212 MAT and Multispecies Revolution

Finding forms of organization that took nonhumans into account was not an easy road to travel, plus there was an even more urgent problem to solve. The expansion of the nekomemetic virus only amplified the generalized consent, or indifference, to the exercise of life and death over Gaia's other living beings. Nearly everyone simply assumed it when considering entities such as protozoa, metazoa, bacteria or viruses whose existence had long been ignored. For sure they weren't under control, just the opposite...

In any case, the exterminations wrought by humans were both the cause and effect of the nekomemetic pandemic. Now that TAMs had opened the channels of affective/emotional exchange, the terrible damage done by millennia to the nonhuman world and biosphere appeared under a new light in all its tragic dimension. In MATs there was no uniformity of relationships because, of course, this depended on the situation and participants in the exchange. In general, the species that already had access to intra-actions severely lacked trust, and circumspection prevailed for everything human-related. Despite the surprising effect of the multispecies media bundle that intimately involved them, many nonhumans were still wary. In some cases, the interlocutor (and perhaps even an entire species) couldn't be perceived visually, which made the situation even more tense. Reactions were different: stress-inducing aggression, a complete collapse or flight from behavior that was often perceived as disturbing or even as deception.

There were situations where negative flows were emitted undifferentiatedly: all humans experienced them, regardless of behavior or emotional attitudes. In other circumstances, certain nonhumans, because they possessed intense intuition, or perhaps for other unknown reasons, knew how to choose trustworthy people. In some cases, emotional relationships were established that might have seemed naive or superficial, but in fact might made up the humus for resuming storytelling, just like in the past.

At that time, the paradoxes of the quantum world pervaded the perception of reality and became dominant. New assumptions about being and knowledge emerged: the very nature of existence was no longer considered, like during in the Neolib Gov, as an individual fact. No longer could any entity subsist in its own right, but only in an intra-relational web.

Gov Q had sought to exploit all these new assumptions in its own favor, not only to autonomize itself but also to build the modes of individual and collective behavioral simulation and control. In the Autonomous Sphere and the emerging movements that research centers and university activists were joining en masse, the opposite possibility was glimpsed.

The MATs created a metaverse in which agents, human and nonhuman, did not subsist per se as pre-existing individual elements, but took shape only in the dynamics of intra-action. And this could be the condition that could reintegrate humans into Gaia.

Although no one could explain how or why, MATs were the environment where one acquired, at least on the human side, an intimate awareness of being distinct from the other only in the interweaving of mutual relationships and not as individual entities in their own right. This was empirical evidence against selfish individualism, the foundation of the capitalist era. In short, a current was emerging that overwhelmed the very ontological basis of the individualism that had prevailed for centuries. But was it not too late?

As for MATs, humans could perhaps regain the awareness that nonhumans had always kept intact. Namely, the emergence of being in affective and emotional exchanges. It was something elusive and dynamic that, contrary to human belief, didn't allow being to embody itself "definitely" and become superior. It was an ever-changing reality that couldn't be measured from the outside, incompatible with the obsession to calculate everything imposed by the "market."

MATs showed that matter, meaning and space-time give rise to and reconfigure intra-actions, affirming the relative. Western dualisms of spirit-matter, nature-culture, innate-acquired unravel and it become impossible to differentiate in an absolute sense. Even creation and renewal, beginning and end, continuity and discontinuity, here and there, past and future.

[Here I asked the Boomernaut how these affections, emotions and set of perceptions and sensations were manifested in practice through MATs, interrupting him in his lucubrations that seemed to me to be slipping into philosophical abstraction... so he went on:]

MATs actively involved each participant consciously connecting to the bio-network through a wide range of mechanisms that used electromagnetic, thermal, acoustic and other radiation waves in order to activate nervous and somatic processes. The goal was to generate intense sensations and mental and physical predispositions more powerful than empathy. Obviously, an outside observer only perceived a pale reflection of what the subject felt. We witnessed this on the human side, but I assume it was true for nonhumans as well, despite our somatic differences. When we talk about the level of consciousness of MAT participants, we have to consider a great variety was observed in all. An initial threshold was crossed to open the channels with a device-assisted procedure or a brief chaining of gestures and postures, movements that recalled the principles of yoga mudras and asanas. A wide range of different states of alertness and awareness could later be created, depending on the participants and circumstances. Except in very special cases, both consciousnesses remained present, there were no sudden changes in reality, and no probes, grafts or bodily implants were needed to trigger these processes.

On certain occasions, moments or periods of MAT immersiveness could be experienced, but at the end a return to the surrounding reality occurred gradually and without causing trauma or shock. As connections became more frequent and deeper, it seemed that the presence of the nekomemetic viral load decreased, along with the index of infectiousness. In addition, some claimed to sense a kind of new identity emerging from the intense emotional interactions inside the bio-network, as if the walls of neoliberal individualism, established over several generations, were collapsing. From these questions, doubts and disturbances, some began to believe that MATs were the key to breaking out of the impasse the subordinate classes felt trapped in.

