EP235: On the Human Plan

[Swamp]

EP235: On the Human Plan

By Jay Lake.
Read by Mike Boris (of Mike Boris Audio).

First appeared in Lone Star Stories, February 2009.

I am called Dog the Digger. I am not mighty, neither am I fearsome. Should you require bravos, there are muscle-boys aplenty among the rat-bars of any lowtown on this raddled world. If it is a wizard you want, follow the powder-trails of crushed silicon and wolf’s blood to their dark and winking lairs. Scholars can be found in their libraries, taikonauts in their launch bunkers and ship foundries, priests amid the tallow-gleaming depths of their bone-ribbed cathedrals.

What I do is dig. For bodies, for treasure, for the rust-pocked hulks of history, for the sheer pleasure of moving what cannot be moved and finding what rots beneath. You may hire me for an afternoon or a month or the entire turning of the year. It makes me no mind whatsoever.

As for you, I know what you want. You want a story.

Rated PG. Contains entropy and age. A lot of it.


Listen to this week’s Escape Pod!

[fearthepenguin]

Excellent narration!  Voices, audio quality, really outstanding.  The story was captivating, but I suspect it flows a bit better as something read as opposed to something listened to.  I had to listen to it a few times to grasp some of the imagery,  but then again I might just be slow  I'm going to track this one down and see if I can read it online, curious to see what I come away with.
edit
The actual text does help fill in the image.   Interesting idea, I would like to read more.

[Gia]

I liked the concept, but the end felt unsatisfying. Dog talked to his priest friend and then . . . nothing. I know that that's supposed to be the point because nothing really ends in that world, but it still bothered me.

[KenK]

Listened to it twice and couldn't make heads or tails out of it. 

The ex-NPR voice actor sure was a pleasure to listen to though. 

[Jinmoonlight]

I absolutely adored this tale.  It had the feel of one of those classic sci-fi stories that were more about the composition of a thought than creating a traditional narrative. 

The reading had a classic feel as well, reminding me of 1980's books on tape. 

[Kathryn]

I am way too stupid to understand this one. Love the voice, though.

Kathryn

[Subgenre]

I kept waiting for Dog the Digger to go down and have an adventure digging for Death's Door. The fact that the story builds up for an adventure and then steers directly away from that left me a little miffed. It's not that I don't like philosophical stories, I've been going through back-episodes and Exhalation is a great one, but this one's beginning and framing device of a storing being told built up my expectations that it would be an adventure piece.

[wakela]

I really enjoyed this story and the reading was fantastic.  The ending did leave me confused.  Like following a river and having it end up in a swamp.  Dog said several times that the door to death he was looking for was not a metaphor, and yet that's what we got.  Or is it.  Not 100% to be honest.  But still I would wholeheartedly welcome more stories from Jay Lake* and more read by Mike Boris.

*That name sounds familiar.  I remember from the intro that he's published a lot of stuff, but I forgot if he's had anything on EP.

[cdugger]

Just couldn't get into this one. Not enough story in the story. Loved the concept, and would like to hear more from that Universe, but with a little more life.

The reading was great, but too much of that NPR tone. Started to lull me to sleep, and that's sad, because he's got a wonderful voice! Again, a little more life.

Regardless, I want more from both.

[bumdhar]

I think this story was a slam dunk. It had a poetic, philosophical quality to it that one rarely sees in short fiction these days. I'm defiantly gonna give it another listen, and seek out the text version somewhere. I also thought the story was well read. Professionally done.   

[tinroof]

I've got to agree with Subgenre. I loved the imagery, the world, the narration, but the ending left me pretty underwhelmed compared to the rest of it. The whole thing deserved to be a longer and much bigger piece.

Still a very good story, though.

[KenK]

This story reminds me of a Salvador Dali painting or an M.C. Escher drawing; beautiful imagery and exquisite craftsmanship signifying nothing. Sci-fi zen.

[Sgarre1]

I visited the Salvador Dali museum just south of Tampa, Florida back in 2007 and I think they'd disagree with at least part of that statement...

“We’re just people who remain ever-curious. We’re just attracted to whatever comes in handy. Again, like the Surrealists, anything you run across is actually beautiful; within a single city block, you find miraculous things. It’s a good planet—and good things can happen.”
Lux Interior

[KenK]

So is the meaning left deliberately obscure or does it really have any specific meaning at all? When prose is this obscurantist, no matter how beautifully constructed, the analysis becomes like some kind of English grad student post-modernism seminar. It descends into solipsism or becomes a Rorschach test style critique. But it is lovely though, eh? 

