I wake up shivering. My head’s pounding, and my teeth grind against a coating of dried vomit. After severely miscalculating my dose of ZTaQ-1281, a cutting-edge Russian nootropic I discovered on a darknet organ-harvesting forum, I stayed up for 36 hours and drank two liters of rum while continuously masturbating to the scene in Her where Joaquin Phoenix has phone sex with his operating system.
There is no time to recover. It’s Monday morning, and I, in this decrepit state, have a critical day of work ahead of me. In my current situation, the average American would be filled with dread. It’s hard to file TPS reports when you’re struggling to keep from vomiting blood and every click of your desk-mate’s stupid mechanical keyboard feels like a crack in your skull. But as you will soon see, I am not the average American. I am the master of my own biology. My body’s potential is unbounded. I am limitless.
I micro-sprint to work — intervals of half a second of full-speed sprinting followed by three seconds of walking.
Normally, I start my days with a variant of Bulletproof Coffee. I like to “supercharge” mine by throwing in 15 micrograms of LSD, 60 milligrams of Adderall, four 5-hour Energy drinks and a dollop of rhinoceros semen. It’s invigorating — the grass-fed butter really works wonders. Sadly, I woke up a little later than usual today and have time only to parachute a handful of crushed caffeine pills and munch on a stick of butter on the way out of my apartment.
I don’t walk to work; walking is inefficient. It’s a pathetic activity for senior citizens whose joints are too weak to do any real exercise, so they meander around parks, fooling themselves into thinking that it’s healthy enough to keep them from dying that week. I micro-sprint to work—intervals of half a second of full-speed sprinting followed by three seconds of walking. It’s HIIT on steroids. Fat flies off of me while I sprint — literally, as I throw up half the stick of butter.
I arrive at work, still a little out of it. I keep trembling, and my stomach contracts endlessly. I decide I need more vitamins. I micro-sprint to the micro-kitchen and grab one of my soon-to-be patented IV bags from the freezer. The IV bag idea is based on those Uber-for-hangover services — the ones where nursing-school dropouts inject you with electrolytes in the back of a van to cure your tequila headache. The idea is great — intravenous administration is the eating of the future. It’s 10 times as efficient, and you can really feel the rush of nutrients hitting your bloodstream directly. But sticking to electrolytes is kiddie shit. I fill my bag with hundreds of different vitamins, minerals, drugs, manures and fertilizers. I’m currently experimenting with IV-ing Soylent as an afternoon snack.
Blood drips down my forearm as I try to intercept a vein. My coworkers squeamishly shuffle by me to fill their bodies with whatever shit food their new baseless health fad prescribes them. This month, it seems to be a diet “whole, unprocessed foods.” Idiots. They claim to be progressive but still shun the future, hydrating orally with coconut water like fucking Neanderthals.
It’s 3:00 p.m., and a VC is coming in. Since our CFO is on a three-month silent-meditation retreat, I’m responsible for presenting our revenue forecast. To achieve maximum cognitive potential for my one minute of speaking, I duck into the bathroom and rail a few lines of Modafinil. My stomach churns as I swallow the drip, but I know the office one-ply isn’t enough for my increasingly difficult bowel movements, which involve more sputtering and spraying than pushing since I’ve started my chemical-based self-improvement regime, so I keep clenched until I’m off work.
I waddle into the meeting trying to stifle the heinous sounds and smells emanating from my brutalized intestines. I feel the eyes of our execs on me, their regrets almost tangible. After 20 minutes of squirming and sweating, my slide hits the screen. Our CEO tenses up and covers his eyes. I ignore all this. I thrive on being the underdog, on defying the expectations of mortals.
A few months ago, I paid a retired Radio Shack cashier 20 bucks to implant a high-powered, Bluetooth-enabled vibrating motor into my right hand.
I make my way to the front of the room. Accounting details materialize in front of me, a projection of my overclocked subconscious. The numbers dance faster and faster. I feel nauseous. My vision blurs, and my mouth is parched. I feel a tingling sensation in my right hand. My eyes are too unfocused to make sense of the charts behind me, so I close them and channel a “brain blast,” a technique I learned from a fellow transhumanist, Jimmy Neutron. The words “one million” comes out of my mouth. There is an excruciating pause. Fuck, one million what? Sales? There’s no way it’s sale; no one’s done shit in months. I’m not even sure what we’re selling. My mind goes blank. The tingle in my hand turns into a tremor. Fuck, shit, is it weekly losses? What are our liabilities aside from lentil chips and employee SoulCycle memberships?
I lose all control of my now violently shaking right hand, and it mashes the Next Slide button on the remote over and over again, flying through the rest of the PowerPoint. What the fuck is going on? I focus, and in my elevated state of consciousness, I immediately comprehend the situation.
A few months ago, I paid a retired Radio Shack cashier 20 bucks to implant a high-powered, Bluetooth-enabled vibrating motor into my right hand. The operation was a resounding success — a huge leap in self-optimization, really revolutionizing how I jerk off. The only problem is that anyone can pair something with it, and with the recent boom in wireless headphones, strangers are accidentally pairing with my hand on a daily basis.
My hand shakes so intensely that it begins to jerk my arm wildly, like there’s a high electric current through the right side of my body. I look like the inflatable tube man outside of discount stores, flapping uncontrollably in the wind, an absurd distraction from our shitty product. Our CTO stands up and tries to play off my performance as nerves and technical difficulties, but before he can finish placating our horrified guest, I lose grip on the remote, and it hits him in the forehead. He keels over in his Herman Miller chair, and the whole room jumps to his aid.
I’m astounded at my unintentional ingenuity, my chemically enabled hidden genius. Throwing the remote was the perfect cover for my escape. I micro-sprint out of the office and back to my apartment. As my hand leaves the range of its controller, I pause to look up at the godless sky and smile, for I have once again out-engineered nature, pushing humanity forward in this artificial evolution.
It’s now 5:00 p.m. Naturally exhausted from another hyperproductive day, I shut my twitching eyes, peel off my sweat-soaked shirt and happily dream of doing it all again tomorrow.
Hey! The Bold Italic recently launched a podcast, This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley. Check out the full season or listen to the episode below featuring Aarti Shahani, technology reporter at NPR. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
