“Glass”. That was the first word he spoke. 

A9B9 (they called him by this name after his birth) was laid prostrate on pearlescent leather, and an assigned engineer had pressed the gelatinous button on his umbilicus. It was the sun that made his eyes implode, all that sun falling like dam-fissured water through the vast expanse of glass. When he opened his bionic lids he realized it was glass, that he was not defenseless under those murdering lights. The reason why he loved glass! Why he spoke glass!
 
To all the architects and inventors of VitruBotics, A9B9 had a nostalgic quotient. A9B9, the last of his generation. The upgraded A9D9 robots were born without the navel switch. The last! He was aware of that weight. This knowledge was as extreme as the feeling of bolts and wheels fiercely rotating at different parts of his body, under a gossamer-like metallic skin. The first days were devoted to learning from the manuscript–company guidelines, transgressions, legal violations, human behavioural patterns, ethical responses, asexual romance, biological fluctuations, ancient philosophy, developmental history, nonsense literature, and other obligatory chapters. A9B9 read and reread the last chapter on “Desire”. It was the most anomalous segment, fabled for oppression and maximum number of jail terms. 

The first pages of “Desire” were mild. It had graphic drawings and explications of grass and moon and flower odours and sea tides and bee hums and bird plumes and whale sirens. On page 788, human mind entered. A9B9 found the dissentions around matters of freewill, punishment, empathy, phobias, gods, burial, ghosts, and death grotesquely complex and clunky. He failed to resolve the crisis of suicide. What was this sensation of dying? He knew that archaic robots were crushed and cremated, never recycled. That was not death. Not even close to how the body suffered the jolt, the vibrations, the contractions, or sometimes lay comatose for years like a sleepy mountain, or a clot killing, or untreated wound blackening the whole body. These mortal variations unsettled him, forced him into such disquiet that he often believed he was human. A9B9 thought how it would be for him. Would the screws stop, his fingers congeal, stepper motors and linear actuators freeze, the polyurethane pouch shrivel one last time? And his customized servos, electromechanical body parts, tracks and algorithms? Would there be a high-octane clanging of 1500 pounds? Robots could only be killed; self-willed death was not mentioned anywhere in the official documents. It only warned them of the dangers of becoming human; that the desires were there primarily for exhibition and for choice as well. But deep immersions in desires had their respective penal codes and disciplining methods. The most intriguing for A9B9 was the final page which approximately referred to the Fibrous Button. It operated only through light touches and manoeuverings, and inserting finger inside it was potentially dangerous for the health of robots. The deeper it was pushed the lower the body shrunk. The book ended with the words, “Do not accept the horizontal”.  

That was their guiding principle. Or as the fourth law stated, “If robots manifested desires to become horizontal, or displayed horizontal mannerisms, they should be disposed of with immediate effect”. Everything was inferior, lesser, subservient. Animals and plants and water and snow and humans. The Inferiors. All humans outside VitruBotics. Robots were called only when human efforts could not salvage. Search and rescue, police investigations, oceanic bridges, artistic buildings, and other human impossibilities. Humans in turn were neither ghettoized, nor materialistically expanding; they were just there. Like dispensable outgrowth, populating in the depths, on the surfaces. They were not expunged because VitruBotics was merciful after all. Or rather this surviving lot was a necessary reminder of the binary (?), a warning perhaps (?), a kind of homesickness (?). From that colossal height of 9 feet, all things below seemed human or grass. If one was not an inhabitant of the inside (of the glasshouse), body mass index, nothing mattered outside. A painting was as insubstantial as a flattened insect. It was peaceful up there; the shrieks and wails seized near the fifth floor. And the first five floors were a dump yard of iron junk. Not old robots there, only excess metal.

