retrospec | Literature Review

Hitori Togusa shared a photo.
8/11 near Apprassage

Catcher in the Rye, in English. Retrospec sent me this one a while back, but I had to read this thing in high school. World lit. Hated it then, but apparently it's important now.

It bothers me that I'm starting to understand it on a re-read. Holden has absolutely everything going for him, but chooses to try as hard as he can to not engage with society around him. Back in high school, I thought it was just a morality tale, a spook story for kids, scare them into figuring their lives out or turn out like him.

And then we all get dropped into a situation where it would be so easy to do exactly what Holden wishes he could. To decide that this life doesn't matter, and turn yourself deaf-mute to the implications. But even that wouldn't get him what it wants, would it?

Question one is, what keeps you going? Keeps you paying attention to the world around you?

Second question comes back to Retrospec's latest game. Anybody else get a jigsaw puzzle?

"Turn him to any cause of policy, the Gordian Knot of it he will unloose, familiar as his garter."
Henry V, Act 1 Scene 1. The Archbishop describing how much Henry has changed as soon as he had to take the throne, going from a layabout of a prince to a sharp statesman of a king. It's really just a framing scene, telling the audience about the time that passed between plays. Odd quote to pull out.

So the last question is, what does that mean to anybody else?

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No! Not at all! I just hadn't put any thought to the term until now. It sort of ties in to the oddity of assigning gender to a being that has no sexuality.

There's, in the other Togusa's world, a group of completely non-humanoid robots. Wouldn't qualify as androids. And they are also weaponized. But all their voices are pitched to suggest a feminine quality. It's strange.

It is. The androids in the world I am remembering are explicitly gendered -- hips, legs, breasts -- but for what reason I cannot tell. Perhaps they are made to more closely resemble humans? It would be mere speculation at this point, but that seems like the most likely explanation.

Most of the androids I recall specifically have been designed to look female. Perhaps their creator had a type. Either way, yes, it is extremely strange.

The other assumption behind the term 'android' rather than 'cyborg' is that the individual's consciousness is artificial, too. Programmed, instead of developing. Is...that also true of the person you are remembering?

[Even though person isn't the right word to use, but figuring out what are the right words to use is turning into half of the issue for Togusa.]

[aye, there's the rub. in her dreams be all A2's sins remember'd.]

I do not know. But whether she has been programmed to do what she does or has learned it, she will have a very difficult time overcoming the mind of a human being who has existed for far longer than she.

That may be straying slightly from the point you are trying to make.

Not really making a point. Just, there are some things I've seen, in the other-Togusa's world. I can't assume that it works the same way for everyone. It's stranger that his world would have developed android technology, though. It sounds like her world created them out of necessity.

But your point stands. You remain yourself, even with her memories encroaching.

It seems only natural that developed societies would strive for the sort of technological advancements required to create androids. May I ask what exactly makes that strange?

While the other Togusa's world experienced another World War, it wasn't devastating on the level you're describing. I mean, parts of Japan are permanently underwater, but the Earth itself is still livable.

And then, much of the technology I've been seeing has been human augmentation. That line between cyborg versus android I was talking about. When you are already mechanizing humans, why do you need completely artificial humans as well?

Was this human augmentation the cause of the third World War? In his world. Were modified humans the combatants or the strategists? What of artificial humans? Mere soldiers?

My apologies. I know you likely do not have these answers. The subject of the third World War is one of intense interest to me, which is perhaps understandable.

I wish I had those answers, myself. My perspective is limited by his, that Japan didn't take part in the war, but suffered some of the consequences after nuclear weapons were used. The entire global geography shifted, everyone paid the price.

The micro-machine technology that makes up internal cyberization for people, that had to have been developing at the same time as the war. Japan had a solution for nuclear fallout that was using the same technology as a delivery system. Not inside of people, but dispersed in the atmosphere.

That's pretty much all I know. Guessing similar events didn't turn out as well for her?

Aerosolized nanomachines to combat nuclear fallout? Android technology seems barely a flash in the pan in light of that. With little risk for prolonged fallout, nations could use nuclear devices on each other with impunity. The entire face of war would change irreversibly almost overnight.

Which, at this point, may be rearranging cause and effect. War brings the sharpest of minds to the forefront, does it not? Death is the mother of invention.

I do not know how events turned out with this android. I know very little about her and the world in which she lived, and none of it is particularly useful.

Just because the fallout got handled, there were still global repercussions of the use of nuclear weapons. I'd like to think that world learned their damn lesson. The other guy's job seemed pretty important, but he was working out of Niihama, which should be isolated. Not as isolated anymore when the sea levels have risen.

I'm open to hearing anything that you do remember, if you're open to sharing. Sometimes it helps to just say it out loud to another person and get you out of your own head and your own assumptions of the worst.

Mm. Destruction happens in an endless cycle. Sometimes the only option is blind hope, even when thousands of years of data tell us otherwise.

I am not certain how much there is to share. This android is ruthlessly efficient at killing machines. She was being Operated by someone, in all likelihood, but I do not know by whom. It is possible the answer is no one, and she merely has functional knowledge of what Operators are, as I do.

There is also a flower that she finds extremely important in some way that is not directly related to her. It does not exist in this world, and I doubt very much it exists at all when there is so little information about it in her memories.

A flower?

[gdi, Togusa, of course that's what you focus on.]

She does have emotional attachment to things, then. Especially if it's not real, is it something from a story maybe? Maybe she's more complex than you're giving her credit for so far.

[it's probably the best thing to focus on of everything she just said. she certainly appreciates it.]

Perhaps. Even that attachment is complex. I know it is not important to her, directly, but to someone she knows. It is difficult to determine what exactly that means. To whom a Lunar Tear even matters.

That she bothers herself at all with botany when there are machines to kill is an interesting point, though. Perhaps she is not soulless. Perhaps this is a mystery tethering her to humanity.

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