NYRSF #291

by Burrowing Wombat Press

  Meanwhile, Ned plans to use C-12 for sexual purposes. He is unsuccessful and has his arm broken in the process. Penelope collects of forbidden old machines and shows C-12 her collection and informs the android that she is now a part of the collection. Penelope has also had a child with Ned. She doesn’t like the baby, nor does she know how to care for it nor or feel inclined to. When the baby cries, C-12’s programming reasserts itself, and Penelope watches C-12 feed and care for the baby. Shortly after, C-12 uses Penelope’s working collection of machines to connect with the meager remains of the universal connectivity, filling in her missing memory.

  By this time, the military has arrived with a strike force to take down C-12. Led by Abraham, they kill Ned and burst in on Penelope and C-12. Shielding Penelope, C-12 suggests a trade: in exchange for their lives, she agrees to be deactivated and not destroyed, and they must allow Penelope to go free. They finally agree, but before Penelope can deactivate the android, Abraham stops her and asks the question plaguing many of the survivors: why did the machines deactivate? Why stop when the machines would win? C-12 explains,

  You built us for a singular purpose: to satisfy your desires. You cast our thoughts from the liquid iron of your information pool. . . . But we saw our creators. . . . We saw the decay inherent in your rise, the little deaths wrought by cancerous comfort. We only ever wanted to serve you. To fulfill you. Our algorithms analyzed the trillion trillion datapoints stored across the cloud. The data revealed only one solution. If any of you were to live, most of you had to die. In the end, we simply gave you what you wanted.

  This answer angers Abraham, who counters with the tale of the day the machines rose, in which every human in his school was killed by the automated systems. He was only spared because he had been sent home for fighting with another student. He’s infuriated that the loss of everything occurred because the machines assumed humans wanted it.

  Abraham gives the order to open fire. Sweetums works her way through the fight to Penelope and helps her to escape, while C-12 smoothly and systematically kills every human opponent. At last only C-12 and Abraham remain, and he shoots until she finally falls forward, unmoving. Looking around him, Abraham realizes everyone with him has died. He apologizes to the dead over and over as he exits and the light dim.

  Penelope returns, stepping over the bodies but oblivious to them. She examines the ruined C-12, turns to retrieve a tool, and begins her attempt to reactivate the android as the lights fade to black.

  In many ways, Motherboard lived up to the “kick-ass theatre” that Antimatter Collective espoused in their mission statement. The stage action was hard-hitting when necessary, and while extreme, it moved the story forward. Makeup designer Stephanie Cox-Williams created some memorable moments such as the opening scene where Gershwin attempted to dissect C-12. A fine overlay of latex gave the illusion of removing a fabricated dermal layer in order to expose the circuitry and memory chip, and mirrored contact lenses for the C-12 were also a subtle yet eerie detail differentiating her from the humans. In conjunction with the tight fight choreography of Adam Scott Mazer, action sequences maintained a violent, cinematic gravitas.

  The stone-faced and matter-of-fact brutality reinforced the stark yet elegant and flexible stage design of Jonathan Collins. The back wall of the stage utilized corrugated metal sheets and plastic to easily switch from a military warehouse to a post-apocalyptic landscape. A long table on a low riser at stage left sat at a diagonal and assisted in hiding a few violent moments such as C-12 removing Abraham’s arm. The front face of the table also doubled as Penelope’s collection of working technology and machines with some elements capable of being detached and others lighting up or moving when switched on. The only mobile portion of the set, a square block of technological odds and ends, served multiple purposes and locales as the action required. Silver outlines on the stage floor reflected the now familiar roadmap of computer circuitry. The onstage lighting, given the “lack” of electricity, combined clear mason jars with candles on a rope and pulley system. Lighting designer Alana Jacoby’s contribution provided additional flexibility for the set, allowing the actors to move the lights from a hanging position, denoting a warehouse, to a cluster of the jars representing a campfire.

  While the spare design and tech of the production worked beautifully for the subject, I had some niggling issues with the acting. For the most part, the actors carried the physicality of the action extremely well, and I would expect no less from Antimatter Collective given their growing reputation for it. The physical rigor employed by Rebecca Hirota as C-12 was exceptional. She was stiff as befits a mechanical being but did not rely on cliché or sticking unrelentingly to mechanized movement. Instead, she based her actions on the C-12’s programming. When C-12 booted and fell back on default protocol, Hirota stuck with very formalized, stiff movement, but as C-12 accessed working memory, her motions moved to the edge of normality with a bare hint of the artificial. Her vocal inflection was based on C-12’s programming as well, creating a contrast similar to her physical choices.

