EP308: Kill Me

[Thomas]

the concept behind the story was intriguing
the story itself, bothered me
not everyone's cup of tea.
i do enjoy horror in my scifi and scifi in my horror, but this really isn't horror, is it??
i am not saying that the whole BDSM thing is horror, but how it is treated in this story.... seems to be.
gimme some time, i may look back on this story and say it was a favorite, but right now, as a science fiction story... i am not pleased, but as horror...

[jenfullmoon]

The very concept that this would ever be legal and especially that it would ever be considered a "healthy" way for psychopaths to vent their anger so completely took me out of the story I never got back into it.

I actually think it's a good idea. NO MATTER WHAT, we have some human men (let's face it, it seems like 99% of the people with these urges are men) who have a burning desire to rape/torture/kill women. We can catch them and put them in jail, but so far we just can't FIX them from having this urge. It will happen no matter what until we catch them, but at least some women have to die so they can get their emotional rocks off before we know what they are.

So this seems like the best scenario for dealing with them: have a woman who finds this shit sexy/appealing for whatever weird reason (I'm not an S&M person either), who has to die every 3 months anyway and needs the money to keep existing, and just let them kill her. She's consenting, going to die anyway, and on some level she finds it appealing. The guy gets his ya-yas out (sigh) without killing some poor woman who didn't volunteer for satisfying his urge to kill. Win-win for everyone! I can see why this would work. At least until you get sick of being killed, anyway.

After that point, alas, the story goes off the rails because I kept thinking, "Oh, COME ON, as far as I can tell you still haven't figured out a way to control the woman from beyond the grave, she can take your money and do whatever the fuck she wants afterwards. This is stupid." At the very least, if you wanted to go there with that story, come up with some way for him to prevent her from doing it. Once Antonio comes in, the story starts to suck.

[ElectricPaladin]

Oh, man, where to start.

I actually think it's a good idea. NO MATTER WHAT, we have some human men (let's face it, it seems like 99% of the people with these urges are men) who have a burning desire to rape/torture/kill women. We can catch them and put them in jail, but so far we just can't FIX them from having this urge. It will happen no matter what until we catch them, but at least some women have to die so they can get their emotional rocks off before we know what they are.

This attitude is exactly what annoyed me about the story.

First of all, it's not "NO MATTER WHAT." People come from somewhere. Violence begets violence and abuse begets abuse. Pretending that some people are bad "NO MATTER WHAT" is just a good way of excusing yourself from the responsibility to think more clearly and discerningly about the causes of their situations.

Secondly...

So this seems like the best scenario for dealing with them: have a woman who finds this shit sexy/appealing for whatever weird reason (I'm not an S&M person either), who has to die every 3 months anyway and needs the money to keep existing, and just let them kill her. She's consenting, going to die anyway, and on some level she finds it appealing. The guy gets his ya-yas out (sigh) without killing some poor woman who didn't volunteer for satisfying his urge to kill. Win-win for everyone! I can see why this would work. At least until you get sick of being killed, anyway.

I've got to tell you, pretty much everyone I've met in real life who experiences rape and murder fantasies (emphasis mine) is actually a nice, sweet, and friendly person. That's because they are fantasies. The stuff you dismiss as "this shit" is nothing more than a healthy fun-play-sexy-time expression of that fantasy. Someone who fantasizes about eating a chocolate cake doesn't have to eat every chocolate cake they come across. Someone who fantasizes about rape and murder doesn't have to rape and murder. In fact, kinky people are even better off - they get to pretend to indulge in their fantasies and find it satisfying; I challenge you to find someone on a diet who finds it satisfying to pretend to eat cake.

The point is that you've got a right to express your fantasies in safe and personal and so do the kinky. They'd find your fantasies painfully boring and pedestrian; you find theirs squicky and off-putting. Luckily, they don't want to have sex with you. Win-win for everyone.

Again, this is what annoyed me about the story - demonizing fantasies that real people really have and equating them with a desperately unfair, painful, and entrapping situation.

After that point, alas, the story goes off the rails because I kept thinking, "Oh, COME ON, as far as I can tell you still haven't figured out a way to control the woman from beyond the grave, she can take your money and do whatever the fuck she wants afterwards. This is stupid." At the very least, if you wanted to go there with that story, come up with some way for him to prevent her from doing it. Once Antonio comes in, the story starts to suck.

Yeah, well, I agree with you there. The story failed to give Antonio's scheme sufficient support. I couldn't see why it worked, either.

