is illegal. Only through certain means and functions can it occur. The average person caught doing it is exterminated.
They must hum at the forefront of our hearts and minds. Their sacrifice has made so much new tech possible, but they get no credit. They鈥檝e been struck from the annals of history.
The early days of transhumanism, marred by social wars, gang violence, and prejudice, marred the turn of our millennium as a species. Yes, that鈥檚 indisputable, even amongst the various subsets of 鈥渉uman鈥 that we exist as today. We cling to our bodies and form like puritans.
All agree we once were merely鈥r purely depending on whom you ask, human. The Cloud Kids claimed to be the purest form of human in existence.
So, that鈥檚 of course all that gets associated with the Cloud movement. For most fools these days, if they even manage to come across an accidental reference to an eclectic 800-year-old subculture, it seems they couldn鈥檛 care less. I鈥檓 astonished by the Academy’s attitudes.
My findings have been met with a cool reception, but I鈥檒l not be deterred.
Anyone who鈥檚 seen a holo-feed knows the cliches. Especially on Ceres.
Of course, they were always more connected to Earth culture than they were the earth itself. So we stayed to fight, die, and be conquered. They fled with that culture of Earth as if it were the divine spark and fucked off to the edges of the belt. Our culture is made up of the best minds of earth, we escaped and made our own home. So, how can we justify this close-mindedness? We are a people of research and science.
Although we claim to have no hierarchy, the Ceres hierarchy is there and to them it鈥檚 nearly religious. A belief of an all-saving messiah tucked away among the Anarchs, of all people. They wait for a savior to return us magically to the earth that expelled us.
And anyone on Earth, well to those poor souls under the demagogue, the subject of 鈥淭ranshumanism鈥 remains as controversial today as when first introduced. Outlawed by many Earth Primarchs and Feudal Lords.
History, it appears, is unwilling to teach us this particular lesson. We鈥檙e unable to shake off the same cycles of behavior.
Things are better, absolutely. I鈥檓 not saying that they aren鈥檛, mi amor. Not at all.
What? Oh, the Angerites and RGV/Northern Mexican 鈥淐adaver Bangers,鈥 or the so-called 鈥淣ecropunk鈥 resurgence we鈥檝e noticed on Earth? Yes, I suppose they鈥檙e going against the law and although they can鈥檛 unplug, they鈥檙e doing everything they can to be less human. We鈥檝e seen this movement fifty years ago on Earth. Thank the stars it鈥檚 yet to reach Ceres. Ugly lot those Corpsebangers, mostly from the ash wastes on earth. Worshippers of strange gods.
The East Coast Terminus Primarch of Richmond spearlined that whole nastiness didn鈥檛 he?
Yes, but that鈥檚 just outright decadence and brutal repression.
I鈥檓 talking about something鈥ore subtle. Refined? No, not at all. Perhaps not even that much more subtle.
Organic? Hardly.
But, I suppose what my Cloud Kids and these revolutionaries with their angry rhetoric DON鈥橳 have in common is鈥 sense of hyper advanced aesthetics.
The cloud kids were pure aesthetic.
Although absolutely Anarch-born and Anarch-bred, the Cloud Kids of Ceres abandoned their Flesh-Prisons to exist without form.
Why? One, because they figured out they could.
But mostly because it felt and looked incredible!
The Transhumanist Cycles? The three 鈥淐old Wars鈥 and the short-lived Syndacite-Empire of Ava_CH23?
That鈥檚 all anyone knows. They cred that reason every time. Makes them sound smart to each other when they huddle like reptiles together on sweatrides or Blue-Hotel bedrooms, credgirls pumping together like engine parts, zooting the latest stims in clouds of vapor up their nose.
To go through them, the corporeal form of the cloud kids, supposedly felt like a damp cloud of descending winter steam, humid enough to form droplets on the skin.
Should I continue our discussion about post deep-incensionist poetry at the end of the last millennium? I know this subject is somewhat outre amongst colleagues. Yes, well, you know me! I鈥檝e always enjoyed a little zip-zip-ZIP!
What a thrill it was to slot into those old files and permutate! You understand dear friend and colleague! The thrill for which we yearn.
The fix we chase.
SKINSTECHS, SKINFORGED, Oi Oi Oi!!
It occurred to me about a year ago, after the launch party for that holo-composer鈥檚 release鈥t was a lot of interviews and on-the-ground footage of Xochipili鈥檚 history, you know how it was terraformed as a prison planet by Earth so El Presidente could send anyone he deemed unwanted, unworthy, or who just looked at him funny. So, yeah, as sad as it鈥檚 to say that planet, now rebelling for autonomy, has every right if you ask me. Earth may be our forefathers, but Ceres has suffered indignities at Earth鈥檚 hands also. Maybe the runners of Xochipili will prevail. Stranger things have happened. But war is coming, that much is certain.
Who was it? The damn composer. I鈥檓 drawing a blank.
Was it the Magnophonics Retrospective at Collegia Abstracta last year?
Summer Solstice鈥
鈥o, you鈥檙e right!
