In the vast world of comics, I wonder if there have been heroes with a “Groundhog Day,” type power. By that I specifically mean a hero who, if they die, immediately finds themselves waking up at the beginning of that day again. If they don’t die, they just continue forward through time.
I’m just thinking of how crazy it would be to have that hero on your super hero team. Like, you go to headquarters in the morning, and it seems like everything’s normal. But then you go to fire off a one liner, and they say it at the same time as you. And suddenly you know. Something went wrong.
And then one day you come in, and your heart drops as you see that their every move looks rehearsed. They answer questions before asked. They are totally aware of everything that’s about to happen. Imagine how scary that would be, realizing you’re starting a day that you’re team mate has failed to survive maybe dozens of times.
Other people have said it before, and more eloquently than me, that
most robot stories are not about the possibilities presented by
robots, at all, they are about the current exploitation of our fellow
humans. Robots are about class and labour, inherently, the very term
created by Capek refers to labour. There are interesting stories
to tell about what happens when humanity’s needs are met by things
that are genuinely not people, but most robot narratives are not
interested in that, they’re interested in the mechanisms that lead
the exploiter to see the exploited as not-people, and the exploited
to see themselves as not people either.
Lots of people have done excellent analysis of robot stories through
the lens of class, but it’s high time to analyze class stories
through the lens of… robots. I’m kidding, but not entirely. The
whole thing occurred to me when halfway through reading The
Remains of the Day I realized it was the same book as Ancillary
Justice. Without denying the creative brilliance of either
author, the story of an aging butler looking back over his life and recognizing he served an unworthy master perfectly parallels the
story of an old AI looking back over its life and recounting the realization that it’s no longer willing to serve its master. Key
elements like the enmeshment of the self with the master and the
master’s needs, the existence fully confined to the smooth running
of a ship/house, the complete suppression of individual selfhood, are
almost identical. It’s identical down to the detail that the
narrator’s emotions are opaque to them, and the reader has to guess
them from their actions or the reactions of others: both novels have
scenes where we only find out that the protagonist has been crying
because a bystander points it out.
Even clearer is the fact that Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper from the
Du Maurier novel (and Hitchcock film) Rebecca is absolutely analogous
to a rogue AI, something a little like the Imperial Radch’s
grief-mad ships, and a little like HAL. She’s supposed to obey
orders, keep things running smoothly and otherwise stay out of the
way – and when it turns out that she has her own emotions and own
priorities, that is inherently horrifying. The fact that she, a
servant, is capable of love is more unsettling than her capacity for
hate, because emotion means she’s malfunctioning, that she isn’t
the blank slate of servitude she should be. Rebecca is a brilliant
thriller, but its central conceit is the anxiety over what if the
help were sentient. What if the people who cleaned your house and
cooked your food and had access to all the rooms of your house at all
hours and knew every last one of your secrets had the capacity to
disobey.This is somewhat mitigated by a protagonist who used
to be a white-collar sort of help herself, and by an ending that
sends a symbol of British aristocracy all up in flames.
Nevertheless. Robots are class and class is robots.
So true. This is inherent in the very etymology of the word ‘robot’.
I read a book recently for book club which touched on the obsession with AI as an existential threat among a certain group of people (mostly obscenely rich Silicon Valley entrepreneurs) and the book never quite grasped that they’re not obsessed with it because they’re smarter than the rest of us and know something we don’t. They’re obsessed with it because they know, somewhere, that what they should be afraid of is the rest of us.
this one’s a few days late due to having a lot of doctors appointments sorry it’s just 9 pages, and about some rats… it’s more symbolic than anything really
(it’s completely unrelated to any of my songs that have to do with “puzzleboy”)
After Lucifer was kicked out of Heaven, he decided to make his own paradise. Both compete to have the best afterlife, sadly you lived a sin-free life and got sent to Heaven. God is throwing a very boring, sin-free party. You spend your time trying to get kicked out so you can go to Hell.
“In that jumpsuit on that minimalist bed, it looks like you’re waking up from hypersleep on an interstellar mission.”
I’m 90% sure this is the opening cutscene of a video game.
>wake up
>contemplate dystopian society you inhabit
>dispassionately eat daily allotment of soylent green
Looking at those other beds in the background, you seem more like a family android. Like an unsettling weyland-Yutani kind.
Like the parents have you take their children to the zoo.
Kids: ooh! Let’s go see the tigers!
Shipdroid:*in a pritish accent* ah yes, tigers. Brutal, yet efficient killers. Those shall do just fine.
Kid: “Mother… I don’t think I like the shipdroid. It’s really creepy.”
Mom: “Oh, honey, that’s just the uncanny valley. You’ll get used to it. We all do.”
Kid: “No, it’s not that, it’s just… he doesn’t seem like he was ever meant to be a nanny. His head spins around 360 degrees!”
Mom: “Pssh. That’s normal for nannies.”
Kid: “IS IT REALLY?!”
Mom: “The Weyland-Yutani corporation is very experienced in synthetics.”
Kid: “I don’t think they’ve ever heard of the first law. Watch! Nanny, what is the first law?”
Nanny: “….do you mean the law of the jungle?”
Nanny: “the first law of Weyland-Yutani robotics is that weyland-Yutani robotics is no longer legally responsible for their robots once they enter into your employ. *smiles at mother* any of my actions considered crimes in the eyes of the law are legally your responsibility ma’am”
Nanny: [making eye contact while slowly pushing objects off of shelf] “I am not accountable for my actions.”
Dragons are extraordinarily good mimics, escaping human predation by disguising themselves as common airliners, some even going so far as to sport crude copies of carrier logos. This makes them difficult to track, though most sources agree that the dragon population is critically endangered.
While there has been some success with halting large-scale dragon hunting, conservationists are still concerned about a recent spate of crashes in otherwise healthy adults.
Given that dragons communicate via radio signals and that most crashes occur near military radar stations, it is theorized that the radar may be disorienting the dragons. Investigations are still ongoing.
“‘Because she likes people,’ said the witch, striding ahead. ‘She cares about ‘em. Even the stupid, mean, drooling ones, the mothers with the runny babies and no sense, the feckless and the silly and the fools who treat her like some kind of a servant. Now THAT’S what I call magic–seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ ‘em safely on their way…and then cleanin’ ‘em up, layin’ ‘em out, making ‘em neat for the funeral, and helpin’ the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets–which is, let me tell you, no errand for the fainthearted–and stayin’ up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin’ on your door ‘cuz his wife’s havin’ difficulty givin’ birth to their first child and the midwife’s at her wits’ end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again…. We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better’n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. THAT is the root and heart and soul and center of witchcraft, that is. The soul and center!’ Mistress Weatherwax smacked her fist into her hand hammering out her words. ‘The…soul…and…CENTER!’ Echoes came back from the trees in the sudden silence. Even the grasshoppers by the side of the track had stopped sizzling. ‘And Mrs Earwig,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, her voice sinking to a growl, ‘Mrs. Earwig tells her girls it’s about cosmic balances and stars and circles and colors and wands and…and toys, nothing but TOYS!’ She sniffed. ‘Oh, I daresay they’re all very well as decoration, somethin’ nice to look at while you’re workin’, somethin’ for show, but the start and finish, THE START AND FINISH, is helpin’ people when life is on the edge. Even people you don’t like. Stars is easy, people is hard.’ She stopped talking. It was several seconds before birds began to sing again. ‘Anyway, that’s what I think,’ she added in the tones of someone who suspects that she might have gone just a bit further than she meant to.”
— Terry Pratchett, “A Hat Full of Sky” (via currentboat)
jinlinli 