[Sgarre1]

Dali is fairly explicable, once you know what his major concerns are.  There's no "signifying nothing" there...

“Here, clock time is no longer valid.”
J. G. Ballard, THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION, (re: Salvador Dali's “Persistence of Memory”)

[stePH]

I am way too stupid to understand this one.

Don't sell yourself short like that... at least consider the possibility that it just wasn't a very good story.

I didn't care for it, myself.  Agree that it kind of sets the audience up for an adventure story and then just goes off into pretentious toss.

[Doom xombie]

I personally loved the story. The reader gave it a nice rhythm and the story flowed right into my mind. The imagery was very vivid to me. I kept visualizing digger holding that axe. Actually I pictured only the axe. In my head digger kept morphing from more or less human plan to something like a dump truck to bobcat-type thing. I loved how my perception was challenged when he went inside the church and the priest scryed. And at the end when you realize that earth is in perpetual stasis of some kind. Waiting only for the sun to wake them from it. I thought what Mr. Eley said was interesting, the bit about with death there is not life. There is only being, existing, waiting perhaps.

[tinroof]

I personally couldn't help but picture Digger as a large, exasperated wombat. Maybe that's why I liked the story so much.

[Listener]

The narration was excellent, and the narrator perfectly-chosen for this story.

However, I didn't enjoy the story. It took too long to get to the story that Digger told, and that story had no real ending. It just sort of melted away into a "well, what do you think?" The scientific concepts were TOO big, I think, for the scope of this particular story, and the text kept hitting "on the human plan" over and over, bashing my head in that THESE PEOPLE AREN'T TRADITIONAL HUMANS ANYMORE YOU DOOFUS! I think it could've been done in a better way -- I can't think of it right off the top of my head but the way Digger kept saying "on the human plan" just really got on my nerves, taking me out of the story (which I wasn't really into anyway for the aforementioned reasons).

[Unblinking]

Hmm.....  (I'm not addressing Hillary Moon Murphy, that's a thinking sound!)

I'm not sure what I think of it.  I have mixed feelings and they were polar opposites. 

I liked the voice of the narrator, the use of "the human plan" as if it was "the family plan" from a cell phone provider.  I liked the time-altering bots, and the philosophy of "without death there is no life".

I disliked the completely fizzled ending--was I supposed to get any sort of meaning out of it or was it just meant to confuse me?  I was looking forward to the adventure that never surfaced.  I never got a clear picture of what Digger looked like--all I know is that he did not look human, but that leaves infinite possibilities. 

In the line of the core philosophy, it touches on a philosophical discussion oft-repeated between me and my wife.  She's been fascinated with vampires ever since reading Anne Rice as a kid, and she's gotten into Twilight in the last couple years.  She's asked me the question time and again whether I'd rather be a vampire or a werewolf (as described in that series).  Every time I say without hesitation:  werewolf.  My main reasons for this (some of which are relevant here):

1.  The biggest reason for this is the philosophy shared with this story:  without death, there is no life.  If I am eternal, then individual days lose their meaning in the infinite resolution of eternity.  Individual events become meaningless by their fleeting nature.  Life is a story, and every story must have a beginning and an end.  No matter how many times we have the discussion, my wife thinks me insane for this view.  Longevity, I would not turn down, but immortality, I'm not interested. 

2.  Not only an eternal life, but no food!  I LOVE food way too much to depend only on blood for sustenance.  A liquid diet for eternity, and not only that but the EXACT same substance, would be pure torture.

[stePH]

[My wife has] been fascinated with vampires ever since reading Anne Rice as a kid, and she's gotten into Twilight in the last couple years.  She's asked me the question time and again whether I'd rather be a vampire or a werewolf (as described in that series).  Every time I say without hesitation:  werewolf. 

  Does she have a short-term memory problem, like Guy Pearce's character in Memento?

[Unblinking]

[My wife has] been fascinated with vampires ever since reading Anne Rice as a kid, and she's gotten into Twilight in the last couple years.  She's asked me the question time and again whether I'd rather be a vampire or a werewolf (as described in that series).  Every time I say without hesitation:  werewolf. 

