Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on March 30, 2014, 07:06:45 AM
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EP441: Kumara (http://escapepod.org/2014/03/29/ep441-kumara/)
By Seth Dickinson (http://www.sethdickinson.com/)
Read by Alasdair Stuart (http://alasdairstuart.com/)
This is an original work with no prior appearances.
Please visit the sponsor for this episode - Posthuman Pathways (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/Jagash/posthuman-pathways)
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You asked me why you are alive, and this is the answer: because I was asked to do the impossible, to choose someone to die. And I loved them all, loved them as I loved Kumara, as I loved myself. I could not bear the choice.
“I need you to choose one of our crew to delete,” Kumara told me.
“I need room to think, or we’re not going to make it.”
Thirty years of diligence said no, never and I began to refuse.
Outside the ship a revenant screamed a radio scream and through the umbilical of our link I felt Kumara cry back in defiance: jamming but still overmatched, struggling against sixty million years of mindless machine hate. Throwing every spark of thought she could muster into beating the revenant’s virals, decrypting them, compiling an inoculation.
I closed my eyes and waited for her to fail, for the revenant to slip into her systems, for the antimatter torch to let go and end us all. But Kumara held herself together. Turned the attack.
Her avatar grinned up from where she knelt, shoulder bowed with effort, nails clawed down to pink flesh. “Saved us again,” she said. “Ha. And they told me I wasn’t built for this. Thirty years, and still state of the art!”
“You can make it,” I said, knowing it was a lie, that she had tapped every scrap of processing power in her hull. I was systems officer; I was the ship as much as she was. But still I begged: “Just an hour to the jump point. You’ll make it. You don’t need to ask for any more.”
Kumara had taken the image of a woman, cable-shouldered, strong. Her hands trembled and her eyes shone bright with an inhuman intellect, a very human fatigue. Her intellect was digital, her fatigue an abstract, but she wore the metaphor of flesh. Flesh speaks clearly to the human mind.
She looked up at me with those brilliant tired eyes and shook her head. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m out of processing power. They’re getting too sophisticated and I can’t keep up. You have to delete someone from heaven.”
I closed my eyes and turned away.
I was the last living crew of Kumara, you see? The others were dead: Captain Shiroma, who burned in her own armor as she stole the machine god’s dream, Matthews who cracked the revenant code, smiling Jayaraman who died first, wordless Landvatter whose ash still painted the hull.
Our raid on the machine god, our Promethean theft, had gone poorly.
But Kumara’s systems had saved them as they passed. Snared their dying minds, digitized them, and uploaded them to heaven: a simulation, a place that might keep them stable. Coddle them in a pleasant hallucination until their psyches could be retrieved.
The heaven mainframe was the only resource she hadn’t tapped. But to make it useful, room would have to be opened, load reallocated. And there was no load on heaven except the minds and worlds of the people inside.
Another revenant struck, broadcasting narrow-beam, hurling itself against Kumara’s defenses. She made a flanged sound, harsh, inhuman, and fell to her hands and knees. Her eyes blanked and the edges of her projection went rough with aliasing.
“Hurry,” she whispered. “Please. Choose one of them and do it.”
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP441_Kumara.mp3)
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Really quite liked it :-)
It felt a little long as the protagonist described each "heaven" (but I did really like the idea of them), and enjoyed the language and imagery enough to gloss over the couple of questions that came up.
I did not see the twist coming, somewhat because there was no visual or audio marker nor context to indicate that the speaker was anything but who he/she said it was, so I believed them (is it normal that one person might be left alive on a ship like that?)
Also I was so enamoured with the "heavens" that I completely forgot about the "item" that they stole, and then I wished there had been more story to see what happened to it/him/her/they...
But I do have one question that I'd like to post to see what other people thought. The procedure that Kumara electronically performed on the crew seemed to me more of a cure than a lobotomy (to quote the episode). Certainly the Captain and Landvatter seemed to be the better for what was done. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but they seemed more at peace, more centred.
No I can understand the personal invasion because Kumara didn't ask, and I also get that regs are regs and Kumara broke them. But I wonder if she (assuming Kumara is female-ish) didn't help them.
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I love this story for many reasons, though I will freely admit that I am also the sponsor for this little episode.
I'm fascinated by the fact that the crewmembers, who sacrificed their lives for the mission, also unwillingly sacrifice part of their identities in the process. It's the idea that they become stronger by excising their humanity which really fascinates (and terrifies) me.
