by Simon Ings
This section of We Robots invites you on shamanic journeys into the lives and bodies of all manner of mechanical beings. Sometimes – for example, in Nalo Hopkinson’s “Ganger (Ball Lightning)” (2000) – we find mechanical beings are making shamanic forays into our own realm.
Underpinning all these stories is the proposition that a life in metal has qualities of its own which it will be worth our while to explore. What would it be like, to be a robot? To be a human soul wrapped in non-human flesh – or (as in the stories by Joanna Kavenna, M. John Harrison and William Gibson) in no flesh at all?
The machine bodies we have so far made are so much simpler than our own bodies, they hardly bear comparison. The radical simplicity of machine being, compared to biological being, is its own source of horror in M. H. Hasta’s “The Talking Brain” (1926). Having to severely restrict their physiology drives the posthuman heroes of Cordwainer Smith’s “Scanners Live in Vain” to something very like madness.
But what if Spartan simplicity weren’t agonising? What if it was refreshing – even fascinating? Quite what Sam must be going through inside his new metal flesh is a secret saved for the very last line of Damon Knight’s “Masks” (1968), while Deirdre, the once-human heroine of C. L. Moore’s “No Woman Born” (1944) grows ever more strange, even as she rises in our estimation. She’s off on an adventure, leaving her humanity behind but not her agency, embracing a life that’s no less rich and nuanced for being less and less to do with blood and bone.
The heroes and heroines of general fiction dabble with a dangerous world but in the end, they rarely give themselves to it. To see them returning home, wounded and wiser for it, is one of the chief satisfactions of that literature. Literary realists go even further when they explore the fate of those who can’t even bring themselves to let go of the side of the swimming pool.
Science fiction, on the other hand, is very good – for some tastes, far too good – at what the psychoanalysts call “manic flight”. Its protagonists are constantly striking out for the deep end of the pool and staying there, whooping and gamboling in transformed fashion in waves that have surely already killed them.
It’s a rare science fiction writer who calls time on the party, and brings their protagonist back to shore. With “Musée de l’me Seule” (2014) E. Lily Yu proves herself one of the braver writers in this anthology, for looking physical loss straight in the face. This is a story of victory and renewal, but one that’s strictly for grown-ups. Losing parts of your physical self is a psychological and physical assault for which no amount of bionic wizardry can compensate. To suppose otherwise is fashionable, but contemptible.
Living as a robot seems to promise a solution to life’s great shortcomings: being vulnerable, and having to die. When something breaks, just plug in a spare! But lives ported over to metal, carbon fibre, synthetic flesh or some digital cloud, also present us with what may be a one-way trip to a sort of half-life.
Worse still, we may never know, reduced as we have been, that this life of ours is only a half-life. We may lack the very equipment necessary for us to understand and appreciate what it is we have lost. As H. G. Wells wrote, “Plainly the human animal, of which I am a sample, is not constituted to anticipate anything at all. It is constituted to accept the state of affairs about it, as a stable state of affairs, whatever its intelligence may tell it to the contrary.”
Whenever we think about becoming robots, we find ourselves re-evaluating our original, human condition. Bodies are frail and cyborgisation is exciting, but if the stories that follow teach us anything, it is that it is still not too shabby of us to stay human, if we can.
THE HAMMER
Carl Sandburg
The poet, writer, and folk musician Carl August Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois in 1878, the son of Swedish immigrants. After college he roamed the country, supporting himself by selling Underwood and Underwood stereoscopic pictures and giving an occasional lecture on Whitman, George Bernard Shaw, or Abraham Lincoln. When he ran out of money, he hopped a freight train. He eventually settled into journalism, winning plaudits at the Chicago Daily News. He worked as a correspondent during both world wars, and in between covered politics, crime, business, and civil rights. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for an insanely long biography of Abraham Lincoln. (Abraham Lincoln: The War Years alone exceeds in length the collected writings of Shakespeare by some 150,000 words.) Sandburg’s poetry split opinion: the journalist Karl Detzer wrote that “admirers proclaimed him a latter-day Walt Whitman; objectors cried that their six-year-old daughters could write better poetry.” H. L. Mencken called Sandburg “a true original, his own man.”