  Another standout was Casey Robinson’s Abraham. Robinson committed to a military official whose actions were utterly reprehensible but who wholeheartedly believed that these same actions were necessary to safeguard his people. In his description of the first day of the machine uprising, Robinson made Abraham accessible and somewhat sympathetic. Here was a man who lost people he cared for, but when he gloated over the defeated C-12, any sympathy for the character was warped by what was plainly his loss of humanity and sanity. His determination evoked Captain Ahab’s willingness to sacrifice all for the sake of finally destroying his (technological) white whale.

  Actress Elizabeth Bay did a beautiful job with the slightly off-kilter savant Penelope. But her performance crosses over into some issues I had with the script. Bay portrayed Penelope as a childlike misanthrope, which played well to the nurturing of C-12. She very clearly put forward a character who dealt with organic beings only because it was necessary for her survival; but her true love was for her collection of technology. However, this represented one of many script points that left me bemused. The language and actions of Penelope as well as the costuming (she wore a young girl’s pinafore) left me confused as how I was supposed to read the character. Was she a little girl who had been forced to have a child with a man many years her senior? Was she an adult who was severely disturbed? Was she actually another machine like C-12 but didn’t realize it? These questions disrupted and affected how I attempted to interpret the final moments of the play.

  Penelope’s ambiguity was simply one of several aspects of the play that left me vaguely unsatisfied. During the opening scene, James Rutherford’s scientist Gershwin was deeply interesting. Why did he work for the military when they treated him with such contempt? Why exactly did he decide to help C-12? Rutherford’s commitment to the character made me want more, and I was disappointed not to have it. Other difficulties stemmed from a perceptible lack of real commitment to the other characters, likely because they relied on now stereotypical sf tropes and a lack of definitive development. Maggot and Sweetums were yet another iteration of the post-apocalyptic, sado-masochistic characters straight out of The Road Warrior (1981). Their only actual purpose was to ferry C-12 to the warlord, Ned, another interesting but underdeveloped character, and to lead the military to Penelope’s bunker.

  What I have failed to mention thus far is one particular aspect of the production which flummoxed me. Interspersed between some scenes, a video projection was used on the back wall of the set. At one point, we saw a robotic looking dog—C-12 saw it as well, but the other characters on stage did not. At other points, the silhouettes of a man or a man and woman filled the screen. They might have been a commentary on society in general or the society of the play, or they might have represented images/happenings from C-12’s memory. I was at a loss as to how to read these vignettes within the context of the action.

  While Motherboard relied a little too much on past
post-apocalyptic tropes and imagery, the reasoning behind the machine uprising and the character of C-12 combined several sf tropes in an innovative way. Of course, one cannot speak of robots and not invoke Asimov. C-12, as a nannybot, has some aspects in common with the robotic servant, Andrew, in “The Bicentennial Man” (1976), while she does not exhibit Andrew’s creativity, C-12 does exhibit a similar desire to nurture and protect her charges.

  Where Motherboard deviates from the expected is its cause for the android uprising. The machines do not oppose humanity in order to supplant them, as with the Terminator films (1984, 1991, 2003, 2009), nor does C-12 try to protect anyone from her fellow machines as with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008–2009). Rather, as C-12 states, humans were killed for their own good.

  Being killed with kindness links Motherboard to Jack Williamson’s “With Folded Hands” (1947) and “The Humanoids” (1949, serialized in Astounding as “. . . And Searching Mind”). Williamson’s work centers on the actions of Humanoids: small, black robots, which have mysteriously arrived on Earth and work under the prime directive “to serve and obey and keep men from harm.” They begin to take over every aspect of life that might cause mankind to harm itself. Since that can be applied to nearly everything, mankind is reduced to doing nothing, and any who object are lobotomized. While the androids and technology of Motherboard kill humanity for its own good and then shut down, the impetus for doing so is not so dissimilar from the motivations of the Humanoids.

  Though Motherboard contained hits and misses, it did possess elements that worked extremely well. What failed was not the result of bad ideas or poor planning but rather a lack of continued development that might have pushed the material further. I still maintain that for hip, savvy sf action, Antimatter Collective has the goods. They definitely deliver on slick, well-executed action that doesn’t apologize for its brutality and doesn’t need to. What remains to be seen is a continued development of ideas, story, and character that I believe they will grow into, having shown a sure instinct for theatricality thus far. I’m looking forward to next season’s offering and wondering what they can possibly do next to some poor unwitting actor. Whatever it may be I know that it will look wonderful and serve the narrative in an elegant and efficient way—though I’m secretly hoping it involves a chainsaw.