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In essence, this is another Allegory of the Cave or Life in the Matrix type story, though I really liked the lobotomy twist. There really were so many philosophical topics touched on here, like the trouble with sentient artificial intelligence, what defines and constitutes humanity, how to choose who gets to die for the greater good, and ethical questions around Kumara's punishment to name a few.
Kumara 2.0 will likely just have some programming that deletes the life that frees up the most space and allows for the most improved processing power, and I am ok with that.
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I enjoyed this one quite a bit. So far it's one of the three that will get my vote when he Best of 2-14 poll comes around.
I'm fascinated by the fact that the crewmembers, who sacrificed their lives for the mission, also unwillingly sacrifice part of their identities in the process.
Tangentially, this made me think, if we ever did come to the point where the soul/individual consciousness/spark/whatever you want to call it can be transferred or digitized, can you imagine the legal implications or extended ramifications of a company being able to extend your life and determine that extension's circumstances in such a way that you would not be able to influence it in any way… It's dizzying to ponder.
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"Oh how I cried"
I liked the world building, the characters, the surprise. What I liked best: The captains heaven and A hand full of moments as the "trimming" was happening. Each made me wince but the eyes turning down... The moment I heard that I was fortunate I was in a parking lot, because I teared up. I sobbed like a lost child. That HURT. And the end result.. was it worth it? That impossible improbable VERY human and very inhuman choice. Beautiful.
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I found the twist -- that Kumara was the one who actually did this, that there was no "systems officer" -- a bit of a cop-out. I understand when she says that no human could've done all this in an hour, but the fact that it was the ship... That's where the story lost me. I would rather it have been an android/robotic crewmember (a la Data on TNG) who was forced to make these decisions.
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I thought that the twist saved the story to some degree. When I thought that it was a human making the decision, I could not shake the idea that he really needed to choose the Captain. She had effectively said to choose her. And maybe I am also making too much of the old romantic notion that "the Captain goes down with the ship." In fact, I thought that I would come here and post that as much as I liked aspects of the story, that the decision not to choose the Captain was a significant flaw.
But, once I learned that it was Kumara making the choice, then it all fell into place for me. And then all of the ramifications of what it means to be human and what makes us human and who gets to make that decision . . . they all were made clear and I saw the story in a completely new way.
And I was happy not to know too much about what was stolen or why we stole it. I thought that it worked better in this story as a great unknown.
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I liked most of the story but was bothered by the anthropomorphic representation of the ship and her pleading with the systems officer (it seemed like a waste of processing power!), so the twist for me worked very well. It made me wonder - would an artificial intelligence, capable of modifying its own thought processes, be more likely than a human being to consider this kind of personality alteration preferable to death?
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I liked it! I'm not totally sure I understood everything, particularly about the Machine God. Was that like a Space Odyssey kind of space monolith and they were trying to salvage information from it or something? I have a feeling for what happened, but not a real grasp of it.
But that vagueness of understanding didn't change that I quite liked the story because the journey through the heavens was great, the decision was great. The parts that I didn't understand at first came to light as things were revealed.
I thought that the twist saved the story to some degree. When I thought that it was a human making the decision, I could not shake the idea that he really needed to choose the Captain. She had effectively said to choose her. And maybe I am also making too much of the old romantic notion that "the Captain goes down with the ship." In fact, I thought that I would come here and post that as much as I liked aspects of the story, that the decision not to choose the Captain was a significant flaw.
But, once I learned that it was Kumara making the choice, then it all fell into place for me. And then all of the ramifications of what it means to be human and what makes us human and who gets to make that decision . . . they all were made clear and I saw the story in a completely new way.
That was a similar reaction to me. The captain knows she's dead. She's said she would choose to die. And he doesn't kill her because she loves the ship? Wha...? But, yeah, the reveal that the narrator was the ship made that make sense. And that also made it all the more interesting when she met the captain again afterward and the captain looks at her like "I'm not sure what I saw in you" because the spark that made her choose her entire path in life has been excised.
The procedure that Kumara electronically performed on the crew seemed to me more of a cure than a lobotomy (to quote the episode). Certainly the Captain and Landvatter seemed to be the better for what was done. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but they seemed more at peace, more centred.