I have seen
The old gods go
And the new gods come.
Day by day
And year by year
The idols fall
And the idols rise.
Today
I worship the hammer.
(1910)
GOOD TO GO
Liz Jensen
Liz Jensen (born 1959) lives in Copenhagen with the Danish writer Carsten Jensen. She first worked as a radio journalist in Taiwan, and then for the BBC as a TV and radio producer. She wrote her first novel, the black comedy Egg Dancing (1995), in Paris, where she worked as a sculptor. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2005. Her novel The Ninth Life of Louis Drax was adapted for film in 2016. Her comedy and satire have darkened perceptibly over the years. The Rapture (2009) and The Uninvited (2012) are decidedly unsettling ecological thrillers.
It’s peak season here at the lake – a hundred in the shade, breeze like a sadist hair-dryer, speedboats stirring up alga scuzz. Weekends like this, the whole town’s packed with Utah runaways getting high like only Mormons can, making it the busiest test-market I’ve worked so far, and I seen a few. As one of Arizona’s top domestic violence/sports accident nexuses, Havasu’s ideal to trial a project like this.
“Hi there, I’m Kylie, Angel Operator, at your service.” That’s what I say to the tragedies when they come in. Which may sound dumb seeing as they can’t hear me, but you’re getting intimate with someone, you introduce yourself at least, is my thinking.
The software’s called Sweet Parting. According to Threshold, it’s “inspired by the William Shakespeare quotation parting is such sweet sorrow.” Some of us Angel operators think it’s classy but the encrypted chat-room consensus is, it’s lame. Some of us came up with our own: My Way, Over and Out, Je Ne Regrette, Die Nice, I’ll Pass.
Anyway, it turns out the local death rate’s so high I’ve barely switched the machine off since I got here four weeks ago: murders, boat smashes, cooking explosions, car wrecks, drugs-and-alcohol offences, pervert auto-asphyxiations, you name it. And suicides up the ass. Had one come in last night, a bleach-swallower, sweet sixteen, with eyes all big and dark and shit-scared till the Angel worked its magic. No way, I thought. There’s still such a thing as bleach?
A primitive, the sexy new doc on the ICU called her. But truth is, she could’ve been me a decade or so back, before I quit Kentucky and straightened out.
When I sent the kid’s report in to the Operator Feedback Division, I flagged up the exit shot, told them Threshold should use it in the promotional material when they launch, cuz bleach or no bleach, she went out with the best smile I’ve seen all year.
Her final wish? A ten-inch butterfly tramp-stamp, one wing either side of the coccyx. I kid you not.
Anyway according to the grapevine that we Angel operators aren’t supposed to even have, except we do, they’re designing the next generation before we’ve even fixed the glitches in this one. The jury’s out on what that means. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to have a job at all, with my history. In fact I think I speak for all of us in your employ, O mighty Threshold Care Corporation, when I say us Angel operators would go just about anywhere you choose to send us. Wouldn’t suit anyone with a family and ties, but the pay’s sweet, and you get to see pl
aces you’d never go otherwise: I’ve lived in Woonsocket, Rhode Island; Paragould, Arkansas; Black Diamond, Washington; Bismarck, North Dakota. And now hello, Lake Havasu City.
*
I drive over the original London Bridge every day on my way to the hospital. It must’ve been quite a landmark when the millionaire dude imported it stone by stone from Ye Olde England to make a tourist feature, but now it’s just part of the general shitscape: highway, hotel complexes, Walgreen’s, and – which is where I’m headed – Starbucks. I’m a creature of habit. I stop, buy one, and drink it in the car. Ew, yeah.
*
I roll into the ICU and fire up the Angel, and see the sexy new doc’s there again, the one that called the bleach-swallower a primitive.
“Hi Medicine Man.”
“Hi Kylie. Call me Angus.”
He’s early twenties, but I’m in good shape, so I’m on his radar. Hmm. Dr Angus van der Kamp. Sounds like a bull.
“How’s it hanging today, Angus?” He can rampage me any time.
