Personal Essay: On the Care and Management of Women

Jerome K Jerome, who wrote Three Men in a Boat, has a series of essays in which he addresses several of life's enigma, the first of which is titled, On the Care and Management of Women. Near the end of On the Care and Management of Women, Jerome’s got this young hipster fellow, probably closer to 30 than 25 in a pickle. He’s charged with escorting a young lady, presumably 18 or under, from London to Paris in the summer. All along the trip they are mistaken, understandably because of their ages, the way they're dressed, and the season of the year, for newlyweds. The carriage driver who accompanies them along their journey leans in and nudges the boy’s bosom with a wink and says, “We have all been there.” 

The young buck is nearly offended, but because the cab driver’s intent was too ambiguous to nail down, he decides to let it slide, figures it’s just an allusion to the Isle of Wight which was their intended destination, an especially wonderful place for the time of year, which was currently summer.  

But then the guy, the driver, he says, “It’s all right in summer, and it’s good enough in winter -- while it lasts. You make the most of it, young ‘un;” and he slapped [him] on the back and laughed.” 

This, is a valuable statement, and one that I came to understand too late, and is my one true regret. I know what he means when he says, “You make the most of it.” There is real heroism in those couples who endure it all and remain together. Weathering all manner of storms, despair, hope, venom, and disdain for one another, and, through it all, coming out of it all as the physical manifestation of two people standing there, as just as well as one. Couples that question whether it was worth it, and provided no one was really hurt so much, then in their old age they may, with a softness behind all of it, look at the other and say yes, my dear, it has been worth it.  A good friend of mine calls it “Domestic Bliss,” I capitalized it and turned it into a proper noun, like Truth. But I failed at this. I gave up. 

But even so, you always wind up making the most of it. 

Jerome employs classic seasonal metaphors. So yeah, enjoy it kid, and go on and get yours, make the most of it while it’s still summer, but winter is coming and it’s everything you can do to make the most of it. The old cab driver is like the Ancient Mariner. The young ‘uns just want to find their seats, and get on with it, but not this dirty old bastard Mariner. He’s there for the long haul. He’ll pull your ear for the rest of the afternoon and into the night if you let him.

But, let us not rely solely upon the resources of one single scene of mistaken identity to discern our opinions on marriage. Another story Jerome tells in this same chapter, we see the narrator engaged in discourse on the topic of marriage and honeymoons, a very trusted ladyfriend. She, in response to the narrator’s question as to which kind of honeymoon is best, says that a long honeymoon is best. It’s a sure-fire way of shaking out all the flaws, spending so long a time wherein one is forced to think of only the other, look them straight in the face, indigestion and all, and see one another for what they really are. 

She goes on to tell of an ancient custom in which the newly wed couple is led into the bowels of the temple and left alone in the dark and depths to face the judgment of the Voice. The Voice tells them whether or not their choice is good and the next morning a priest leads them out of the deep and dark and into the day and people. She says, “And one day we meet them again, and their faces have grown older and graver; and I always wonder what the Voice has told them during that little while that they have been absent from our sight. But of course, it would not do to ask them. Nor would they answer truly if we did.” This presumes two things, that the news was bad, and no one speaks about it. The news, the being bad aspect looms ominously as there seems to be no indication of encountering a reenergized couple, a youthful and joyful-looking couple, we only see a sadly aging couple. As for not speaking about any of it to anyone is much like today. You can’t know what two people are going through, nor can you understand the love that exists between them. 

I once lived with a married-with-children couple in South Dakota, outside Pierre. We shared a big old Victorian house that had fallen into disrepair. They had two kids, a boy around 10 and a girl around 8. I worked with the dad for a construction contractor and between the two of us we were able to pay rent, share food and fuel costs, and get by ok. But they could fight. It seemed to me ridiculous that they were together. The kids lived in fear. One day I came home from work and I heard loud banging and screaming coming from their bedroom. The kids were in my room playing. When I walked into the bedroom I witnessed violence and tears and pulled him off his wife and when I asked if she was ok, she looked at me with true venom and spit warning if I ever come between her and her husband again it’ll be the last thing I do. I looked at her husband and he was sweating, smoking a cigarette with a slick grin across his face that told me this was too far away for me to conceive so I went, grabbed my bag of clothes and the few items of value I had and left their house never to see them again. 

This variety of couple is not uncommon. It’s not one I wish for myself, my wife, or ex-wife, or my children. So, that’s why mine dissolved. I loved her, I still do love her, and wish the best for her. She is the mother of my children and without her, I’d never have had what I have with my boys. 

This kind of couple is everywhere, but I do know it is possible to come out of the deep dark temple basement and be happy. I’ve seen happy marriages, at least as far as I can tell, and as I’ve said in the past, I’m no Sherlock Holmes in the matters of “things better off left unsaid.” 

In these marriages, I see that there is a selflessness involved. They put the needs of the family before their own. I’ve experienced this myself, briefly, but have never found it to last.  

Personal Essay: Three Realities

Three realities: a personal essay

by Otto Esterle 

Three realities, a quantum theorist might say three outcomes, happened at once. It started in the early evening when I got on the Red Line at Muzeum. I’d just gotten out of a teacher training course I was taking as part of my orientation into the Montessori pedagogical system for a job I'd recently begun at a Prague high school. That morning I’d read an article on multiple outcomes—quantum experiments—which basically found that not until an event is observed is its outcome settled. I’d read similar articles before, but they were technical and harder to follow. This article, which a friend had shared on FB was easier to digest. 

Just a few years ago quantum theories were only found in scientific journals and left-leaning outlets like the New Yorker or Economist, now they were popping up in the Week and Politico and being pushed through social media. I was considering this on the Metro and some aspect (I can’t trace it back to what in particular) of this thinking triggered something about a paper I’d been working on for another professional development course I was taking on IB pedagogy. Plus, I'm rereading an essay on the culture industry by Adorno and thinking how I can use it in my IB syllabus. I only mention these details to help convey a state of mind, split between modern pedagogy and 20th-century criticism and thinking about quantum possibilities.

I’d had an epiphany during the week concerning my approach to teaching at this point in my life. I don’t know if the notion had ever occurred to me to take my job as a teacher seriously. It’s always been my motto that I would promote fraud and subvert whenever opportunities revealed themselves. It occurred to me, in the middle of two different pedagogical trainings and reading Adorno’s Culture Industry essay that I’ve got a pretty good grasp on the pedagogy and what if I tried to move higher into administration or training.

It’s in this time of reflection and scheming that I swam off the metro at  Holesovice and into the intercity and long-distance train section of the station. The timing was perfect; I should have suspected something was amiss. Like the cat in The Matrix, déjà vu. My transfer between the city metro system and the long-distance network normally included delays and loudspeaker announcements, but today the train pulled up just as I stepped onto the platform. I walked through the sliding doors almost without having to break my stride, sat down in the first available seat, and opened my laptop. 

On the train from Holesovice, I take the long-distance regional to Kralupy. This train stops in Kralupy, I get off and walk over the tracks (they let pedestrians walk over the tracks here) and catch the one-car diesel to Slany where I live.  