Actually, to me, that made the analogy of a lobotomy more apt, at least if we consider the original understanding of lobotomies when they were routinely performed. They were performed on patients who were exhibiting what others saw as behaviorial problems (some were schizophrenic and really had problems, others may have merely not fit into societal expectations). The intended outcome of the procedure was to make them calmer people who can still function. As far as a cursory Google search tells me, the results were extremely variable in practice, but calming and removing emotional bursts was the intended effect, but at the time it was seen as a cure for the underlying mental illness.
That meshes pretty well with Kumara's intent and with the effect that comes from it. The Heavens are not a problem because of what they are, but because they drive the Heaven's owner to strive for something. After the operation, they no longer have the will to strive. They're fine with how things are. Sure, you could see it as a cure if you see unhappiness and discontent as a disease. But I daresay unhappiness is a part of all of our existence, or at least the vast majority. But unhappiness is not always a negative thing. If I am unhappy, I can use that as an energy source to strive for better things--to work to improve the social order, to produce better art to share with the world, to explore, to discover, to accomplish something. If I'm always happy, then why not just... let things happen how they will happen. If everyone did that, not much would happen, we'd probably all just starve to death because no one is making the food.
Cure? Perhaps. But not without side effects. If unquestioning and eternal happiness is what you want, then a lobotomy (or certain kinds of drugs) might be just the thing for that.
I found the twist -- that Kumara was the one who actually did this, that there was no "systems officer" -- a bit of a cop-out. I understand when she says that no human could've done all this in an hour, but the fact that it was the ship... That's where the story lost me. I would rather it have been an android/robotic crewmember (a la Data on TNG) who was forced to make these decisions.
I don't understand. Why would it be better to have an android/robotic crewmember? Either way it would be an artificial intelligence trying to cope with a crippling decision. I don't see the difference.
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I found the twist -- that Kumara was the one who actually did this, that there was no "systems officer" -- a bit of a cop-out. I understand when she says that no human could've done all this in an hour, but the fact that it was the ship... That's where the story lost me. I would rather it have been an android/robotic crewmember (a la Data on TNG) who was forced to make these decisions.
I don't understand. Why would it be better to have an android/robotic crewmember? Either way it would be an artificial intelligence trying to cope with a crippling decision. I don't see the difference.
Because then you have an outside force acting upon the ship itself, instead of the ship making the decision. Intelligent ship stories are a really hard sell for me; every space opera story I write, the ship doesn't have an AI.
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I found the twist -- that Kumara was the one who actually did this, that there was no "systems officer" -- a bit of a cop-out. I understand when she says that no human could've done all this in an hour, but the fact that it was the ship... That's where the story lost me. I would rather it have been an android/robotic crewmember (a la Data on TNG) who was forced to make these decisions.
I don't understand. Why would it be better to have an android/robotic crewmember? Either way it would be an artificial intelligence trying to cope with a crippling decision. I don't see the difference.
Because then you have an outside force acting upon the ship itself, instead of the ship making the decision. Intelligent ship stories are a really hard sell for me; every space opera story I write, the ship doesn't have an AI.
I on the other hand eat up ship AI stories like candies. To each their own. :)
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I loved this story. Easily my favorite of 2014 so far and even including the latter part of 2013 as well. As Alasdair said, the language and the imagery were absolutely beautiful. The idea of post-human people with digitized immortality "dying" and going to heaven is fascinating. I mean, once you're post-human, and your mind is basically a data cluster on a hard drive, you become essentially immortal. When your physical body dies, your mind is simply transferred to another system until you choose to be downloaded again into a body. So what need would you have for an afterlife?
And that's what's so beautiful about this story. This society of post-humans understands the need for a break. They understand the need for death in order to maintain value in life. So, when your physical body dies, rather then just continuing on in a different location, you are actually removed from your situation, cut off from it, and given a time to rest in a fantasy world of your own creation, where you can recuperate from your previous life before you start anew. Fantastic.
And this is where Kumara's great crime really comes to light. Each of the crewmember's heaven's was a struggle, a malcontentedness that kept them searching, but it was a struggle of their own creation. I mean, this is heaven to them, therefor this is what makes them happy. And Kumara took that away from them. Albeit to save their lives, but was it worth it? Is it worth surviving a terrible accident if you're left on life support for the rest of your life? That's what Kumara did to them; she took away what made them happy. Sure, they were content, but in that they weren't happy, and they would never really know why. When Captain Shiroma came to visit Kumara at the end, and "shook her head, as if to say, why?", at first I thought she was asking Kumara why. Why would Kumara have done this to her, taken this from her? But she wasn't. She was asking herself why. Why had she once found this ship and this life so appealing? And she will never know the answer to that because Kumara stole that from her.