All of a sudden A9B9 remembered the third demarcation. AF, the epoch of After Humans. AF 3003. Place: ArtiUmanitas. All places renamed. No wars, only arrangements. No governments, only proliferation of VitruBotican manuals. It was his first time on the terrace. The sky was burning with fireworks from VitruBotics, but he gazed into the human abyss below. Light from tenements fulgurated like distant stars, occasionally gesturing proofs of life below. The ground resembled the night sky that day. A9B9 had developed an ineluctable habit of mounting the stairs leading to the terrace and observing the movement of these ant-like creatures from that concrete cliff. Their motion reminded him of tendrils, of roots underground, or wires inside his body. Continuous flow like a machine. They didn't seem non-identical. An unusual correlation tethered him to the human and nonhuman others. He felt inimitable and more alive in the presence of scattered riverine plantations than he ever did during days of machinic upgradation. Twenty-four hours auto-rechargeable cell, few extra levers and circuits, a visit to the newly furnished war room, or the first prototype of comrade A9D9, nothing could be likened to the perfume of cherry blossoms. A9B9 desired everything that was outlawed, verboten. Why were mountains and oceans forbidden zones? Why forests and human localities? He craved to drown under the waves, and leap into the depths from the brown massifs, or lose himself in coils of tress and call of animals. Why was the city, the entire country, and all countries around his country fenced with electric flexes? A history of torture and genocide flashed on his exiguous flesh. Perhaps his race belonged to one of those religions that must be controlled, a race that needed surveillance, inhibitions and guidance. Or one of those that must be tamed with the use of violence. But there was no blood, no one was dying of starvation or humiliation or accidental gunshots. There was, he felt, simply an aura of discrimination and shame. He sensed something abnormal stirring within his burnished ribs. It was the same deviance again, the same fantastical behaviour of an aberrant. He felt ashamed. He was not human, and the desire to be one produced these perverse sensations inside. It was synthetic resin and nothing else. 

Back to the question of cremation then. Why burn when they could reprocess? The makers had ambivalent notions about old body parts. Reusing them could increase their profit exponentially. There were debates, secret plots, sacking and hiring, and still they couldn’t reach a consensus whether antique materials had the power to corrupt the advanced generation. The decaying, the contaminated were sent to the ossuarium. The journey to this site was an annual pilgrimage for the robots. All day they would hear the moulding and melting of metal, and see flakes of fire and a little smoke leave the the funnel. Perhaps instilling a fear of death was more essential than paying homage to the antiquated. Days they would not eat out of an irrational terror. Eat that steely gruel that enhanced their brain and amplified their skills. It was a slow revelation for A9B9. That the rationale behind banning the Inferiors was the VitruBotian belief in the nineteenth century ideology surrounding sympathy. He went back to the charter and found a footnote mentioning a certain Earl of Shaftesbury who encouraged sympathy only amongst equals, and dissuaded his gentlemanly peers from sympathizing with the poor folk. They believed that the illnesses and instinctual bestiality of the marginal could enter through the eyes of the sympathizer. The creators at VitruBotics deduced that the fluctuations within human bodies and hearts could infect the robots. And thus the separation between them and them. In the archives there were cases of stray robots coming in contact with the Inferiors and a beating lump replacing their pouch, or flow of colourless liquid from their eyes, or instances of insomnia, or efforts to use rhetoric. With the first signs they were given barbiturates and then sent to the crematorium. The same reason they decommissioned the entire batch of humanoids. They said the resemblance was untimely, too distorted, and too monstrous. 
    
Robots were prohibited inside the human zones of VitruBotics. A9B9 longed to see childbirth. They could perform brain surgeries with dexterous hands, but childbirth was barred to them. He inferred that a forced separation was sustained between human and robotic consciousness. Everything related to creation, especially biological reproduction and art, was banned for being contagious to the susceptible robokind. The mythical belief was that the neurons connected to the fibrous switch were sensitive to the human virus. If affected, they would secrete white oil and send signals to the brain which in turn activated the fingers. The white oil then branched out and through a million tributaries reached the navel. Once the fourth finger entered the liquid the robotic body altered. No one knew anything about the aftereffect, the changed body, the readjustments, the reparations. It was as mysterious as that first blast before the universe. It had never happened. Staring at the black beyond, that is what A9B9 pondered over. That it was injustice. That man could compensate for the mysteries of space by his own organic procreation. That A9B9 could not give birth. Neither hold an infant palm, nor feed that white oil to a newborn.