[birdless]

I actually think it's a good idea. NO MATTER WHAT, we have some human men (let's face it, it seems like 99% of the people with these urges are men) who have a burning desire to rape/torture/kill women. We can catch them and put them in jail, but so far we just can't FIX them from having this urge. It will happen no matter what until we catch them, but at least some women have to die so they can get their emotional rocks off before we know what they are.

So this seems like the best scenario for dealing with them: have a woman who finds this shit sexy/appealing for whatever weird reason (I'm not an S&M person either), who has to die every 3 months anyway and needs the money to keep existing, and just let them kill her. She's consenting, going to die anyway, and on some level she finds it appealing. The guy gets his ya-yas out (sigh) without killing some poor woman who didn't volunteer for satisfying his urge to kill. Win-win for everyone! I can see why this would work. At least until you get sick of being killed, anyway.

I know this isn't worth me trying to argue because I'm not a psychologist, so with that in mind, I'll just state what i think: from what I think I understand about psychopathic abuse is that there is a large factor of a feeling of control for the psychopath. If the person volunteers to be slaughtered, AND has the ability to "resurrect" then I'm not sure the killer would really feel the same satisfaction of control. My guess is that it might work for a little while, but it would escalate into the illegal variety of killing. You might get more "I wonder what it would be like" people who otherwise would live out in idle curiosity, but I don't think it would "cure" the "I have an insatiable desire to torture and kill people!" All that is more or less complete speculation on my part.

[InfiniteMonkey]

Why precisely would a cloned body fail, and at only three months? Why the same time for all of them? Wouldn't some last longer than others?

Dude. Five words. Planned obsolescence.

I'm cynical enough to have no problem with the idea of planned obsolescence, but how crappy does your product have to be - a fairly large and complicated one in this case - to crap out after only 3 months? Why would anyone sign up for one (apart from the whole, uh, "not dying" thing)? I think even six months would have been more reasonable; again, it seems to me a plot point solely designed to "pull" the character.

And I'd have at least liked an attempt at an explanation as to how this storage device wears the body out in 3 short months (or was this just so it would co-incide with the seasons?). If it was planned obsolescence, just say so.

[Gamercow]

NMK - Not My Kink.  This story really held no interest to me, as I do not understand the BDSM community or mindset.  And don't try to explain it to me, I've had dozens try before.  I don't condemn the practice, nor do I think that there is anything wrong with it, I just don't understand it.  In the end, this story was as interesting to me as someone talking about Pokemon for 45 minutes. 

[Talia]

Well, I liked it. The concept was interesting enough to keep me engaged, as was the protagonist's dilemmas. I had no problem with the story not including information on how Antonio would keep an eye on her after his death - he was wealthy, there was a number of things he could have done, and I was OK with that being left up to the imagination.

[Devoted135]

And I'd have at least liked an attempt at an explanation as to how this storage device wears the body out in 3 short months (or was this just so it would co-incide with the seasons?). If it was planned obsolescence, just say so.

Yeah, this part bugged me as well, since the lack of an explanation seemed to imply it was "obvious" that a cloned body would wear out quickly. And of course it wouldn't last a whole lifetime, but c'mon, three months? Even Dolly lived several years...

[LaShawn]

This story left me pretty...squeamish. Which I guess was the effect intended but...::shivers:: I think I'm going to listen to Midnight Blue again.

[Schreiber]

A lot of interesting questions and opinions here. I'll add one to the mix, even though it's a question I usually hate: Did the speculative element add anything to the story?

Let's say Ada is a kinky, HIV-positive sex worker who specializes in getting slapped around and needs the money because waitressing wasn't covering the cost of her antiretrovirals. She's got the same death sentence hanging over her head and the solution is still pretty much the same. Enter Antonio who strikes a deal that has absolutely nothing to do with cloning, just like the deal he struck in the story itself has absolutely nothing to do with cloning. I say the arc and the theme remain the same. Which is  pity, because the model of cloning that Kaftan posits is actually pretty rich with potential.

Would that story have made it onto Interzone or Escape Pod? Well, no. But hey, there's nothing wrong with branching out to other genres.

[InfiniteMonkey]

Let's say Ada is a kinky, HIV-positive sex worker who specializes in getting slapped around and needs the money because waitressing wasn't covering the cost of her antiretrovirals.

Well, not to nitpick or anything, but....