The twist ending I could take or leave with this one. I agree with others that the additional information about the nature of our narrator shed some light on a few questionable motives earlier in the story. But in the end, the reasons for their situation and the results are secondary to me behind the exploration of this digital personal heaven and the results of destroying aspects of what make us human in order to save us. Sure, the crew is still alive, but are they really alive anymore? Are they even themselves anymore?
Great story.
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I have to admit I had little patience with this story. I kept waiting for the narrator to own up and kill someone. It's not like he had much of a choice.
The problem here (IMHO) is that setup is there only to support the idea of the resolution, the re-fashioning of the stored. And *as a setup*, it sucks, because it's not a decision you can putz around over. You simply don't have the time. It would have been more honest if the ship, Kumara, had simply owned up to her identity in the first place.
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Oh man. I loved this one. I loved this story so hard in ways that I can only barely attempt to survive. I loved the quandary Kumara found itself in. I loved the idea of her solution. I loved the unreliable narrator, and how much sense it made at the end - of course an AI, incapable of visceral emotion, wouldn't know how to make this sort of decision and would end up relying on a clever-but-horrible solution. I loved the people we were presented with, however sketchy and surreal that presentation. I loved it all.
The idea that a human mind can't be truly held in stasis was also really interesting. Of course, it also makes a kind of sense. So, it turns out that in this universe, "mind" isn't a noun - it's a verb. And if a verb stops verbing, it stops being anything at all. It dies. A human mind can't be flipped on and off without damaging it because it's not an object or a machine, it's the byproduct of the operations of that organic machine, and if it stops doing, it stops being. Splendid!
Of course, that makes you wonder just what Kumara is. She's a true AI. She doesn't need a body or a heaven mainframe. She is a thing and can be turned on and off... what essential human characteristics does she lack that makes this possible? How is it that her mind is a noun and ours is a verb, and what does that mean about her, and us, and the giant planet-sized AIs? Are they trying to find a way to become what we are? To transcend what either of us is? Is that the secret they'll kill to protect, or something else?
Above all, though I loved the world the author presented us with. Damnit, I want this to be the setting of the posthuman sci-fi roleplaying game. Brave post-humans fighting the enormous and malevolent planet-sized AIs while contending with their own internal politics (I presume) and grappling with what it means to be human in an age of AIs and transferable consciousness.
So... well... I loved it. I want more. Well done!
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I loved this one too. I understood the dilemma that the ship was in, and found the solution to be amazing and terrible. I was disappointed to find that there wasn't a Systems Officer - it had been been so emphasized that the ship couldn't touch the Heaven mainframe, that it seemed a Deux et Machina to find that it could, and that it had.
I would have been more satisfied to find that the ship had needed to hack into the mainframe and bypass the Systems Officer.
But, overall, I loved it.
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Kumara was a well crafted story lending itself to reflection. The construction of the AI/Kumara character with its depth of human feeling (in a decidedly post-human environment?) was masterful. One could sense the interplay of emotions as the climactic decision was weighed. Cloaking itself in the persona of Systems Officer was something quite like what a child would do to explain a naughty deed. In that sense, this is something of a coming of age tale.
Upon reflection, I came to see how the AI/Kumara may have grafted into its programing the same characteristics it says it passed on to the nascent "machine god" entity. The drive to be somewhere else (à la the captain) sent the ship to observe the growth of the growing machine god entity. The prolonged "navel gazing" (à la our two heretofore frustrated yet now hopelessly entwined crew members) justifying its own course of action. And finally, the stubborn refusal (à la the fighting weapons officer) to give up its new self adjusted mission. I could not help but wonder if the contact with the machine god intelligence raised/moved/adjusted the self awareness of the AI/Kumara. To violate what might be seen as programming in the same vein as Asimov's Laws of Robotics when breeching the sanctity of the "heaven mainframe," could have been due to an outside influence. Might it be possible that the AI/Kumara's search/journey to see the growing machine god entity was a search/journey of both self-realization and need for community?