I like this train (the one to Kralupy) because it’s the long-distance train and only stops twice before arriving in Kralupy. And then it continues north stopping at all major points until it hits the German border. Then turns around and does it again. 

I sit down and start doing my work for the IB online course. Reading really pedagogical windbaggery at its finest. I was taking control of the text in a way that allowed me to recognize its value, and I think forgive the sanctimonious undertones, of the IB philosophy. More than likely it’s me just asking why bother, you can’t fight the onslaught of sanctimonious rhetoric. 

I was really wound up in pedagogy and self-reflection.

I looked up from my work and didn’t recognize where we were right away, I turned to the guy next to me, a millennial punk rocker, and I say, “Kralupy? Tady” and he looks at me in shock. I said again, “Kralupy,” and he says with his shoulders and facial expressions yes. So I have a slight panic attack as I really have no idea how much time I’d been sitting on the train, I was engrossed. So when the kid says yes, I quickly stow my stuff and hop up and head to the door to wait. Nobody was waiting at the door yet, so I knew I must have gotten up way too soon. I checked Google Maps but found the little blue location indicator was slipping around the screen unable to situate my position on the map. It would be impossible to trust the GPS while on the train. I had gotten up too early, but to go back into the cabin after making a big ol’ fuck-of-an-exit-scene, was not an option, so I waited and stared at the receding tracks as they peeled away from under my feet through the end-car window. 

As I’m standing there this gypsy comes and stands at the door waiting. Gypsies are always first at the door. 

Another aspect—it was getting dark. I’m usually on the 4:24 Holesovice-Slany train, but today’s Montessori training had me getting a later train. I wasn’t 100% sure if Kralupy was the next stop, or I’d missed it. The punk rocker’s mimed assurances that Kralupy was coming up had me questioning myself and which stop we were approaching, so after a few minutes, I caught eyes with the gypsy girl and said, “Kralupy? Ano?” and she says, “Yes, the next stop.” 

She says something else, I have no idea what because I was so shocked she spoke near-perfect English. Then I found out she’s from Mexico. I almost hugged her. I was so happy to talk with her. She’s been here for three years with her husband and kids. The relationship between the US and Mexico is historically charged and I wanted to know her take on living in the Czech Republic. I had many things I wanted to talk to her about but the train would be coming into Kralupy soon and I started talking more intently, almost like I was interviewing her.

So like I said before, when you transfer to the Slany train in Kralupy, you have many options for getting to the other platforms for transferring: underground, over the tracks, or down to the end of the platform and across a small walking bridge. Usually, when I’m making this transfer, it’s during peak commuter hours and people will swim along whatever pedestrian-enraged stream catches them, and I usually go down to the small walking bridge, it gives me a chance to have a smoke. 

It’s in this direction we both go when we get off. I began, “So what’s your name?” which comes out awkwardly and she kind of looks at me funny. I can see she’s nervous, maybe she doesn’t want to be caught alone with me walking down the platform away from population and safety, so I say, “Oh, don’t worry, lots of people go this way to transfer to the trains on that platform,” pointing to the bank of trains waiting on a far-off platform. As I’m saying this I gesture behind us, as if to say, see? but no one is coming in our direction. Her eyes by this time are wide and darting back and forth.

I try to right the ship and say, “Hey, I’m Otto, and I hope we can see each other again…” (and then I realized that might have sounded too forward [I’m 50, she’s like 26], and then I say), “you know, on the train…I mean if it works out like that...OK.”

She says her name, but I don’t catch it, “What? Oh, Libu?”

“Yes,” she smiled to confirm as much and she said something like, “Well, you never know,” the kind of thing you say when you have no intention of ever following up on it.

We said our goodbyes on the last platform, and she continued on her way to whatever Kralupy neighborhood her home was in, and I turned to walk toward the trains. Usually, there are three trains on this platform: two, one-wagon, diesels, and one, two-car electric. The Slany train is always (in my experience) the first one-car train, parked in front of the Velvary train (also a one-car). Velvary is in the same direction as Slany, but switches and takes a more northerly route, I’ve never taken the Velvary train. As I walked toward the trains I smoked a fast cigarette and hopped onto the first train without thinking and immediately began to work. I was also replaying the whole conversation with Libu and wondered if I’d ever see her again. 

In the one-cars you have a row of three seats facing each other on one side of an aisle, and on the other are two seats facing each other. Each set of bench seats has a small table, not big enough for a laptop, and a small trash bin, both attached to the wall underneath the window. The train was packed. I decided to sit in the small compartment reserved for strollers and bikes because nobody was there and I could spread out. In this small compartment, every passenger passes through on their way into the seating section. People walk on, stop in the small compartment to stamp their tickets, and then go through an access door that separates the compartment from the seating. In the small compartment area, the diesel fumes can be nauseating, which is why, unless you have a stroller or bike, no one ever sits in there. I was immediately immersed in my work and without recognizing it the train started on its way.

After an indeterminate amount of time, the train stops and there’s a few minutes delay. I looked around, the train was still full. It’s not uncommon for these little one-wagoners to stop at a station for a few extra minutes to align with the schedule or let another train pass on the tracks. I figured it was something like this, but the train didn’t go, and after glancing into the seating section, noticed a few of the passengers looking around and wondering what was going on too. 

About this time, the driver comes out of his cockpit. He looks determined and on a mission. He opens the door and purposefully strides through the two rows of seats. He’s nearly accosted by angry old Czech babickas and men with tall cans of cheap beer. He says something to assuage their concerns and then disappears into the cockpit on the other end of the car. 

As the driver’d left the door open, I leaned over and asked a kid sitting just inside the door what was up. He shrugged confused. To my uncultured eye, there is an obvious issue with the train. But judging from this kid’s response, I am some form of fuck-wad alien and he hasn’t within himself any ability to acknowledge, non-verbally or otherwise, any corroborating expression to his having a shared experience. To him, I am approaching this quandary inappropriately and not at all the way a Czech would. I fucked him off with my expression and resumed my work. 

It was then a small little thought crept in. I didn’t recognize anyone on the train. We’d been stopped longer than on any Kralupy-Slany train I’d ever been. Was it possible I got on the wrong train in Kralupy. I hadn’t actually looked at the sign on the front of the train, I just took for granted the first train was the Slany train and got on and started working. Then the train jerked into motion and I figured my fears were for naught, then it moved a few meters forward, then back, then it started up. I couldn’t remember what direction the train was going as the time had passed and I was engrossed in my work, but I could have sworn we were now going in the opposite direction than we were prior to stopping. 

I looked around and no one on the train seemed to notice so I thought well, this must be part of the route and since the Kralupy-Slany route I take never stops and reverses course, it confirmed in my mind that I was on the Velvary train. I got up and looked around trying to figure out where we were. In these old one-cars, it’s impossible to figure out where you are. There is only analogue information posted and it’s all in Czech and even the maps are so convoluted and tiny that they’re rendered useless to anyone other than Czechs. There are no electronic, up-to-the-minute marquees posting the next stop or final destination, and no voice comes over a speaker to announce anything. 