“It’s hanging good thanks Kylie. We’ve got an ambulance due in fifteen. Car smash on the highway, oncoming truck driver DOA, two Angel candidates.”
“Cool. I like the challenge of multiples.”
He smiles. “Funny you should say that. I do too. I appreciate that extra layer of decision-making.”
*
Twenty minutes later I’ve hooked both tragedies into the system, an old man and a teenage girl, a family combo. The junior cop who came in with the ambulance must be a newbie, cuz she can’t stop staring at the messed-up leaking bodies.
“It used to get to me too once upon a time. But not any more,” I tell her. “Hasn’t for the last three postings. Can’t afford it, mental-health-wise. You get jaded instead, is what happens. These two’ll get a good send-off I promise. They’ll leave this world happy. Off you go kid, we got work to do.”
When the door’s swung behind her, Medicine Man shoots me a look. “We’re not supposed to discuss it.”
“I didn’t say anything,” I say, adjusting the old man’s head-mesh.
He face-shrugs. “Be careful, is all.”
“I worked obstetrics once,” I tell him as we prep up. “Loved it. You know, when you see them born, covered in blood and that white waxy shit and all, wriggling and then screaming and your heart goes yeah, yeah, yeah, you know? Life.”
He smiles. “Sure. I been there too. Nothing like it.”
“When I joined Threshold, I expected the same kind of kick. I mean, departure shouldn’t be that different from arrival. Not if it’s done right. Big spiritual moment, right?”
His eyebrows go up. “But?”
“Doesn’t happen. When I get into their cognitive system, you can see it’s not working how it should. I’m not the only one that thinks that. So operating the machine’s a bittersweet experience, is what I’m saying.”
“You seemed happy enough with the kid last night, how that went.”
“The one you called a primitive? I was and I wasn’t. I mean, she smiled nice when she got her ass-tattoo. But there’s more to a good death than a smile, right? You have to look at what the Angel’s promising here, then figure out if it’s delivering.”
“Isn’t that why Threshold’s trialling it?”
“Sure. I’m just saying, they haven’t thought it through.”
He looks at me sharp. “Kylie. Be careful. You can trust me – but you can’t trust everyone.”
“Confidentiality pledge doesn’t say you can’t discuss philosophy with colleagues.”
He thinks for a minute, then grins back at me. “She wants philosophy, huh. OK. You know what this reminds me of?” he cocks his head at the tragedies.
“No, what?”
“The one that goes: I’d like to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.”
I’m not expecting it: I laugh so hard I spit my coffee back into the cup.
I’m still chuckling as I calibrate the Angel to my pulse, put on the helmet and dock in.
*
“Hi there, Kylie Wells, Angel Operator, at your service.” The old geezer on the slab goes by the name of Jerry according to his ankle-tag. “So where have you mentally transported yourself to, my senior friend?” He’s well into shut-down but I have a knack with cognitive pathways, so I’m in real quick. It takes a moment to adjust to his mind’s eye cuz he’s clearly been drinking but when I do, the image is clear.
*
We’re entering a casino, name of Treasure Island. Las Vegas, I’m guessing. It’s a popular destination. Symbolic in some way I guess. The lottery of life and yada yada.
He loiters a bit near the entrance, taking in the ambience: the ventilated spice atmospheric, the horizon of heads, the clack of chips, the jewelled fingers, the beer-guts, the leathery cleavage-cracks. He’s feeling a hell of a lot younger than he really is. The old folk tend to. It’s a self-perception slash vanity thing.
No-one pops up in his mind so I sketch in a host: the generic man’s man the system calls a Jimbo. I choose Jimbo 2, who’s in his forties, the age Jerry’s feeling.
“I used to play a lot,” Jerry tells Jimbo 2, who’s playing doorman. “Never won big-time, not once. I’d come in and blow it the same night, left broke, the usual story, huh? Guess you’ve seen it a thousand times.”
“Sure have sir,” says the doorman. They like being called sir. “So what brings you back to our fine establishment tonight?”
“Oh, a memory lane thing I guess. Farewell visit. Last try at cheating the system.”