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I'm another for the "loved it" crowd. A couple of things to add that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet.
This appears to be--among other things--a very conscious reworking of the classic Tom Godwin story The Cold Equations (http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equations/). At the crucial moment of Kumara, the narrator declares "And it came to me that there was another way. A solution to the cold equation; a way we could all live. Reflecting on that moment, I think I even considered it a mercy." (Emphasis mine)
I recommend that people read The Cold Equations to fully understand Kumara, because I think that the thesis of Kumara stands out in stark relief to The Cold Equations. The Cold Equations envisions a merciless universe that is largely beyond the control of human beings. Kumara is--ironically, given the identity of the narrator--a humanist response. Kumara seems to say that human choice, human morality, human emotions, do matter. The posthuman protagonist fails to pick a person to die even when "cold equation" says that she must. And it is this failure that appears to be responsible for imparting human characteristics on the super-super-intelligent being that she addresses throughout the story. In short, The Cold Equations says that human feeling doesn't matter to the universe. Kumara says it does.
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I disagree that Kumara's is an adequate "solution" to the cold equation. I think her ultimate sin was that she robbed her captain and crew of their free will, and did so contrary to their fairly clear decisions that she not. Perhaps she delivered something wonderful to the new intelligence, and she obviously saved lives; lives that can't really say that they are worse off for the saving. But the reason they can't say that is because they no longer have the will to say it. Had she let one die, that crew member would have died fully intact. Instead, she forever altered all four, turning them into something different. If the definition of human autonomy is the right to be who we are, then Kumara violated a right perhaps more fundamental than life. And the question has to remain: Can we even say that the crew members actually survived?
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I should clarify that I don't think that Kumara the story is saying that the choice made by Kumara the character was the "correct" choice--I don't think there ultimately is a correct choice either in the situation of this story or the situation of The Cold Equations (except, of course, in The Cold Equations throwing in jail whatever murderous person decided that a "Keep Out" sign is sufficient warning for "DO NOT COME IN HERE OR YOU WILL BE SHOT INTO SPACE YES SERIOUSLY THE VACUUUM OF SPACE"). I think the story is saying that there IS a choice and that choice matters--matters in a way that is very human. The Cold Equations denies that a choice even exists.
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So, I think I enjoyed thinking about this story (and reading others' thoughts about it) more than the story itself. It raises so many interesting questions that are fascinating to ponder!
One thing that struck me later was Kumara's reason for not following the Captain's wishes by killing her to die to save the others. Through the eyes of the Systems Officer, it seemed like a misplaced respect for the Captain's dedication to her mission and her ship. I remember the Captain's love of the ship was emphasized. Looking back and realizing it was the ship making this decision, it puts Kumara's refusal to kill the Captain in a very different light. And of course the irony is that by "saving" the Captain, Kumara lost the very love she was unwilling to sacrifice.
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I needed the ending twist to make the story work. My initial reaction to the discussion with the Captain was, "Good. You talked to her, she's given you excellent advice, now follow it, you moron! As a result, I was impatient with the conferences with the other crew members. However, once I knew it was the ship making the decision, that put an entirely new spin on the question.
For me, the poignancy of Kumara's dilemma was that she had to find a solution for people she loved, but could not fully understand. I think she made the wrong choice. In stripping each of them of an essential trait, I think she lost the entire crew, and I think it was entirely right that she be forbidden from traveling with a human crew again. But, I respect the anguish that went into her decision, and the intent behind what she did. For me, that's the heart of the story.
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So, I think I enjoyed thinking about this story (and reading others' thoughts about it) more than the story itself. It raises so many interesting questions that are fascinating to ponder!
Yes, I quite agree.
Also: That there was a twist ending was not a surprise; what the twist was, was a surprise. I thought the twist was going to be that the sysop was the dead one. Not sure the ship as narrator really worked.
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For me, the poignancy of Kumara's dilemma was that she had to find a solution for people she loved, but could not fully understand. I think she made the wrong choice. In stripping each of them of an essential trait, I think she lost the entire crew, and I think it was entirely right that she be forbidden from traveling with a human crew again. But, I respect the anguish that went into her decision, and the intent behind what she did. For me, that's the heart of the story.