We鈥檇 just emerged from a chrysalis of sorts. You and I mutated inexorably by the stim-haze of final project presentations into the stoned hibernation (the quick nap, really) of winter break. A break you mostly, kindly, spent haunting seedy bars with me and watching me crank the grav-bike, always ready for somewhere new and neon.
Yes, after that remarkable night I decided that you might even be interested in this little pet project of mine. Back then it was just a private obsession. Never thought鈥r even considered thinking about the Cloud Kids as a longer, pod/hybrid audiovisual academic subject. I spoke to a mechanic–actually he鈥檚 also a Xochipili scholar–Cholihuaca. Quite a ne’er-do-well, a real rake, but top of his class!
These girls treat him like a living God. Anyway, underneath all that bravado is actually a real poet and a serious artist if he were to give it an actual shot.
Of course, that would involve actual effort and discipline
Then鈥f course.
You do.
And then it becomes something else.
Well why the fuck not!?
I didn鈥檛 let myself get hung up for too long on feeling sorry for myself.
When I gave in. I did so wholeheartedly.
The astral projection? Oh please don鈥檛 tell me they got to you too! Please, I won鈥檛 allow these ludicrous rumors to persist.
We call it 鈥渢耻苍颈苍驳.鈥&苍产蝉辫;
I tune to whatever room and circumstance I find myself in. Then I create a holographic permutating imprint of every detail and freeze that date in my core where it remains. So if anything goes sideways鈥ccording to our fucked understanding of physics鈥here鈥檚 a liminal fraction of mathematical possibilities which postulates that as a matter of fact we could reset it. Reset the clock and the time.
Totally overlooked among the most important countercultures in, I daresay, the history of our species(s鈥), the Cloud Kids of Ceres at the turn of our millennium represents the moment the greater turn in our species鈥 consciousness began. All of growing, learning, and developing as a being is based on
We could truly, I believe, say something profound about our species and our presence here among the stars. They represent an opportunity to know this truth.
But truth is like the ever-shifting and color-changing aspect-forms of the Cloud Kids.
It will always remain elusive. Sometimes literally mercurial.
The past stretches like stylogym-poxy. It mutates and preambles through our many-tiered uncanny culture, the slopes and valleys of human intelligence, sprawling suburbs and cosmopolitan possibilities variegating without possibility of being classified.
鈥淲elcome to the uncanny end of the pool,鈥 the Cloud Kids loved to say, amplifying their kinetic language through the use of thousands of floating, nano-speakers from inside and around the half-machined, vapored 鈥渂odies,鈥 that could speak through their trillions of nano amps and color changing particles, allowing them to speak and change color at will. Among themselves (for they never wanted to seem rude or pejorative, or thrust their decision on others) they called themselves the 鈥渋nspired.鈥
Back then, I mean even their music has changed now. They鈥檙e just a bunch of wannabes and the rate of Cloud reversion has gone up astronomically. Back in the early days, there was no going back.
Once you departiculated, that was that.
The inspired; they said that the revelation of 鈥渟hedding the skin vessel,鈥 would make itself clear.
It either hits you, a bolt from a clear sky, or the feeling crept like cold, damp fingers until it grips you and it feels as if you鈥檝e known it your whole life even if, in that bolt, you realize you鈥檝e known your whole life.
And it鈥檚 more than the tech鈥he language for uploaded intelligence had barely even begun then. These kids were light years ahead of everyone. For what they did, how breakthrough, for that to be grasped when they just鈥 鈥渇azed forward,鈥 to put it in Cloud Kid terms鈥ell, I鈥檝e written a book and designed and composed an entire holo on them and I still don鈥檛 know if I captured just how daring and pioneering they once were. Today, of course, they鈥檙e ubiquitous. You see them in Tlaloc Plaza every day.
UI has been all but completely explored and understood and yet–many intelligences (both organic, digital, and everything in between) across the stars are unaware that they owe their very existence to an ancient, turn-of-the-millenium subculture. Many of the kids who 鈥渇aze forward,鈥 today, have no idea how it all began.
Shame, if you ask me.
I鈥檇 heard about the 鈥淐loud Kids鈥 of Ceres, but I thought that was more of an aesthetic question.
We covered it in that early exceptionalist course, remember?
Or was it the Post-Inceptional Deep Dream class? We had them the same day, I remember.
I remember.
Looking back, at this sudden catalyst, it鈥檚 like someone just mainline jacked adrenaline methadrine and swallowed a whole fizzing chemshop worth of laughter.
Society leapt forward. Whether they were ready for it or not.
Notice some of that Remodernist early inceptionism creeping out of our submerged digital subconscious?
Frazzling, truly ahead of their time.
Cloud Kids began with one Ceres gang, Los Rolleros, and their tech-loving gang-boss, Kique Nepantli. Boy was he a fucking character. A letter for another day.
There was a period of uneasy acceptance.
What ultimately happened to Kique and the rest of the Cloud Kids remains a mystery. They were outlawed and destroyed more than likely.
If you come across any reference in your work or would like to take a look at my research, I would be delighted.
Yours in Light,
Tenoch