Could we coordinate with nonhumans, even at the risk of relinquishing the dominance hitherto exercised over them?

Initially, the main theater of confrontation would be the combat of nekomemetic flows. Nonhumans enabled humans to avoid infection and to produce counterflows. At a later stage, the core issues of power and survival, and later material conflict, were inevitable. Hard times ahead, spent amidst the already great daily difficulties.

Even if all the steps along the way were not clear, a kind of multispecies revolution, if we can call it that, seemed like the only way out of a hopeless situation for the subaltern human classes and ultimately for all humanity.

On a few occasions it seemed that Gaia wanted to lend a hand: putting out fires in entire regions with providential rains or loosening the grip of deadly heat waves in tropical belts. But perhaps these were only temporary variations that masked the severity of a toxic infection that was too advanced to heal spontaneously, even if the nekomemetic pandemic of humans that had spawned it had worn off.

Even if the humans were on their way to a collective convalescence, the great unknown remained: our behavior. Especially in the facing the risk of losing of control and power over the nonhumans, or a possible relapse.

During the discovery of the nekomemetic virus and Gai's toxic shock, signs of impatience and indiscipline emerged from some nonhumans, including those of plant origin. These fears, considered irrational by Gov spheres, were fueled by a plethora of reports that multiplied, but it was difficult to tell how many were actually real. Later, the situation seemed to worsen again with large migrations and the abandonment of substantial territories due to the advancing septicaemia.

There were tales of mass escapes on large ranches in South America, such as those in the Gran Chaco that had taken the place of extensive forests destroyed by humans. But no one knew for sure whether cattle destined for slaughter had escaped or had been released by eco-warriors. Later we learned that many had died since they were unable to survive in the devastated territory.

Accounts of wild or stray animals looking for food in cities spread over social media. There was talk of foxes, wild boars, coyotes, squirrels, monkeys, raccoons, and even bears and crocodiles. In India, monkeys in Delhi revolted by attacking local residents, looting homes and stealing food from stores and markets every year.

Multitudes of birds found refuge in the edgelands, the fringe areas of cities consisting of decommissioned industrial plants, empty houses and warehouses overgrown with vegetation, taking over the rusted scrap metal and smashed roofs, their vocalizations echoing in the distance. Unverified rumors abound of flocks, herds and other groupings of nonhumans directly menacing humans, just like a Hitchcock cult film.

A seagull attack in Cornwall raised eyebrows because it targeted riders and letter carriers. Apparently this became somewhat more frequent in certain coastal cities. In Tokyo, hawks colonized the skyscrapers of the metropolis and swooped down from the sky like thunderbolts to grab prey. Then there were cases of crows, ravens, and other birds sometimes showing signs of aggression. But we had lost the human reflexes of the past, so no one, not even in Gov Q, proposed hunting the birds.

Something was also changing in the seas. In the past, some species, including killer whales, were known for their aggressive behavior toward humans. But other species started reacting negatively to the use of their abilities to meet human needs. For example, dolphins, whales and sea lions, which had been trained to use their echolocation at sea to detect submerged objects or people, now refused to cooperate.

Even in the world of slime, symbol of repulsion and fascination for humans, this plant resisted. Jellyfish, taking advantage of warming seas and oceans, regularly blocked the pumping and circulation of cooling water in nuclear power plants. Not to mention insects who, despite the fact that species had been decimated, raged in successive waves over ever-widening areas without sparing cities.

In the plant world, herbaceous forms of life developed different strategies to protect themselves against the raging nekomemetic pandemic. Certain grasses considered invasive, such as Palmer's Amaranth, Bitter Grass or Rigid Rye Grass thrived on industrial plantations of soybeans, cotton, canola, GMO beet, and sprayed glyphosate. Like bacteria against antibiotics, these plants were pesticide resistant, becominga real scourge for the latifundist corporations of the Ecofin sphere in certain regions.

The totality of these phenomena remained limited and were more like anxious warnings. These fears were situated in a kind of limbo between reality and dystopian illusion. Nevertheless, they had something that conjured images of the end of the Black Death epidemic in Europe. At that time, the population had shrunk so drastically that the wilderness regained control over many territories. Demographically, we were far from that: after peaking in the second half of the 21st century, the human population was in decline. Despite the fears evoked, we weren't talking about the human massacre that some deep ecology movements predicted, and seemed almost to wish for. But some of these movements had taken on an almost sectarian dimension, characterized by a deep aversion to technology. For example, one such organization became a kind of faction of extreme technophobes, easily recognized by the red dome they always wore on their heads at their meetings. It was unclear whether these phenomena of nonhuman resistance, rebellion or aggression were real warnings of an impending apocalypse generated by Gaia's terrible state or rather the imaginary product of the anxiety and fear in which many human communities lived.