Agreed completely. For me, that was the rub, and therein the glory. I finished totally sympathetic of Kumara and totally unwilling to give it a pass. Horrible atrocities have/can/will be committed with the best of intentions. As someone who believes that intent should be 80-90% of the calculation of punishment, it's hard for me to fault Kumara's process, but obviously you cannot allow an entity that would opt for the death of many over the death of one to be in a spot where these decisions are made.
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Hey! Just listened to this one, and I had a completely different solution occur to me in the middle. Instead of cutting out what made each of them most human to save on Heaven space, (or delete one of them, or the Macguffin,) why not translate the things that Kumara needs the memory for into those virtual heavens, and let them help her fight off the Revenants? There are possible parallels, though they don't fit perfectly; the tech officer fighting off ferocious threats would be the clearest, dialing him into the defenses. The captain's heaven could be tied into the search for the safe jump point, (even though she's trying to find somewhere she hasn't been, and Kumara is trying to get home. Might have to deceive her a little.) The two lovers would be the hardest to fit in a satisfying way, something about combining to analyze data, or just sending it back and forth.
After I got to the bit about feeding what it got from the human crew into the Macguffin, I don't really like my idea so well, but I still wanted to share it with y'all.
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Cool idea Chris! I think it may not have worked because trying to make that kind of alteration would probably just make the crew members crash. But a cool idea anyway, and would've been cool if the story had noted it and dismissed it for some reason or other.
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Wouldn't that be neat, though? If the afterlife is going to be a computer construct anyway, why not make it a copy of the ship? they might even be able to make the transition with barely a blip between reality and afterlife...just some deja vu or something Matrix-style... Although, I have to admit, if that were the deal IRL, I think I'd rather just be dead than forced to continue in work purgatory. So maybe the answer is just that Kumara should have killed them all.
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I mean, this is heaven to them, therefor this is what makes them happy.
I disagree. It was CALLED heaven, probably named so because it's where you put dead crew members. But these weren't heavens made for you to be happy, they're heavens that keep you alive because they keep you striving, pushing. Kumara didn't take away their happiness, she took away their striving.
Which to me makes the choice a much more muddied one. Ask a lobotomy recipient if he's happy and he may well say yes, but that's not the same thing as him saying yes BEFORE, because his mind has been fundamentally changed. But, why should the lobotomized guy care about what the pre-lobotomy guy would say as long as lobotomized guy is happy? Why should that matter? The reason it matters, to me, is that I'm pre-lobotomized guy thinking about how I'd like it if it happened, dammit, and I want to be me. I'm sure Lobotomized Unblinking is a very nice fellow, and I'd be happy to buy him a Guinness if I ever run into him as long as I don't have to become him.
In the end, I don't think Kumara made an unreasonable decision given her situation. IMO it is simultaneously wondrous and horrendous, a fine balance to strike.
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...It was CALLED heaven...
That's H.E.A.V.E.N. -- the Humane Evanescent Alternative Virtual Environment Nexus (TM) -- brought to you by OmniCorp.
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Share and enjoy!
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What I really liked about this piece was how it subtly unfolded layers and layers of the actual twist at the end--and every time we get a bit deeper, we learn more about the characters and the narrator in a way that makes us sympathize with all of them. At the end, I felt like it didn't really matter who was human and who wasn't--it was a story of individuals who loved each other and did what they thought was best for each other.
Very delicately, sensitively written and a great concept.
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Hey! Just listened to this one, and I had a completely different solution occur to me in the middle. Instead of cutting out what made each of them most human to save on Heaven space, (or delete one of them, or the Macguffin,) why not translate the things that Kumara needs the memory for into those virtual heavens, and let them help her fight off the Revenants? There are possible parallels, though they don't fit perfectly; the tech officer fighting off ferocious threats would be the clearest, dialing him into the defenses. The captain's heaven could be tied into the search for the safe jump point, (even though she's trying to find somewhere she hasn't been, and Kumara is trying to get home. Might have to deceive her a little.) The two lovers would be the hardest to fit in a satisfying way, something about combining to analyze data, or just sending it back and forth.
After I got to the bit about feeding what it got from the human crew into the Macguffin, I don't really like my idea so well, but I still wanted to share it with y'all.
That would have been a really cool place for the story to go.
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Welp, here goes.
I did not like this story. In fact, I think my dislike of this story was directly proportional to the amount of love it has gotten from the majority of the forum.