That completely changes the dynamic of the story. Ada the cloned sub is just endangering her own life. Ada the HIV positive sex-worker is endangering the lives of others.

I suppose you could come up with a situation where that's not the case - she has cancer instead of HIV.

As for your larger question, what did the speculative elements bring to the story, I think the element is "not dying". She's not afraid of being killed because she knows she can be brought back.

[Spindaddy]

The story was kinda good and interesting to me--I liked the premise--but it fell kind of flat.

I dug the story all the way up to "no backup copy" of a person is allowed.... the explanation of the tech governed by laws completely removed my suspension of disbelief. Sorry, but if you can bring a person back from death by imprinting a copy into the brain, you can also make that device pretty damn indestructible. And a company so high tech they can clone and imprint people... yeah they are NOT going to waste a valuable asset like Ada.

And why the HELL if you had tons and tons of money and were dying would you not just clone yourself or imprint yourself on a clone of someone else?

I had hoped that the "secret admirer" was Dr Sorrington.

All in all there were a couple of interesting paths this story could have taken, but the one it took left me disappointed.

[statisticus]

I found this story an interesting exploration of the consequences of a possible (though perhaps unlikely technology).  I wondered if the story might go in several ways - for example, early on when Ada worries about her implant being destroyed that she might discover later that this had happened on previous jobs and that she had been restored from backup, perhaps several times.  Then we get the "no multiple copies" law, which seemed a bit illogical as it greatly lessens the protection that having an implant gives.

Also not very believable was the business that clone bodies only lasted 3 months.  Come on guys - a regular body lasts fifty years even if you don't look after it; I can't believe that a cloned body would decay in such a short time.  I could buy less than the proverbial three score and ten, but not that much less.  If I were the restorations company, I'd change my clone supplier.

Finally, the ending was disappointing.  After all her opportunities she just gives up and goes back to the old grind.  What sort of character development is that? 

Which is not to say that I disliked the story - it explored some intriguing possibilities, as I mentioned.  Nevertheless, the story was somewhat flawed IMHO.

[Westlake]

This story started out with an interesting beginning. I was genuinely hooked by the opening section. The writing was clear, precise, and so on.

However, that all changed with the first info-dump. I thought it was pretty clear there was a device which stored her personality etc. Did we really need a full-on explanation? And then there's the info-dump regarding the car crash.

I was disappointed that the rich customer was some random guy from Ada's past. The revolver-on-the-mantelpiece rule (there's a name for it, but I forget) was ignored. Also, the lengthy conversation between Antonio and Ada served only to slow the story down. Antonio came across like a Hannibal Lecter clone (old, seemingly all-knowing, and apparently with a degree in psychology).

The logic regarding the contract has already been covered by other forum-goers (how will anyone ever know if Ada secretly indulges her desires?) so I won't get into that here.

Also, I wonder what the reaction would have been if a male had written a story in which every female character is a bad person (in the same way males are portrayed in this one). Perhaps it would have been better (by which I mean balanced, I guess) if one customer had actually been a female, or a colleague of Ada's was a male masochist? Not all males are dominant. Not all females are submissive.

Like I said at the start of this post, the writing was good, on a technical level. It was easy to get along with, and despite the story's flaws, I got to the end. There were just too many logic-gaps, and I just didn't like the gender assumptions.

I actually think it's a good idea. NO MATTER WHAT, we have some human men (let's face it, it seems like 99% of the people with these urges are men) who have a burning desire to rape/torture/kill women. We can catch them and put them in jail, but so far we just can't FIX them from having this urge. It will happen no matter what until we catch them, but at least some women have to die so they can get their emotional rocks off before we know what they are.

I know you said 99%, but there are actually quite a few females out there with similar urges. Eg. violent relationships in which women are perpetrators, very rarely get reported due to the 'shame' aspect from the man. This underrporting leads to lower statistics, which leads some people to think it doesn't go on. Also, research has shown that while females might be slightly less likely to have these urges, when a female does, she will often take things to a 'higher level' than a male. Basically, a male will generally beat someone up. A female is more likely to carry out 'cruel acts' which are thought out and methodical. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule in both genders. What I'm saying is that I resent the sweeping statement of "lets face it, only guys do this."

(Just to clear something up, I'm not talking about people who are into BDSM etc. I'm talking about people who commit for-the-thrill violent crimes).

[Unblinking]

Finally, the ending was disappointing.  After all her opportunities she just gives up and goes back to the old grind.  What sort of character development is that? 