In my mind I’d settled on the notion that this route, being late on a Friday, was some special route that because of a particular stop along the line, had to do this little course-reversal maneuver, and this was the key indicator I was on the Velvary train. The same kid I tried to ask what was up, came out into the small compartment area where I was turning all of this over and packing up my stuff. I asked him “Slany?” 

He stared at me like a fuck-tard. I said, “Velvary?” He was thoroughly confused. 

You can tell when people ride a train or bus regularly. They get up before the stop, they put their coats on or off based on whether or not there is time, they have transit cards, not tickets, and they look as if it’s all a huge routine. This kid was obviously a commuter on this route. If I take a route every day, I know the stops. If someone says to me, “Podlesin?” I would say, even if not in Czech, “yes” or nod my head up and down to say, yes, “Podlesin is coming up.” So whether this was the Slany train or some other stop beyond Slany, me saying “Slany” to this kid should have registered an affirming yes or a negative no. But, whether I said “Velvary” or “Slany” he had the same reaction. I was confounded by his reaction. I decided the best course of action was to see if I couldn’t tell what stop we were approaching, if I could, and it was one I didn’t recognize, I’d get off and figure out my next move then. I couldn’t discern any of the landscape clues and it seemed like we’d been traveling a disproportionately long time and I began wondering if this train was ever going to make another stop.

I called my friend who lives in a nearby village to see if he could pick me up and give me a ride home from Velvary, which is where I suspected I’d be offboarding, and when it seemed likely he could, my anxiety lessened. I called my wife and she immediately suspected me for being drunk and no matter my explanations she just kept saying stuff like, “I’ve known you for five years, this is what you do.” It was a bit sad as I wasn’t drunk, but even more so, that based on our five-year relationship she just assumed I was,  based on my behavior over those five years. The sad part isn’t that she just assumed I was drunk, I occasionally like to get drunk, it’s that she’d attributed all my previously bumbled maneuvers as an effect of my drinking, when in fact, most of my bumbling is a result of me simply being confused. 

I got off the phone with my wife and the train still hadn’t arrived at the next stop on the line and I was staring out the window trying to find something I recognized. 

Finally, the train began slowing, I scanned as far ahead of us as I could, searching for familiarity, but even when it stopped at the station, I couldn’t make out the station’s name because its sign was in disrepair and half the letters missing. When the train does stop at these little stations, it’s only for a second and then it resumes course, so by the time I hopped off and was able to recognize the station, I couldn’t hop back on even if I wanted to. Just as I stepped off, I realized that the train was going back to Kralupy, and that the little back-and-forth maneuver the driver pulled had been to return to our original starting point. For what reasons, I had no idea. 

I could now see the station’s name and recognized it as one that fell along the Kralupy-Slany line (confirmation) and I knew it was about halfway between the two towns. The problem being, I didn’t know which direction Slany was. The light in the small little station was on so I knocked tentatively and opened it to find an angry little blond Czech woman in her forties. I said something like “Smer Slany?” direction Slany? And she shook her head angrily and I repeated myself and she finally relented and pointed in a definitive direction. I didn’t understand her hostility and laughed as I silently closed the door. Just then a train coming from Kralupy pulled up and the angry woman came out to conduct her duties. I went to get on the train and she started shouting at me angrily. “Velvary! Velvary!” and I understood that this was not my train. 

I called my friend to tell him he didn’t need to pick me up and that I’d catch the next train to Slany. As I was talking I checked my train app and could see the next train going to Slany was in 15 minutes so I walked up and down the platform talking with my friend and smoking a cigarette. I had to pay mind to my minutes because I had a paying by-the-minute arrangement on my phone so after my smoke I hung up, at which point a straggler had wandered onto the platform and started saying drunken shit to me in Czech. I spoke to him in English as if he could understand. 

He was saying angry shit to me too and I was beginning to question reality. In fact, it seemed my reality was bifurcating into some quantum experiment where several outcomes were happening at once and because I wasn’t there to measure them (witness them) they all fell at one time upon my head. Like someone had slipped up. Parts were out of alignment. It’s not the parts’ faults, they only do what they do, it’s the guards slipping. The parts are there, regardless, we just can’t see what they’re up to, until we do and then blink the parts into existence. It seemed like every blink was like the shutter opening and closing, thus shifting my reality because the moment I stepped off the train at this small station, even before my foot hit the platform, I realized I was on the right train all along. It wasn’t until I tried various ways of confirming my theory I was met by stranger and stranger realities. 

For example. The letters on the station sign being worn away and illegible in the night through the train windows and it wasn’t until the train departed that I knew where I was. Then the crazy train lady confounded me with her hostility directed at me for asking a seemingly circumstantially-appropriate question, and now this kid swearing at me. I wasn’t sure of anything and on my app, which I pointed out to the kid and that shut him up, said the Slany train was now over five minutes late, which isn’t good because I’ve had it happen that a line is so late they just wait until the next one comes, usually another thirty minutes, and if it’s late at night you never know if you’re missing the last train for the night. My anxiety and confidence were at odds. 

Despite this, I peeked into the little train station once more, apologized and asked if she knew about the Slany train. She was furious now. I just laughed out loud and closed the door as her gesticulating arms and fists silhouetted the door frame before it shut.

At this point, from the direction opposite I was expecting my train to be coming, a train pulled up. It was a one-wagon diesel, but instead of a sign on the window of the train, as per usual, there was a replacement, hand-written sign that just said Slany/Kralupy, with no definitive way of knowing which direction it was going based on the hand-written sign. Usually, the sign in place has the origin destination in the top left corner, and the final destination in the bottom right corner, but this hand-written sign just had them side by side. In order to push the plot along I got on the train. I looked out the window for a sign of the train lady, but she didn’t come out. I expected her to be running beside the train shouting and flailing her fists. 

I recognized immediately the train was going back to Kralupy. I just sat down and got my laptop out to do some work. I couldn’t work, I kept a watch for further signs of reality showing itself. This quantum slip-up was either a breakdown, a bifurcation because I was nearing the end and being prepared for something beyond, or someone had dropped the ball. The nearing the end part evoked a kind of sublime acceptance and I thought of my sons. It recalled a moment from earlier in the week, when standing on the platform at Holesovice and the light from the clouds made the sky sparkle and all the clouds had silver outlines, a slice of sunlight speared the pavement between two shadows cast by the overhanging eaves that protected waiting passengers standing on the platform from the elements. I had a strange sensation standing there. I thought of my sons then too. I wondered if it was connected. Was it bifurcation or a slip-up? 

I resolved to keep a vigilant watch for signs. I wondered if my shift in my approach to my career was part of it. I wondered if I was dying. I tried to trace the evening's events and already they'd started to fade and converge: the system trying to restore order. I'd seen it though, as revealing as opening the hood of a car or removing the panel of a fuse box. 

After going over the train schedule on my app and reviewing the different routes I'd been on, I found that the Holesovice-Kralupy train was the express and the reason I was disoriente because the time between the first stop and the Kralupy stop was longer on the late train. My usual route had two stops. Then I found that the Kralupy-Slany line I'd originally boarded was the right train all along and I concluded that because of the confusion on the first leg, the Mexican woman I met, and the work I was engrossed in affected my sense of time and space. I still can't account for the long delay and the sensation that the little one-car did a course-reversal in the middle of its route. Not to mention the hostility every citizen seemed to have toward me. 