There were many things that I agree were laudable; the writing and pacing was more than decent, and the characters were distinct and interesting. However, the different heavens were, honestly, to me, a bit heavy handed. I couldn't help but think of What Dreams May Come, that Robin Williams movie, that I saw as a kid. It's not that the idea in itself wasn't intriguing, or that the heavens themselves weren't well described; they just read as cheesy. In addition, I felt like having three of the four crew member's heavens be water based made those two particular places lack distinction. With literally nothing but their own minds shaping their worlds, it is less interesting to me that the majority of the group would pick such similar destinations. Thinking on it as I write, the fact that those three were at such peace in their heavens, while the one in the mountains was in such turmoil, was another thing that took away some of the appeal I think this story had potential of having.
I did not like the twist. Not the twist that the one who made the decision was Kumara, but who the AI was speaking too and attempting to explain herself to. I felt like the entire reason behind the fighting itself, against the Machine for something stolen, was poorly explained, so the entity she was speaking to was, in extension, hard to really understand in a meaningful way. I don't really get how the things she took from the crew members was fine when being used by it, but not when being used by the crew themselves.
On a philosophical level, I believe she made the full-on wrong decision. I'd rather die than be less of myself, especially if the thing taken from me was as defining of my personality and soul as the things she took from the crew. That choice was the one thing that I agree with the forum on, though. That was a great moral quandry to think on; I just didn't really like the packing I got the question in.
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It was weeks ago that I listened to this podcast, but just now, reading the forums, something occurred to me: By taking the actions she did, Kumara didn't just harm her crew, she ALSO screwed up the mission.
Recall the object was to get a sample from the Machine God, and then grow it to see what it would become. But she went and injected the sample with the human drives and personality elements of her crew, which means she hopelessly contaminated the sample. It's as if a researcher pithed their fellow team members in order to get a sample of Lake Vostok, and then dumped their pee in the sample.
So not only did Kumara wreck the minds of the crew, she rendered the entire mission, and the actions she took in order to complete the mission, pointless. Man, the things we do for love.
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I loved the reveal and it made me smile. That Kumara pleaded with the non-existent Systems Officer was actually brilliant for me because it made me think how we all wrestle with decisions and sometimes vocalise those questions despite already possessing the answer.
I normally hate open ended endings because the frustrate with their lack of resolution but this did actually feel like a complete story and that the adventures of the 'other' would be a who new story. Which I would love to hear by the way...
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Ad to me to the list of love for this one. I've been thinking about it all day actually. You know it's a fantastic story when it has you doing that! :)
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The idea that the simulation could not be stopped doesn't make any sense in a computer that is itself capable of stopping and restarting without loss. Consider emulator savestates, or hibernation savestates. Externally, the emulation (or simulation if you like) stops, but internally to that simulation it is continuous. The only way that this idea makes sense is if the computer on which the minds are being emulated is itself a brain; AND that also requires that you accept that the reason brains aren't good at being restarted without loss must be less to do with what happens after the mind stops minding or what causes it to do so, and more to do with the actual stoppage itself.
On a bad-sci-fi scale of 1 to 10 with the human batteries premise in The Matrix being about an 8 and every sci-fi themed pop song being a 10, this is about a 4 or 5; it was clearly required to make the conflict work, but it just stood out like a hangnail for me. Good story otherwise.
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Something that has not been mentioned about the reveal that Kumara is the Systems Officer is the critical nature of this deception to the story craftsmanship. If we did not have Kumara pleading with the Systems Officer to hurry and to emphasize the external threat, there would be a fraction of the dramatic tension in the story. If this deception was not included to emphasize the external threat and time crunch then there would be mass complaining about the computer dawdling under fire.
Good stuff, and a really nice pickup for EscapePod as an original publication. Well done!
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On a bad-sci-fi scale of 1 to 10 with the human batteries premise in The Matrix being about an 8 and every sci-fi themed pop song being a 10
Now I'm just curious what sci-fi themed pop songs you are using to calibrate your scale.
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On a bad-sci-fi scale of 1 to 10 with the human batteries premise in The Matrix being about an 8 and every sci-fi themed pop song being a 10
Now I'm just curious what sci-fi themed pop songs you are using to calibrate your scale.
A suggestion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVmTxYlvtSQ&feature=kp).