Incredible how on some level they always just know.
The doorman laughs. “Dollar for every time I hear that one, I’d be Alex Bezos.”
Jerry clucks his teeth, makes a face. “Good to be here. Came from my daughter’s wedding, over at the Lake.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Five months pregnant, already got two, different fathers and her eldest’s retarded. Anyway up the aisle she goes. Snowball’s chance in hell of that one working out. I give it two years, max.”
“Who’s the lucky guy?”
“A florist. What kind of man becomes a goddam florist?”
The doorman thinks for a moment. “How were the flowers?”
They both laugh, loud and meaty. Jerry sighs. “Anyway, family row, the usual shit. So I quit and here I am, all set to bet.”
“You left your daughter’s wedding?”
“Let’s just say I removed myself from the equation,” says Jerry. “Best for all concerned.”
“Families, huh?” says Jimbo 2, shaking his head. “So, you feeling lucky tonight sir?”
“Matter of fact I am. Feel like I might just walk out with a few thou. No, let’s make that a million, why not. Yeah. I’m up for that.”
“That what you want, sir?”
“You betcha. Would you say no to a million, man?”
“No, sir, I would not. Well, good luck.”
“Yeah, nice talking.”
Jerry takes a breath, forces his way to the bar at the centre, buys a double scotch, knocks it back in one, then gets himself a hundred dollars’ worth of chips. Meanwhile here at Ground Control my stomach’s rumbling. Come on Jerry, pick a table and let’s get started, I’m thinking. But he’s not progressing. He’s wandering around with his chips, looking at the tables, but not picking one. I was expecting Jerry to launch fast and smooth into the Great Beyond with his un-earned million in his pocket, and a big winner’s smile, false teeth blazing – but no. He’s sensing something’s off. You know when a cat’s decided to settle somewhere, and instead of just sitting down, it turns around and around and around, like it can’t decide which compass-point its ass should point to? Well Jerry’s indecision, it’s like that. Kind of a circling the drain thing I guess.
The system’s registered that the client’s uncomfortable and losing his gambling nerve.
From the way he’s swaying now, as he heads for the Men’s, you
can tell he’s got that seasickness problem the tech guys can’t seem to crack. The Angel Wobble we call it. I co-feel stuff but so far I’ve been immune to that one. Some colleagues, they’ll actually puke.
He staggers to the sink and splashes cold water on his face, then takes a deep breath and looks up.
AAAGH! The line on my screen spikes, then plunges.
Jesus. Woah there, thinks Jerry. WOAH! Who’s that ugly old bastard in the mirror? He blinks with shock. Jesus. It’s me. What happened?
I can’t help laughing. He hurtles out faster than you can say, suck it up, old man.
So, scrub Las Vagas as a scenario.
Repeat offer? The Angel wants Jimbo 2 back in the frame.
I know Jerry won’t go for it, but I press OK anyway. Call it a little bet with myself.
“Hey big guy,” says Jimbo 2 as he heads for the door. “You quitting already?”
“Yeah,” goes Jerry. “Just didn’t feel right.” Like it’s some heroic moral choice he’s made.
The Angel tries again, with Jimbo 2 saying: “You ain’t tempted to go back in and take your chances?”
“Nah, man,” says Jerry. “It’s a young man’s game. I’m done here.”
“Told ya!” I yell at the Angel. In my side vision Angus looks at me with a question on his face. “Sorry. Got carried away there,” I tell him. “System’s an idiot. I’ll need to re-boot Jerry here, he bailed out.” I shift the input. “While he’s in limbo let’s do the other one.”
*
When the helmet’s re-calibrated I enter the kid, name of Jessie-May. She’s got mild cerebral palsy according to the notes, and on top of that she’s all over the place emotionally, probably cuz her mother’s piggybacking. You get that a lot. Parents, priests, exes from hell, etcetera. Parasite presences, usually malign. I include God here. Takes a while to calibrate Jessie-May, and once I’m in we’re straight into a bad memory. She just peed herself behind the wedding marquee and wet her dress. When Ma found out she went apeshit and slapped her cheek right in front of the pastor.