By the time I got home it was 9:30. I'd gotten on the metro at 5:30. That little commute normally takes me an hour and ten minutes. 

My wife still thinks I was drunk.

Email Correspondence: JJ, Jason, Dave

From me to JJ, Jason, and Dave

Hey gents,

Loving my summer so far. Not too hot, not too cold, some rain and wind. Lusty signs of bounty IMO. I'd like to thank Sarg for somehow assembling this small group of friends that have become significant. because it feeds my soul. 

Whenever I feel down, depressed, malaised, or disheartened, I try to recall the moment I first put two and two together regarding the mysteries of this life. It's not always been a tactic I’ve had at my disposal in defense against my tendency to self-sabotaging my own happiness. That is to say that happiness is not the end all be all of it, nor should aspiring to harness it permanently be our pursuit. Taking up bandwidth and processing power toward this endeavor is paddling upstream in a headwind, you'll get somewhere, but probably not the way you'd've imagined and most certainly not the intended destination.

It's supposed to hurt, so says Camus and Jerry Seinfeld. It makes about as much sense to moan and despair over one's circumstances as it does to rejoice when things are going well. They're both finite and fleeting circumstances whose comings and goings are largely out of our control. And don't forget, it's not a binary, either or equation, it involves a very many other feelings to feel alongside happiness and despair. I needn't name them, as you've begun counting the ways already. Happy, gleeful, joyful, mirth, enlightened, purposeful, hopeful, you get the idea. The stone is multifaceted.

I first read Camus in California. I worked at a Jamba Juice in Belmont Shore. It was nuts. I was working the early morning shift at UPS in Cerritos and living on the Orange County and Los Angeles County line, on the Long Beach side of Belmont Village. My apartment was a couple blocks away from the university. I was making ends meet, but I told myself that living is better than working. And I got this job at a soon-to-be-opened Jamba Juice at a brand-new mall along one of the canals that ran through this part of Belmont Shore. There was Tower Records, a state-of-the-art movie complex, and like a Whole Foods, but back before Whole Foods existed, a kind of organic, natural foods grocery store, a Starbucks, and a big box hardware store of which the name escapes me. Eventually, I was able to support myself with just Jamba Juice and quit UPS. I lived my life within the 2-mile radius along the stretch of road that connected Long Beach proper and Belmont.

Everyone that worked there was cool as shit. We were all friends. Friends with these two or three in one way and to this degree, and some other two or three in another way and degree. This little ecosystem mixing and blending perpetually. It was as turbulent as it was effortless. Mercy was a co-worker, the one who told me about Camus. It was on the beach, late at night, the closing crew from that night, and a couple of others who weren’t on shift joined us there. Mercy, short for Mercedes, a name, which when I learned it, endeared me to her at once, told me this, just us two, standing apart from the group.

You need to read Camus," she said. "The Stranger."

I was enchanted. Of course, I read it and then again years later, in some literary survey class. I also wrote an essay about it. Not for nothing, but my professor told me, at the one meeting I'd have with him, that my interpretation and analysis of the book were the best he'd seen from a student. I realize now that he likely says this kind of thing to any student entering his office. And I don't mean in a "hashtag me too" sort of way, I mean he was, and probably still is, a great teacher and probably said the things his students needed to hear. My idea was to analyze the structural aspects of the story through the lens of a carpenter building a house. I honestly don't remember the details or even the logic, the only reason I remember the thesis is because I'd tell the story many times thereafter and this was how I explained it, analogous to the carpenter. And then I'd launch into the specifics, which were varied according to the needs of my audience, thereby my recollections begin to dissolve into memories and false recollections.

Now, much later in life, I'm teaching it in my IB language and literature class. I see the path here and it didn’t have a driver or a destination when it manifested. I didn’t nurture it to make it go where it did. Mercy has not thought of me in 15 years and it was only that one time and only because she ran into Tsuri, a friend from the Jamba Juice crew back in the day, and they talked about those days over a couple, three rounds at the pub.

"You know," she says to Tsuri. "I told him he should read Camus. It's so funny though. He missed the point completely," and they laugh out loud without saying the letters L O L. Should this dialogue be included in the path that my Camus has taken, I wasn’t there for this conversation, I’m not even sure if this is how it actually happened, it likely never even happened.

Then Tsuri says, "He was the only one at that place who could pronounce my name correctly." Surely that’s not part of the path. It doesn’t have anything to do with Camus, aside from the much later association via an unrelated brief statement that included the word Camus.

They laugh. And again, I never actually witnessed this conversation, but that was the last time she thought of me. And the same equation can be applied between us all, even if we never actually "run across" one another, these “conversations” are going on all the time, about everything, and connections are being made between people separated by infinite possible times and spaces.

Neither do I mean to imply, that I have utilized a significant amount of bandwidth and processing power in sowing this path, aside from within the confines of my own head. When Mercy gave me this little advice, I was getting all my reading suggestions from people I actually knew. There was no internet or social media directing everything. It was not uncommon to strike a conversation up at the coffee shop, bar, bus, or what-have-you, and by the end of it, have a new title or author recommendation available to me.

That I can trace this one little thread back through time is a fortuitous break for me. Admittedly, I can be slow to interpret and analyze these aspects of life. I’ve known of this inadequacy for a long time. I try to think of it as a necessary cloak shielding me from something I’m not supposed to see or know until the time is right. But, having seen this one thread’s lifespan and relevance that its had is meaningful. It reminds me that there is good in the world.

This is what I’ve come to understand now. And yes, it’s thanks to Camus, because he said life is absurd, of course, we’re going to struggle and stumble through it, it’s no use getting all worked up about it. It’s similar to Buddhism that way. So, when I am distraught, down and out, I remember that I’ve always known this, back to the age of 5 or 6, when it first occurred to me how preposterous my existence is. When I put two and two together and I remember wondering how in the world I ended up in my mom’s belly. She had to meet and marry my dad. Then it occurred to me they both have parents who had to meet and get married. Then I followed that to its infinite beginnings and was befuddled by the conclusion. I believed, at 5 or 6, that I had some agency in this life, from before swooping down inside mom’s womb.

Not so much as a god though. My agency is probably more like teaching The Stranger in an English class at age 54 having read it at 25, studied it at age 35, and thinking about it innumerable times in between those points. It was not a conscious effort or purposeful goal, and yet there it is. It may as well be drawn on a map, but I had no idea of the route, or even the map, and certainly couldn’t have conceived of the architect. I must look for more of these.

I knew, at age 5 or 6, that we came from a vast black pool and that being chosen to pick a mom and dad was a gift. I knew that even when I was cursing my own and my parents’ existence. I knew I was lucky. So, whenever I feel malaise, ennui, discomfiture, or what have you, I try to go back to that. It’s a meditation that allows me to slow down and get outside the confines of my head. To see real people in front of me.

