Luis Othoniel Rosa

Translated by: Katie Marya

The post-colonial birth, life, and death of the collective consciousness known as the Animal.

Middle-aged streamer twins in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, are the first human beings to successfully connect—sharing their consciousness across 34 translucent cables. In that moment, the Animal is born, an intracerebral force that quickly grows to encompass anthills of synaptically entwined bodies, a floating library kitchen redolent of rice and beans far above the Mississippi river, and a transhuman compound in a future Cuba on the Isle of Youth.

Circling back and forth and ever progressing, Animal Spiral moves through 400 years of human, and then post-human history, beginning with a revolution on the streets of San Juan and ending with five brilliant siblings: the Squash (humanoid), Calima (beetles), Yemayá (eels), Coatlicue (serpents), and Juracán (anthropomorphic birds), who have millions of bodies and all the world’s intelligence, but only want to no longer be alone. This is a buoyant, joyous ode to possibility, a warning about the dangers of neglecting what makes us human, and an astonishing exercise of the flexibility and capacity of liminal spaces. Loneliness is a collective disease! We defend our right to madness! Brave are not the ones who resist; brave are the ones who let go!