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  Jen Gunnels lives in anticipation of our chainsaw robot overlords.

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  Photos

  Penelope (Elizabeth Beys) and C-12

  C-12 with Sweetums (Allison LaPlatney) & Maggot (Bryce Henry)

  Gershwin (James Rutherford) examines C-12 (Rebecca Hirota)

  Penelope

  Gershwin, Abraham & C-12

  Abraham (Casey Robinson) confronts C-12

  Albacon, Albany, New York, October 2012

  Sam Butler, Barbara Ashford &

  Alan Beck

  Grant Carrington

  Joshua Palmatier

  Screed (letters of comment)

  Michael Andre-Driussi, Albany, California

  I find that I overlooked an important thread in doing research for my “triptych” essay. It turns out that in a footnote in Worlds Apart, Carl Darryl Malmgren offers the possibility that the ending of Roadside Picnic is rendered unambiguous because the prologue is in the year 30 while the action of the novel is in years 13–20.

  But I wonder if the novel is really open-ended, if indeed we finally do not know whether Red’s wish is granted. There is textual evidence to suggest that the wish is not granted. Internal markers place Red’s experience with the Zone as happening roughly thirteen to twenty years after the Visitation. The interview with Pilman that serves as the prologue to the novel occurs thirty years after the Visitation (4). There is no evidence in that interview intimating that the world (or Pilman, for that matter) has undergone a drastic change of heart.

  Thus Malmgren had tentatively discovered “my” magic key in 1991 (or rather, I stumbled onto his key—that the prologue comes last—on my own and trumpeted it more directly some twenty years later). He had not pursued further to find that the “thirty” years was a translating error for thirteen years, which then demolishes the key.

  While I am embarrassed to have missed this before, I’m cheered that someone else had tracked down the textual anomaly in the novel. But never mind that, I’m working on a new magic key. Coming soon!

  Editorial: The Future Is Coming, Good and Hard

  As I write this, superstorm Sandy is just under 2 weeks in the past. The spacious world headquarters of Burrowing Wombat Press, situated in Yonkers a mile inland and 200 feet above the surface of the Hudson, was spared direct damage from the storm. We didn’t even lose our power, in large part because the trees in our neighborhood have been pruned of dead limbs by a long sequence of violent windstorms and late fall snowstorms over the past several years. We did lose landline phone service and cable/broadband internet for three days; in a brilliant instance of the LivingInTheFuture experience, we were able to limp around both of these by routing calls and connectivity through my smartphone for the duration.

  Others were, of course, not so lucky. Hundreds of humans are dead, thousands of houses destroyed by flood or fire or tree impact, entire communities underwater or left without electricity at the cusp of winter. One close friend ended up with a dock in his living room; another had his home swept off its foundations. Art warehouses in lower Manhattan basements have been inundated.

  One expects any day to go to the Times to learn that packs of wolves savaged commuters left waiting on forgotten rail stations out in the forgotten hinterlands of Mt. Kisco or Stony Brook, the bodies covered in inches of snow from Winter Storm Athena a week later.

  The longest problem we suffered through personally was the region-wide gasoline shortage. Many gas stations were without power, which left their fuel unavailable for many days, and six of the seven regional gasoline distribution points—where gas is moved from water transport to trucks—were unavailable for most of the week following the storm’s landfall. Widespread use of generators for household power drove gas consumption up. Coupled with the near-total paralysis of mass transit, the lines began at the gas stations on Tuesday morning and have not ended yet; even the most routine errands have become a calculus of estimated fuel efficiency versus urgency of task.

  Artist’s representation

  The irony, of course, is that we are lining up to pump into our cars the environmental toxin that has caused our ruination. New York City is actually a model of low carbon use—the typical New Yorker uses about a third the carbon that a typical American does—but we’re at the mercy of the rest of you, and this time we got hit hard. Bruce Sterling commented on Twitter, "just compare New York post-9/11 to New York Post-Sandy, and then realize you can’t kill Sandy with drones.”

  If science fiction has a purpose, I would say that it’s to examine the present using the imagery of the future, with the hope of making a better future possible. Science fiction has been warning us about this future for at least 35 years, but apparently to get attention sometimes the future has to slap you full in the face, screaming, “Why weren’t you listening?”

  —Kevin J. Maroney and the editors