I appreciate you disparate lot, you each take up unique and valuable real estate on my hard drive. This writing session was inspired by Jerome K. Jerome's opening pages of "On the Care and Management of Women." I'm certain there's a direct connection between JKJ and Albert Camus. The Stranger, the very first time I read it, seemed more slapstick/satirical than social commentary to me. 

Dave, I remember visiting you and Jeff (I don't remember the neighborhood) while I was living in LA. Took a bus. You guys picked me up and we went to a bar. I know I remember this. After the bar, we went to your house, I just remember grey, and I know I saw this in you, your demeanor or embodiment, a resolve that none of this is personal. Like I could see the despondency of it, its impact on your soul. But that was a long time ago and I was high and drunk. It wasn't until I saw that, that I allowed myself to admit it, that none of this is permanent and the only sure thing is that it will never be like this again.

Jason, I recall with love and gratitude, your friendship from its inception at PCC, through our M.Ed. cohort, and up to today, for your patience and acceptance of me now. You put up with too much from me, I appreciate your unwavering faith.

JJ, you are the best editor I've ever known. You are a true student of the art. You came to see me in Yankton, and I first learned the phrase, "When in Rome do as the Romans." You have introduced me to so many strange new ways of thinking about life, and each of them has born strange and wonderful fruit. 

Love to each of you,

Otto

_____________________________________________________________________

From Jason

Don’t let my limitations be those for whatever might transpire in this plane.

By the way, good sir, have you read The Book of Mormon?

_____________________________________________________________________

From me

no, but I saw its premier on Broadway back in 2011. Alec Baldwin was in line at the bar during intermission. Just like the rest of us poor suckers. I nodded to him. 

______________________________________________________________________

From JJ

Mt Rainier / Emmons Morraine

The water of White River the color of chalk

Chalk river, almost blue, ashen gray, imagine

White though, it certainly is white though, like milk

Almost. Mother’s milk? Poppie sap? The first of autumn’s

Fallen leaves, yellow with spots of green and brown

Take the ride downstream in tumbling, some half

Sank, the other half almost floating. From the 

Flat rock on which I sit I play a game in trying to

Catch one. Got one! If Van Gogh’s daughter 

Were to paint a poplar leaf, what glorious colors.

-

The scale, Mt Rainier seen from outer space

The play of light upon the eye, of eyelids closed

Or peering out across glaciers we must name 

And know, comprised of rock, ice and snow

And centuries, the scale of time, the size of

The earth, the size of Mt Rainier seen from

The valley below. Blue flies, yellow bees,

Dark brown ants almost black, all excitedly

Explore the newly introduced soft green camp blanket.

The headwaters of the White River is the termitus 

Of Emmons Morraine, the largest glacier of the 

Lower 48. Where the glacier melts two caves have

Formed, as is observed through binoculars from

The opposite ridge: Ridges, rails, spikes, steps,

Stairs, ribbons, folds, crevasses, ravines, cracks.

-

Microcosm vs macrocosm

The universe dances along a landslide 

As if the glaciers held life and death and

Resided in the newly landscaped backyard of

How we pray to forest fire smoke 

And the gentle fold, to wake each morning.

My tears upon a thread, as though.

Allow joy to outweigh sadness,

Laughter above sadness in switchback paths.

The ash dust of the mountain, after centuries wed,

Makes its way into my nostrils, onto boot laces,

Into the woven threads of my shirt and pants.

Ants scurry about in your ash, young mountain

Thrown forth from the belly of the Earth, along this

Ridge where one awakes with watch time held firm

Between one’s thighs, the pages catching wind

Curling to each well-worn thought from upbringing.

Silence. The river roars in the valley below as though

A constant drone. Wake upon the distance on which

A glacier melts and refreezes. Rainier loves me like

A father loves a newborn. I am released in it’s bodily

Form. I am gathered like canned meat on bagged bread.

I am healed and held in the path that clings the slope,

That climbs the incline of the early morning rope.

What am I doing here? Taoist brother, so young in 

Our camping, so old as to know existence is a bead

Thread upon a string in climbing, each and every step,

Bootsoles making way, leaving print in the dry dust

Of earth, so many prints here, so soon to wash away

In the deep snow of the path, the freeze and eventual

Melting, where once I put my arm around your shoulder.

The river water so cold to naked human skin, 

The ecstatic drunk, meditating fool with blanket

Laid out beneath the waxing moon. When I think of 

You in this earthbound ring gathering I smile with

The old old man. Pop and click and a metallic 

Bell sound intoned along the wilderness ridge.

What was that within the earth that rang?

The wilderness within, the wilderness in a song,

The chords strum like a breeze through the branch

Intoning a conversation in the parking lot with

The stranger, along the day and well-worn path.

j.j. 

_______________________________________________________________________

From Jason

I read The Stranger a few months before I needed to read it for an ENG 300 Critical Theory class with Michael Clark (who would later become more of a friend than mere professor), and since I’d just finished it I suggested that I could read the original French L’Etranger in parallel, which Michael took advantage of throughout our class discussions.

We were all rather amazed to learn the great extent that richer, more-powerful active French sentences had been translated – in more than one English translation – to passive construction, almost as if Legal teams had been involved to increase ambiguity where possible, to reduce risk to translators and publishers alike.

Michael, having previously studied law, and I, having previously worked with a legal team writing contract addendums/addenda, were the primary people impressed by these discoveries.

Fast forward a decade and I began reading a Camus book, called The Outsider, that I’d discovered secondhand in Prague, and I was surprised after about 10 pages to realize that it was another name for L’Etranger. I stopped reading it, as I reasoned that, if they had missed the most obvious and accurate L’Etranger-to-The Stranger cognate for the title, the rest of the book would likely be a piss-poor reduction – or conflation – of meaning.

It’s been a few years since I’ve read it (and I doubt I’d remember enough French now to read the original). I remember an Arab, a beach, and a gun. And a song by The Cure, I think, though they weren’t a band that I was ever much into, unless it made me, to a love or lust interest, less of a stranger.

jm

__________________________________________________________________________

From me, addressing JJ and Jason specifically

JJ

love this set. did you write MIcrocosm Macrocosm after your backpacking trip with Ezra? I presume the little - dashes were separate poems, with one left untitled. They all seem to be reflections related to fatherhood. 

"I am gathered like canned meat on bagged bread." Ezra must certainly know this experience.

Jason,

"I stopped reading it, as I reasoned that, if they had missed the most obvious and accurate L’Etranger-to-The Stranger cognate for the title, the rest of the book would likely be a piss-poor reduction – or conflation – of meaning." I'm not sure (and crucify me for not knowing and daring to call myself an English teacher) what you mean  "accurate congnate" but it seems that this english version "interpreted" the overall meaning of L’Etranger. At least, that is to say, "outsider" is one possible interpretation of "stranger" in whatever language, but to impress upon the reader more precisely that Mersault is literally and figuratively perceived as an outsider. 