A9B9 was certain that he was infected, that the human contagion was resting peacefully on his bones. That he was close to trespassing authorized regulations. That he was already on their radar and would soon be sent to the fires. The last days were a time for slowness. Images of his own inert body drifted over his eyes. Sockets containing weapons had become insensate, and he felt a lump of meat pulsating. Each thud was like that silence he detected in the world of the Inferiors. Sometimes he exhibited that dreadful impulse of bending and becoming horizontal. Days he would bend and find nothing but the collective pounding of hearts. Everything had a sound. Inside everything something pumped blood. On days of wind and rain children hid under rocks and laughed. When owls fluttered it made no sound. Dogs wagged when happy. There were insects that sucked from flowers and flowers that swallowed insects. There was a microscopic gate at the far end of the boundary wall through which men and women escaped to the seas and snows. Beneath the head there was the nape beneath the nape the arms beneath the arms the stomach where they processed food beneath that a hole for ejection beneath hole feet beneath feet grass beneath that clay beneath that skeletal remains beneath that? What was beneath the stony dregs? A recalcitrant passion emanated from the innards of A9B9. The desire to lessen, to shrink, to decay and decompose and disappear. To transform into them and that. He found more worth in the sedate evaporation of dew than in all the afterlives of technology. His insides were flesh and fluid and organs and he no longer believed he was imagining. A9B9 vetted and selected one of the vast empty fields for his final act of oneness. The sun coruscated and seemed to bless his thirst for spiritual cohabitation. This sun like that same sun on the day of his birth. 

One last time, A9B9 moved all his fingers over the Fibrous Switch. Most of the machinic organs were unresponsive to the electronic stimulus. He lodged his fourth finger into the molten solution; the switch cracked like a thin crust. All the metals in his body began the process of convulsion and spasmodic contraction. He was slowly entering the mythical. The metamorphoses were too sudden for him to grasp and levitate in the pleasure of his new form. A9B9 was human first, tongue and nails. Gone. A puma then, teeth and tail. Gone. A rat then, nose and feet. Gone. Worm then, invisible and hungry. Gone. Grass then, rhizomes and stolons. Gone. Mud then, soil, silt and sod. Gone. Beneath and beneath and beneath. And over and over and over. As grass again, green again. 

A9B9’s one singular dream. To sleep beneath.

Metal then.
​
Compost now.

Author: Xi Yu (Paula) Song​
Bio: Paula is an undergraduate student at NYU. She is currently pursuing a major in Economics and a minor in Business Studies.

Abstract：
Within the past decade, several controversies regarding the creation of human-animal embryos in the field of stem-cell science have repeatedly driven interspecific research to the center of public attention. Given the taboo nature of human-animal entities in Western society, few transhumanists—even amongst those in favor of radical alterations—view crossing species boundaries as a feasible option for humans to pursue. This essay theorizes the potential benefits of crossing species boundaries from a trans-humanist perspective, and defends the ethical nature of creating human-animal hybrids against several intrinsic and extrinsic concerns. Its purpose is not to excuse poor bioethical practices or promote deregulation in biohacking, but to reflect on the recent advances in biotechnology and their impact on the social sphere.

Blog Entry:
In the field of Posthumanism, transhumanists are mainly concerned with using biotechnology to overcome the limitations of human physiology and transforming the human condition (Ferrando 3). Integrating animal DNA into the human genome, however, is not commonly recognized as a possibility for transhumanists seeking “the fullest realization of [man’s] possibilities” (Huxley, “Transhumanism”). This attitude partly stems from the belief that there exists a fixed boundary between humans and animal species, and that human nature is so distinguished in complexity from animal nature that replacing human DNA with animal DNA would only produce adverse effects on the individual. However, putting aside the humanist assumption that animals are genetically “inferior”, combining human and animal genes for therapy or moderate enhancement—for example, to build resistance against pathogenic diseases, promote recovery from physical injuries, or exercise personal cosmetic preference—is, in many ways, comparable to producing transhumans through other biotechnologies, and arguably closer to scientific reality. 