  Does she have a short-term memory problem, like Guy Pearce's character in Memento?

No, her memory's much too sharp for my own good!  I think it's more of a case that she sees my answer as irrational and figures that sooner or later I'll come to my senses.  Also, I may have exaggerated the frequency of the conversation for effect.

[CryptoMe]

My first impression of the story was "What, finished already? And I'm not done with the dishes...."
I think that is my second impression too. Either way, it seems to be my strongest

Dog said several times that the door to death he was looking for was not a metaphor, and yet that's what we got.  Or is it.  Not 100% to be honest. 

My understanding was that Earth did not have a door to death anymore. So the door wasn't metaphorical, just gone. I could be wrong, though...

[wakela]

But why can't you have life without death?  If there were nano-bots that swim through your blood and repair damaged DNA and organs  wouldn't you live forever barring some accident?  No, you would not live beyond the heat-death of the universe, but the existence of life does not depend on the existence of the HDotU, and by the time it happens we may have figured out how to stop it. 

[Number_6]

This story hooked me! Usually I am content to listen to the cast, pay my (meager) donation when i can afford it (working student), and keep my big mouth shut while the grown-ups talk. But I have to chime in for this one. This story managed to leave me with the impression that Dog the Digger's time/place was the normal one and We are the ones living in an exotically archaic time*.
I *think* it was mentioned in the intro; the Clark quote about any sufficiently advanced technology etc...Well in the story, the description of our paper-based information systems* had that same effect on me. It made it seem exotic and weird that we should use the mashed-up corpses of trees to store and pass information.  For me, that was the point in the story that flipped me through the looking glass (er, for you Matrix Algebra geeks, it applies [1,0,0;0,1,0;0,0,-1] to all 3x3 xyz matrices with the xy-plane as the "looking glass"). 

Oh and, since this is my first post, I'll put this here: I really, really, really liked the punch-line to "Off Base".

*A respectable parlour trick.
**Ya I know, it's all going digital, but I still have to fill out forms when I go to the DMV right?

[Unblinking]

But why can't you have life without death?  If there were nano-bots that swim through your blood and repair damaged DNA and organs  wouldn't you live forever barring some accident?  No, you would not live beyond the heat-death of the universe, but the existence of life does not depend on the existence of the HDotU, and by the time it happens we may have figured out how to stop it. 

The difference here is how you define "life".  Yes, your biological processes will continue, as will your consciousness.  But life itself loses much of its meaning to me if there is no resolution to it.  I'm not saying I wish to die any time soon, but the fact that I know I WILL die someday changes everything.

[Unblinking]

Also, I can understand wanting immortality.  It's just not what I want.

[heyes]

I really enjoyed the setting, and the narration.  The story didn't so much end as it stopped, and I think that this could have been a very epic novel.  That being said, this is going to make it on to the next "Best of" podcast cds for my car.

[wakela]

But why can't you have life without death?  If there were nano-bots that swim through your blood and repair damaged DNA and organs  wouldn't you live forever barring some accident?  No, you would not live beyond the heat-death of the universe, but the existence of life does not depend on the existence of the HDotU, and by the time it happens we may have figured out how to stop it. 

The difference here is how you define "life".  Yes, your biological processes will continue, as will your consciousness.  But life itself loses much of its meaning to me if there is no resolution to it.  I'm not saying I wish to die any time soon, but the fact that I know I WILL die someday changes everything.

I am aware of that interpretation and I would never try to talk you out of it.  But for me the phrase "without death there can me no life" is one that I nod sagely at when I first hear it, but then falls part when I scratch its surface.  It would have made perfect sense on several levels to the Buddhists who came up with it that Steve referenced.  But either our generation or the next one or the one after that will be able to move beyond it the same way modern societies have moved beyond former truisms regarding the role of women and respect for authority.  An unending life can have as much meaning or as little as one puts into it. 

[Dave]

This was brilliantly realized stuff, a steady stream of interesting characters and ideas... but I'm afraid I have no freakin' idea what the ending was all about.

[WillMoo]

I concur with most of the replies on this. Great story, very well read, good imagery and use of language but the ending... not so much.