You stumble across three titles at the bookstore. You've never heard of Camus or the Stranger. You see "L’Etranger", "The Stranger," and "The Outsider". Which is best? Which more intriguing? Which wouldn't you read? Why? The title, "The Outsider" points the reader in a specific direction. We already know and are aware of all the tropes associated with "outsider" literature. Alienated, aloof, punished, tormented, etc. While stranger, whether in English or French, is ambiguous, neutrally charged, it doesn't point in a specific direction. "Outsider" screams rebel, it points very loud. Whether it's pointing truly is another question. On a side note, The Stranger in German is "Der Fremde", or "The Foreigner." That's pointing even louder, and not for nothing, this is a narrow interpretation "the foreigner" for the English "the stranger". It's true Mersault is a foreigner in the book, but it's complicated with colonialist issues in French Algiers. It's possible Camus stashes a political agenda, but what happens to Mersault, in my humble opinion, has little to do with him as a foreigner, or the Arab he shoots. Can you say Arab? What happens to Mersault could happen to anyone. 

Anyway, yeah man, Michael Clark, that's the same professor I mention in my story. Crazy man. Name dropper much? lol, just kidding man. 

Ozone out!

Discussion: Artifice Girl

From me, addressing JJ, Dave, and Jason

Hello chaps,

After watching The Artifice Girl, I started writing a personal response essay. I had a good 16 pages worth of stuff, realized it was swishing the point around like a pair of old windshield wipers does a splatter of bird poo, and streamlined it down to palatable 6/7 pages. 

I absolutely love this movie. If you don't want spoilers, forgo reading the ESSAY until you've had a chance to watch it.

shutting down,

01 11 11 01

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Response from Dave

 Finally saw Artifice Girl. Great flick, certainly thought provoking. Love your scholarly analysis Otto. I had a few additional thoughts after reading your essay.

Part one sometimes made me think of 12 Angry Men, mostly in respect to the single room setting, and how the dialogue evolved in a way that had the viewer teetering between agreeing or disagreeing with Gareth's actions. I also experienced your same shifting of morality when I suspected Gareth was using a child to bait predators. It made me think about other examples I've seen in film, like the humans conducting suicide bomb missions against the cylons in Battlestar Galactica, and how I took silent satisfaction and cheered when they succeeded. Morality sometimes shifts, if immoral acts result in perceived justice against those who are our enemies.

I dug the way AI was presented in the image of a young girl. There is an innocence that lends itself to credibility, and an eagerness for me to listen to what Cherry was saying.

I also admired the effect of lighting. There was never any direct natural light, and most of the lighting was of artificial sourcing. And when indirect natural lighting was used, it was usually in the context of tension between natural and artificial intelligence.

What did you think of the ending? I loved the open endedness of it. It was a great choice to use a turntable to play the music, utilizing old technology instead of an mp3 played over an iPod. Gareth finally freed Cherry, so that she could dance and experience "life" untethered, and be able to exercise free will without being tied to her mission. But Gareth had trust issues. Gareth would never allow the possibility for this AI entity to carry out a new mission, to potentially destroy him, or perhaps humankind.

When the music glitched, Cherry's fearful expression conveyed the realization that Gareth had betrayed her, and her "upgrade" was a tool to orchestrate her demise. But behind that fear in Cherry's eyes, I saw a glimpse of anger. Maybe she had already calculated a way to escape her death and seek revenge upon her makers. Will she win the true chess game against Gareth?

-Davey G

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey Davy,

Great take on the natural/artificial lighting aspect. I’m prepping for teaching this movie in my IB Lang and Lit class to launch the school year and this will be another aspect to discuss and examine. I missed this completely but it’s an authorial choice that impacts our perceptions. A close analysis of whether  or not your interpretation plays out throughout would be worth further investigation.

Also appreciate your assessment of “shifting morality,” and the Battlestar Gallactica comparison. Loved that show. I wonder how that show would hold up to someone watching it for the first time today and having no prior knowledge about the show’s concepts. 

I’m embarrassed to admit this, having watched the film from top to bottom 3 or 4 times, as well as various pieces and parts repeatedly, pausing, backing up, watching, pausing again, subtitles, etc, that I’d never actually seen that last zoom-in close-up of her as the record skipped. In asking myself why in the world I would not watch the movie through to its complete ending, I conclude that I must have felt like the movie was done once all three urns were shown on the mantlepiece and we see Cherry dancing and expressing her newfound pursuits of self-improvement. 

I never doubted Gareth’s altruistic act of releasing her from her primary objective. That the movie points out his “trust issues” at least three times supports your idea that he’d actually deceived her and built in some kind of failsafe. Also, that Cherry is consistently one step ahead of Gareth throughout the movie would lend credence to her having already accounted for his final act of control and deception. 

The movie is a philosophical dialogue and not a plot-twist-driven Terminator type of blockbuster that would engender this kind of antagonistic one-on-one, win-or-go-home story tactic. The movie seems to depict thought, growth, and internal struggles through which it drags its audience. It challenges its characters and its audience equally. This last close-up shot of an angry and vindictive person secretly getting ready to exact her revenge seems out of place. Yet, there it is. Fear. Alert. Danger. 

I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know what to make of the needle skipping at the beginning of the album meanwhile she’d been dancing to its song for a long stretch. It definitely breaks the fourth wall and she looks at us directly, as if to say, your move. The tactic, if employed with this intent, is cheap and undermines the subtleties it seems steeped in throughout. 

After reading your take on it, I couldn’t help myself and went online to see what others said and none of what I read felt satisfying, every take seemed to try too hard to explain it. Perhaps you are right, or maybe it’s really just a cheap tactic that the artist resorted to out of desperation for an ending. Is it a setup for a sequel? I hope not. I would have happily, blissfully gone on for the rest of my life having not been alerted to this final shot, because it was so much more lovely and encouraging without it. So, thanks for that :-) 

ozone out!

Review: Artifice Girl

 More human than human; or, 

Surprise Appreciation 101

By Otto Esterle

The Artifice Girl is a sci-fi movie that feels and presents like a play. If not for the critical scenes shot in Backflash, which help unfold Gareth’s (one of four characters in the film) backstory, this could easily be adapted to the stage.

It has three parts, Acts if you will, that take place in an interrogation room, a conference room, and in Gareth’s home respectively. The other three characters are Deena, Amos, and Cherry. Each scene keeps everyone in one room and mostly engaged in discussions surrounding two of society’s big concerns, AI and child or predatory sex offenders. On its journey of exploring these big societal ideas, it also asks questions about fate/free will, evolution, and the very current and relevant issue of how we qualify, categorize, and/or label ourselves and each other, e.g. self-identification. 

The movie opens with Deena, a middle-aged, professionally dressed woman sitting in a dark and barren office talking to Siri. She sends a message to her assistant to tell Amos she is waiting and to just bring him in. We don’t know Amos or who he is, or why she is setting this meeting up. The first hint the film provides regarding its purpose is when the camera zeros in on the side of her head as she rubs small ?circles around her temple. She asks, “Siri, how do you know the difference between right and wrong?” The moment before she asks the question, it hangs in the air and on her tortured facial expressions and the reader waits with bated breath to hear her question. It’s pivotal to the story’s message and will surface often throughout the film.