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The idea that the simulation could not be stopped doesn't make any sense in a computer that is itself capable of stopping and restarting without loss. Consider emulator savestates, or hibernation savestates. Externally, the emulation (or simulation if you like) stops, but internally to that simulation it is continuous. The only way that this idea makes sense is if the computer on which the minds are being emulated is itself a brain; AND that also requires that you accept that the reason brains aren't good at being restarted without loss must be less to do with what happens after the mind stops minding or what causes it to do so, and more to do with the actual stoppage itself.
On a bad-sci-fi scale of 1 to 10 with the human batteries premise in The Matrix being about an 8 and every sci-fi themed pop song being a 10, this is about a 4 or 5; it was clearly required to make the conflict work, but it just stood out like a hangnail for me. Good story otherwise.
This was definitely on my mind while writing the story - it's pretty fundamental to the nature of computing that the simulation should be able to halt. Ultimately I resorted to a kind of cheat, invoking that dread term 'quantum'. Kumara's heaven mainframe is a topological quantum computer, and under these operating conditions, the minds stored within will become lossy and decohere if the simulation is halted. I don't know if you'll find this a satisfying answer, but I hope it's worth something that it was on my thoughts!
Kindest thanks to all of you who've responded.
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"Quantum" is to modern SF the way "nuclear" or "magnetic" was to 1950's SF. Someday, people besides the experts will be able to go, "What? That makes no sense whatsoever," but in the interim, it's a useful stand-in for phlebotinum or unobtainium. ;-)
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Hmm, strangely I was not a huge fan of this story. I felt like the unreliable narrator trick was played in a way that was only there because the story needed it, not because the narrator had any real motivation behind it. Specially since the narrator has to turn the table on itself, which felt like it came out of nowhere.
Similarly, the science and technology of the world feels way too convenient for the story, bordering on deus ex machina territory. The characters are not particularly interesting, and the whole heaven construct basically reduces them to a single trait.
But given those complaints, I found the narrative drive and writing good, and the world building had seeds of something very interesting. I remain curious to see what the author comes out with in the future.
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The idea that the simulation could not be stopped doesn't make any sense in a computer that is itself capable of stopping and restarting without loss. Consider emulator savestates, or hibernation savestates. Externally, the emulation (or simulation if you like) stops, but internally to that simulation it is continuous. The only way that this idea makes sense is if the computer on which the minds are being emulated is itself a brain; AND that also requires that you accept that the reason brains aren't good at being restarted without loss must be less to do with what happens after the mind stops minding or what causes it to do so, and more to do with the actual stoppage itself.
On a bad-sci-fi scale of 1 to 10 with the human batteries premise in The Matrix being about an 8 and every sci-fi themed pop song being a 10, this is about a 4 or 5; it was clearly required to make the conflict work, but it just stood out like a hangnail for me. Good story otherwise.
This was definitely on my mind while writing the story - it's pretty fundamental to the nature of computing that the simulation should be able to halt. Ultimately I resorted to a kind of cheat, invoking that dread term 'quantum'. Kumara's heaven mainframe is a topological quantum computer, and under these operating conditions, the minds stored within will become lossy and decohere if the simulation is halted. I don't know if you'll find this a satisfying answer, but I hope it's worth something that it was on my thoughts!
Kindest thanks to all of you who've responded.
I'm a sysadmin. I work with virtual machines every day and I actually loved the idea that a person's mind could not be stopped and restarted. If a ship member's mind completely lives in memory, stopping and starting that person's mind, to me, would at the very least revert the mind to the time that it was put into the system in the first place, the snapshot of that mind. If there was no snapshot, then removing them from memory would absolutely wipe them out.
When you turn off a virtual machine, you have to "quiesce" the virtual memory of that virtual machine. If you don't, you are very likely going to cause problems with that virtual machine. There are some ways around this including caching, snapshots and shared storage, but if a machine is 100% memory, you're boned.
Up until that explanation, I was skeptical of the decision because it was a simple "just hibernate them" answer for me. Thank you for closing that loophole.
As for the decision itself, I had the opposite problem to Kumara. The captain wanted to die to save the ship, kill her. The pair were so wrapped up in each other and themselves that they were communicating millions of times the amount of data, therefore they experienced millions of times the time, therefore they were good candidates to be killed. The tech officer was basically in his own Sisyphean hell, and would have been better off not existing, so kill him. This choice would not have taken me long, I probably would have stopped at the captain. But all 4 were justifiable.