[Unblinking]

I am aware of that interpretation and I would never try to talk you out of it.  But for me the phrase "without death there can me no life" is one that I nod sagely at when I first hear it, but then falls part when I scratch its surface.  It would have made perfect sense on several levels to the Buddhists who came up with it that Steve referenced.  But either our generation or the next one or the one after that will be able to move beyond it the same way modern societies have moved beyond former truisms regarding the role of women and respect for authority.  An unending life can have as much meaning or as little as one puts into it. 

To each his own.  I'm sticking to what I said.  Some day I'll die, and if you've achieved immortality by then, then you'll have gotten the last word. 

[KenK]

unblinking:

Some day I'll die, and if you've achieved immortality by then, then you'll have gotten the last word.   

Indeed he will. And good luck on that immortality thing too, wakela. 

[stePH]

Eley could have used this as a closing quote:

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.

 

[Boggled Coriander]

I don't need to be immortal.  In fact, I'm perfectly happy living just 5 more years.

It's just that the "5 more years" figure will not change as time passes.  When I'm 40, I'll want 5 more years.  When I'm 100?  5 more years.  When I'm 130?  5 more years.

[Sgarre1]

I don't need to be immortal.  In fact, I'm perfectly happy living just 5 more years.

It's just that the "5 more years" figure will not change as time passes.  When I'm 40, I'll want 5 more years.  When I'm 100?  5 more years.  When I'm 130?  5 more years.

Sounds like the opener to "Ziggy Stardust" to me...

[Kanasta]

Sounds like the opener to "Ziggy Stardust" to me...

  Which bit?

[Sgarre1]

The opening song - "Five Years" ("...that's all we've got" because "Earth...was really dying.")

"drinking milkshakes, cold and long...."

[Kanasta]

The opening song - "Five Years" ("...that's all we've got" because "Earth...was really dying.")
"drinking milkshakes, cold and long...."

Ah.. I was thinking of the song (not album) Ziggy Stardust, "Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly,
and the spiders from Mars. He played it left hand", was wondering what I had missed there!! 

[Darwinist]

I was optimistic about this one but the longer I listened the more confused and uninterested I got.  It may benefit from a second listen but I'm not sure if I'll go there or not. 

[Unblinking]

Eley could have used this as a closing quote:

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.

 

Or you could manage both, like Helmut Finch!  (Check out "Hometown Horrible" on Pseudopod if you don't know what I'm talking about).

[wakela]

I am aware of that interpretation and I would never try to talk you out of it.  But for me the phrase "without death there can me no life" is one that I nod sagely at when I first hear it, but then falls part when I scratch its surface.  It would have made perfect sense on several levels to the Buddhists who came up with it that Steve referenced.  But either our generation or the next one or the one after that will be able to move beyond it the same way modern societies have moved beyond former truisms regarding the role of women and respect for authority.  An unending life can have as much meaning or as little as one puts into it. 

To each his own.  I'm sticking to what I said.  Some day I'll die, and if you've achieved immortality by then, then you'll have gotten the last word. 

Actually, this is the main reason I stay with the pro-immortality argument.  You always get the last word.   

[jmmoon]

I truly loved the story - and went out and found the text online and read it a couple more times.  To some extent I think the various replies indicating dissatisfaction, confusion and annoyance are an indication of the strength of this episode.  As Dog says, this is not Truth, it is a story.  Ambiguity makes it more interesting.

Of course I must admit that much of what drew me to it was the imagery.  The notion of basing information transfer on the death of trees with a bit rate measured in hundreds of years made me smile.  One of my favorite Escape Pod episodes ever.

[yicheng]

Didn't get this at all.  I think this story was a bit too dense for audio consumption, at least for me. 

[Mike Boris]

One of my favorite Escape Pod episodes ever.

um....how did you like the narration?

[gelee]

Well read and written piece that seemed to fly over my head. Post-singularity type stuff does that to me. The story began stongly, but seemed to take off without me about half way through.

[Gamercow]

One of my favorite Escape Pod episodes ever.

um....how did you like the narration?

I'm not jmmoon, but I think it was marvelous.

[SirJolt]

I thoroughly enjoyed this one, great work by all involved as far as I'm concerned

[kibitzer]

I have NO idea what this was about. It came across as a bunch of cool ideas inexpertly stitched together, by which I mean: nice writing, but the whole didn't work. Very odd.

[qwelen]

Well read and written piece that seemed to fly over my head. Post-singularity type stuff does that to me. The story began stongly, but seemed to take off without me about half way through.

Hmmmm....