I think that's a reasonable type of character development, the one in which a character has a chance to turn their life around, to really change themselves, and instead they choose to make the same choice.  They're not in the same place, because turning down their opportunity to change means something.  Either they're trapped by their own compulsions, or are happy with the choices they have made, but they're no longer forced by circumstance to do what they do.  And she's aware of that, so she has changed.

[jayazman]

Mostly I liked it.  I know some people have a gripe with the 3 months thing, but the explanation that it is the implant which kills the body was enough for me as it is not the main point of the story.  The idea of having legal murder, to let people who have these tendencies act them out in a "safe" way is interesting.  It did make me wonder what other urges some people have could be made legal.  I think if we ever get something like a holodeck, we will find out.
Like most people I did find the contract a little disappointing.  There was nothing stated that would prevent Ada from indulging a little, and getting out of the contract was surprisingly easy.  If there was some enforcement clause that prevented her from getting out of the contract, now that would have been more interesting.  Since the theme seemed to be about control, and Antonio wanted to control someone from beyond the grave, the contract seemed to be rather lacking in the control aspect.
Didn't hate it, but not one of my favorites.

[CryptoMe]

I really found this story dumb.

• Studies show, killers work up to murder and then go even further from there. So, there is no validity in the premise of sanctioned pseudo murder as a safety valve.
  
• Masochists don't want to kill themselves, people with suicidal tendencies do.
  
• Relinquishing power is not a form of power.

I could go on and on with all the little dumb things that tried to pass off as wisdom in this story. It just felt very poorly thought out.

[Corcoran]

How do I say this without hurting some felings ? I´ll try to be nice
I earn my money with S/M. I teach S/M, I live S/M.
I know a lot of people who have something to do with S/M.
Stories like this a lot in the S/m forums, not in this quality, but the concept
of someone who cannot die and so you can murder him is something you read
every half year. But if you take all the people who do S/M, people who go to such extrems
are very very seldom, most of them are on the verge of mental illness.
I realize my english is not good enough to convey everything I would like to say,m so I cut this short.
This is a story with mistakes, a lot of the things labeled here as masoschism arent masoschism.
Full body suspension does not hurt, I teach this in "Love Bondage Workshop"
Take the story, but forget the masoschism part, Here is to much just wrong.

[El Barto]

I thought this was a fascinating episode, though it got less fascinating as the story went on.  I was hoping they were going to explore the idea of the backups and perhaps the main character finding out she was an illegal backup.   Alas, it went in a different direction.

I want to say that stories that explore sexuality are difficult to do well, but this story was written in a way that suggested sex was completely uninvolved, which struck me as bizarre, and somewhat emblematic of contemporary American social mores.  Murder me for money?  Sure!   Any sexual contact first?  Crazy!  (I could imagine the movie version of this story getting a PG-13 rating -- unless there was some nudity.)

I see that a bunch of people were put off by the lack of detail concerning the enforcement mechanism in the contract.   I don't recall the exact language in that scene but my memory is there was a long complicated contract and I assumed there were dozens of pages that described how the creepy rich guy's representatives would monitor her behavior somehow.

A variation of this story I'd love to see someone write is a world where memory drugs are perfected and people can go into a facility, get an injection, and know that whatever they do and say for the next 12 hours they will not remember anything and there would be no record of what happens.   Would you go?  What would you do?   Who would you take with you and what would you tell them, knowing they'd never remember???

[hardware]

As some others here, I really liked the opening, the whole scene of the first kill, the waking up and so on. But as soon as there was this need to start explaining the technology it quickly went downwards. It just became clear that the author had an interesting idea but no compelling way to tell it. The rules of the world felt arbitrary and only existed to serve the story and the idea of the contract was not very strong (in general, what's up with people thinking they will find pleasure in what happens on earth after their own death, thats just silly.) I have liked some of Kaftans stories before, so it was a minor disappointment. Hopefully next one will be stronger.

[deflective]

ah, a good old Steve selected story.  
technology with half-baked, contrived rules designed to dehumanize & control the protagonist.  i don't mind so much when it's just an occasional story like this.

[CryptoMe]

A variation of this story I'd love to see someone write is a world where memory drugs are perfected and people can go into a facility, get an injection, and know that whatever they do and say for the next 12 hours they will not remember anything and there would be no record of what happens.   Would you go?  What would you do?   Who would you take with you and what would you tell them, knowing they'd never remember???

There are such drugs already; alcohol in sufficient quantities.