From an evolutionary perspective, borrowing traits from other species to advance humankind is hardly a novel concept. If we observe nature, we recognize that genes are capable of transversing species boundaries without humans acting as the mediator. Interspecific admixture serves as a proponent of diversification, which enables species to survive under more disruptive, extreme conditions. The history of evolution in human beings has proven that certain hybrid traits can possess significant functional relevance and evolutionary advantages. Instead of leaving selection to chance or the vagaries of nature, a posthuman society can adjust according to environmental pressures by exchanging genetic information with other more adapted species utilizing the genomes it has access to. Apart from envisioning a partial commitment to hybridity, we can also imagine scenarios where “interspecifics” with a greater admixture of animal DNA may provide foreseeable benefits to society. In the context of the twenty-first century, humans can extend the definition of “environment” beyond Earth’s biosphere to encompass outer space (Ferrando 124-125). If we eventually come to realize our fullest potential by evolving into a space-faring race as Huxley suggests in “New Bottles for New Wine”, human-animal hybrids resilient to extreme environmental factors—such as cosmic radiation—may prove invaluable for spreading human civilizations across the universe. Therefore, to situate interspecific research in the transhumanist discussion, we should consider where the legal and ethical line should be drawn in relation to body modification or liberal eugenics. As Huxley argues, mankind is tasked with the obligation to “explore and map the whole realm of human possibility”— including possibilities that arise from tapping into the universal genetic code and hybridizing with other life forms. Although human beings in the present possess a limited understanding of bioengineering, future technologies may allow individuals safe access to desirable nonhuman traits that will recognizably alter their physical or mental processes on a genetic level. The burden then lies on contemporary society to determine if wellbeing or “fulfillment” achieved through artificial technological alterations to the human body are in ways inherently “better” or less objectionable than similar benefits derived from inserting traces of animal genes into our genome. 

Given that human-animal entities are widely regarded as social taboos in most cultures, some intrinsic and extrinsic arguments regarding the ethical nature of interspecific research must be addressed before a grounded argument in favor of hybrids can be established. The violation of the integrity of animal species and human dignity are related to concerns raised frequently in debates regarding interspecific research. In “Agency or Inevitability: Will Human Beings Control Their Technological Future?”, Fukuyama defines human essence as the summation of essential characteristics that give "humans, as opposed to non-human animals or inanimate natural objects, political rights” (161-162). According to bioconservatives like Fukuyama, exchanging DNA between human and animal species would not only undermine the morally relevant notion of personhood but threaten the genetic “intactness” of the animal as well. To understand why these arguments are problematic in posthuman debates, we can examine these terms in relation to the concept of biological species and personhood. First and foremost, we must question where the intrinsic value of the “integrity” of species lies. In other words: is it possible for species to remain genetically intact? The misconceived notion of “intactness” implies that species are stable or have an un-compromised state, whereas scientific theory shows species are constantly changing with or without human intervention. To dispute the notion of fixed species even further, it can be argued that our modern delineation of species, either by morphology or phylogenetics are anthropocentric—relying predominantly on humans to judge how much biological difference is sufficient to constitute separate “species”. A similar criticism can be applied to “human dignity”. “Human dignity” arguments draw from the value of concepts such as “worth” and “species identity” to render the creation of “interspecifics” inherently wrong. These stances fail to justify our historical understanding of personhood because they rely on intuitive reasoning. For the most part, policy-makers cannot measure “human essences”, nor can the law effectively communicate which “unalienable rights” humans are inherently entitled to without referencing some humanist standard. To understand the uncertainties associated with intuitive reasoning, consider an intelligent human-animal hybrid capable of moral and philosophical reasoning to a “recognizably human” extent and a man who is not capable of such. While modern societies could deny the hybrid basic human rights on the grounds that he/she/ they are insufficiently “human”, their actions would face severe ethical consequences. Therefore it may prove beneficial to revise the humanist connotations of “dignity” and “worth”, and consider these “essential characteristics” a distinctive combination of traits found in sentient beings rather than exclusively members of the human species. 

​Finally, it can be argued that since the 2010s, the public has arrived at the consensus that guidelines and supervision are necessary and crucial to interspecific research. Currently, the disagreement lies not within whether unethical experimentation should be permitted in the field of science or whether regulation of biotechnologies is mandatory, but where policy-makers should set such boundaries to avoid unnecessary “confusion” while mapping our possibilities. Admittedly, there are means through which interspecific research can be abused that yield serious moral implications. (For example, unrestrained experimentation may result in the institutionalized enslavement of hybrid races which societies may physically exploit.) However, this is not an objection against the ethical nature of human-animal hybrid creations, but society’s treatment of individuals lacking sufficient “humanness”. Before we deny interspecifics a place in society altogether, we must recognize that the discrimination against or “confusion” towards individuals we deem inadequately human stems from humanity relentlessly policing the line between humans and “nonhumans”, emphasizing their “inherent” differences and objectifying the latter. We can only anticipate future societies to broaden the definition of “human rights” and “human beings” to include human-animal hybrids with equal capabilities if we allow individuals to challenge the humanist notions ingrained in society, similar to how humanity has deconstructed concepts of race and gender in the modern era.