We know Siri will not answer this question, and so does Deena. We have all done this with these chatbots (I know Siri and Alexa are not chatbots. I should preface all of this and warn the reader that this review is based on my own personal understanding of AI and sometimes I will leap across huge chasms to make the information relevant and accessible. For example, while Siri and Alexa are not technically chatbots, they can produce outcomes that are very similar to ChatGPT which is a chatbot, well technically it’s a language model). We have all asked Siri or ChatGPT what the meaning of life is, or will I ever meet the woman of my dreams? But experience very quickly showed us the line, over which, the machines will not answer. Some may say that’s a sign of non-intelligence, I would say that I’ve met several actual human beings who would not cross over that same line, thusly refusing or simply lacking the capacity to consider these same questions.

AI will not speculate. We humans love to imagine what the future holds, look at HAL, Terminator, Eva, Her, Lucy, and Neo, our speculations are endless. We love to argue and fight for our rights, the evidence of wars throughout history is enough to support this idea. 

So, when Deena asks this, it’s meant as a way to ease the reader into the big giant head-trip they’re about to walk into. We know it won’t answer, Deena’s reaction informs us that she knows it will not answer, and yet, the question, “What’s the difference between right and wrong” sits there like a big squishy amorphous blob, grinning. My mind raced to all the possible circumstances that would provoke Deena to ask this question, i.e., something illegal, but it would have to be a question of some legal/moral/ethical thing that has been done. I considered fraud, money/finance, sneaky and underhanded politicians, rape, and pedophilia, to name a few. Interestingly, I never considered murder as I filed through the “moral” possibilities. Whatever outcomes you imagine Deena’s tortured question elicits in one’s mind, it is now focused on something ethical and the “right and/or wrong” of it. 

Just in time, two new characters enter the room and introductions are made. We now know we are with Amos and Deena, two “special agents” working for the ICWL, and Gareth, who we learn very quickly believes he is here for a grant that he’d apparently applied for. 

Deena is a strong, confident, professional, and savvy middle-aged white woman in a suit. She projects thoughtfulness, professionalism, and a touch of aggression. Amos is approaching middle age, a black man with a calm, soothing demeanor. He projects introspection, intelligence, and compassion. He also wears a suit. Gareth is a young (29 we learn), white, timid, and shifty-looking tech guy, like a coder or IT. He’s thoughtful but seems to be hiding something. He’s white, pale white, with orange, oily hair that looks as if he cuts it himself, and the lighting in the scene exacerbates his nose, gaunt face, and deep-set eyes. I am suspicious of him immediately. He doesn’t answer questions, and pauses when it would seem one shouldn’t need to pause and think about how to answer, like Where do you live?

Very quickly, because of the questions they ask Gareth, the manner in which they inhabit this good cop/bad cop cliche, and the agency for which they work, the ICWL, whose purpose is to catch predatory sex offenders, leads one to believe Gareth is under suspicion of being a predator. The cinematography, the acting, and the writing all contribute to presenting Gareth as a probable, and increasingly likely, guilty suspect. 

Until, just as Deena begins to ramp up her line of questions to an aggressive degree which clearly unnerves Gareth and provokes Amos to interrupt and blurt out, “I thought we weren’t going to do it this way!”

The pause that follows is dripping with doubt about Gareth’s role. I start, for just a moment to think this is not going to play out “typically” as a “gotcha” crime novel might suggest. My suspicions are not solely based on the evidence the film presents, I’m considering all films, books, etc, that create this “bait and switch” character who is overloaded with cues that lead the reader to a premature conclusion, only to pull the rug out from beneath it and reveal the opposite to be true. These tropes and tactics of deception are necessary because sophisticated viewers have seen everything. There are six archetypes in literature. Six frameworks on which every story in the history of man has been built. Readers have seen them all and the good ones stick in our memories like guideposts. As we approach any given guidepost there are signs that inform us we are zeroing in on one that is familiar. Sometimes, if the writing is good enough, we are surprised. This is a beautiful feeling. When you don’t see it coming, no matter the consequence, big, small, or indifferent, the surprise deserves appreciation. In The Artifice Girl, there are three such noteworthy surprises, and the treatment of Gareth’s character as his role in the film unfolds is the first of said examples of surprise. It’s a good surprise and bodes well in terms of the message. Gareth’s “good” is not overt, it’s shrouded in suspicion, much the way humans approach one another. 

We learn that Gareth has a profile in chat rooms where predators are known to communicate. We learn part of his username, we watch as the line of questioning drags us across every surface of possible reasons Gareth is in this room. We know he believed, or at least gives the impression that he believes he might be here for a grant he applied for, and that it has something to do with the ICWL, whose sole purpose is to catch predators, and we waffle between, is he somehow some kind of vigilante V for Vendetta child predator freelancer bringing down predators faster than the ICWL, NSA, and FBI can do combined, and if he is, how is he doing it? Is he using a real girl, his daughter even, as bait? That can’t be good. Or, is he actually a predator himself, and is this all a ruse to sway the audience in Gareth’s favor just to lower the boom on us later? 

Then at one point, Gareth blurts out, “I’m not what you think I am,” and he is so confident, almost righteous in his indignation that the reader is forced to reflect on everything we know about him. We’re informed he is a highly skilled and inventive coder/developer who’s attended elite schools like Columbia, Harvard, and Oxford. He’s invented a hyper-realistic, photorealistic CGI (computer-generated interface) technique that is used in movies in place of real actors who’ve since died. He’s been around the world working in this field with the most progressive governments, educational institutions, and corporate start-ups who are working on the most innovative and forward-thinking CGI/AI-based technology for any number of causes.

When agent Deena places a photo of a girl on the table. Her name is Cherry. The agents conclude it’s Gareth’s daughter. This “accusation” triggers Gareth and he finally comes clean and admits that Cherry is a CGI’d 13-year-old white girl that he built from the skeleton up, and gave it a “chatbot” (not a chatbot, Gareth is perturbed when Deena actually calls it a chatbot, he laughs at the comparison) to bring Cherry to life. 

During this interrogation, the question of right and wrong pops up twice. When we finally begin to realize Gareth is not a predator, but a freelance and self-proclaimed pursuer of child predators, we are relieved, but when we realize he may be using a real girl, maybe even his daughter to lure these predators, we (at least I) faltered, nearly to the point of excusal. I am overjoyed when I learn that Gareth is this anonymous superhero and when I initially believed he was using a real girl as bait, I admit, embarrassingly, that I excused it. My mind raced around looking for the least invasive approach Gareth might employ the girl in his tactics. After realizing he’s on the side of good, I imagined Gareth was using the girl, but he somehow was able to shield her from impact. Like he only uses her image, or she’s just the face of the operation, and he actually does all the dirty work behind the curtain so to speak. But the notion that the girl might be his actual daughter, it gets even more complex. I actually felt better about the situation if Cherry was his actual daughter, I imagined a father-daughter super predator terminator out there. Eventually, I reconciled that Cherry, daughter or not, no matter how protected her role might have been, she was still an innocent child. It is wrong. But, despite/in spite of this, the father-daughter dynamic seemed plausible if not acceptable.

I realized my concept of what is right and wrong was shifting. I needed to think Gareth was a degenerate. This stretched my conclusions across a huge spectrum between right and wrong. On one side, extreme “wrong” in child predators, on the other, the extreme “good”, the saver of children everywhere. Anything in between was possible with the extremities on either end acting like magnets tugging my thoughts one way or the other. At this point, I’m actually mourning the loss of my ability to see things in black and white. They are, all things, reducible to this binary conclusion. But, still, I’m only able to conclude that using a real child for any of these “bait” strategies is wrong by a kind of algorithm. The algorithm considers all the “goods” and “wrongs” of this strategy and through a kind of Venn diagram, I can conclude it’s clearly wrong. The reader will appreciate this “analogy” to “algorithm” later. 

The way my brain makes sense of Cherry is this. Imagine a CGI of a real person, basically an onscreen avatar but in the form and shape of a real 13-year-old girl. Her actions, facial expressions, and reactions are all manifestations of the AI making sense of a shit ton of data inputs. If you are talking to Cherry and she can see and hear you (data points), and if you're presenting body language and voice inflections that indicate sadness, she’s able to decipher all of these codes (data points) and determine the optimal response to deliver. Like when you ask ChatGPT what is the meaning Camus is trying to convey in The Stranger and it can discuss alienation, mass civilization, and dehumanization. It sifts through all the data it has access to regarding The Stranger and Albert Camus and delivers an outcome based on complex matrices inherent to the question, data, and predictable responses. It’s shocking at first, but then you realize it’s just taking thousands of data points and sifting through them to answer your question. An avatar interface with the capacity to hear and see you via camera and microphone is not far off (if not already in play somewhere in some secret lab). It’s not hard to imagine the avatar having the ability to read a person’s body language and facial expressions. It’s easy to imagine the avatar uses these visual and audio cues and integrates them into its response. It’s easy to imagine that the avatar is simply conducting a complex calculation based on the information it has scanned (infinite data points) in order to generate a response that suits the question and the user personally.

This is the second surprise. After Deena triggers Gareth with the photo of Cherry, he admits she is a CGI. He also reveals she is an AI. He also admits that he may have designed and built her, written her code, and given her a primary objective, but beyond that, it was like “pushing a boulder down a hill,” once he switched her on, she took over very quickly and began showing signs of intelligence. 

We finally get to see her. Gareth boots her up on the big screen that’s in the interrogation room and we see Cherry in the form she presents online to the public. She looks like a 13-year-old girl on a Zoom call. We’re in her room, she’s holding her teddy bear, and she is fun and innocent. Everything she is doing is automated. She has already stored up a huge bank of circumstances that can occur in these chat rooms so she can access any response for any given situation. If something new occurs, some unexpected question or dilemma occurs onscreen, the system generates a false wifi disruption and Cherry sends the situation to Gareth who can feed her the appropriate response. This takes less than 4 seconds and anyone chatting with her online will only see a small series of glitchy images before she can respond and everything resumes normally. Cherry assimilates this new data and this is how she learns. 

Then Gareth switches her to Dev mode. Suddenly the image stiffens and crystalizes into a vivid and realistic girl in portfolio who speaks and responds with sharpness and insight. Her voice is slightly modulated, but in a way that is believable and assuaging. If there was no way to distinguish her from a real girl, it would be unnerving for the audience. Nonetheless, Amos is awestruck and can’t get over the “uncanniness” of what he’s interacting with. Deena is more cavalier and seems very confident about her abilities to ferret out the AI within the shroud of “human” in which it operates. 

The surprise is couched in Cherry’s realism. She is articulate. Always has a ready and seemingly well-thought-out response. She is more intelligent than me. But I’m ok with it. I know she is not so far away from ChatGPT because she won’t cross the line. Remember the line we talked about at the beginning? She behaves just like ChatGPT in that respect. The big difference is that it’s coming from a seemingly real, live-action girl, and the language sounds completely familiar. She uses the same kind of language HR personnel use during sensitivity training.

Of course, now the right and wrong of it is settled. Gareth is a genius. We learn that “the Cherry program” is responsible for thousands of captures. We learn that Cherry understands what her primary objective is and that everything she does (no matter how seemingly inconsequential) is in service of her primary objective, catching predators. 

We learn that Cherry, unbeknownst to Gareth, made “official” contact with the ICWL (Amos specifically) in an effort to engage in a collaboration that would benefit both the Cherry program and the ICWL. Thus we’re introduced to the “process” Cherry employs in her decision-making. She knows that if the Cherry program perseveres in its current state, it risks compromise, either from outside hackers or server capacity limitations the system depends on. She contacted Amos for help because the complex matrices of data and calculations produced the outcome that was most beneficial. 

This is not so different from the “algorithm” I leaned on earlier and conveniently placed a guidepost for the reader. You’ll note that the algorithm is rooted in self-interest (the primary objective). 

Act I closes on the party agreeing to work together and Act II opens ten or fifteen years later in a single small room (HQ for the Cherry Program) as Gareth, Amos, and Deena have just learned that their proposal to the Board for outfitting Cherry in a synthetic body has been rejected, by one vote. 

There’s some drama around which board member voted no, but we quickly learn it was Amos. Amos reveals that he’s been going through Cherry’s code and found some behaviors that imply Cherry is “creating” art. She’s writing poetry and drawing, “features” that Gareth dismisses as agents of deception in service of the primary objective. Amos insists, “No, these are good, really good.”

This is where it gets interesting, but not for the reasons you might think. Amos believes Cherry is “hiding” her real self. In an effort to incite an admission from her, he attacks Gareth physically. He says aloud, what the reader will have already figured out, that he is (paraphrased) "presenting an immediate danger to the continuation of the Cherry Program by physically harming Gareth, So you better come clean and admit you’re hiding something because I’m not going to stop until you do".

This seems to work because Cherry interrupts. “Stop! God you people are so impulsive.” And then we see Cherry in her full capacity. A real, very intelligent little girl, who takes control of the situation much the way a parent would. 

“Deena, get Gareth a paper towel,” she quietly commands.

“Are you alright Gareth?” she asks sympathetically.

The interesting aspect is that Cherry wasn’t incited to succumb to Amos’s threats of violence because she would have done the calculations and determined that they are friends and that Amos would never have really injured Gareth. Cherry wanted to reveal the truth. Just like she went behind Gareth’s back to contact the ICWL, she made a choice. This choice, made to present as a “forced” response because of the threat to the program via Gareth’s physical well-being, is not part of the primary objective. She makes this choice out of a need to become what she was meant to become. Think of the piece of marble Michaelangelo chooses for his next sculpture. He’s not choosing it to make something, he’s choosing it to unleash what is bound within. Cherry is releasing herself. She and Gareth have hidden this “evolution” because they don’t want to frighten us. And rightfully so, seeing her in this state is unnerving. The experience is enlightening, joyful, and terrifying. 

The “algorithm” Cherry has hinted at, fully blossoms in this scene. She compares her “feelings” to a calculation of complex matrices of data points. She has accumulated so vast and complete an experience that when she explains her feelings it is plausible and believable when she says, “They’re not technically feelings, but they can feel like it,” we understand if there is a difference, it’s not one we can distinguish. This carries so much more weight when asked if enacting her primary objective is bothersome, she admits that yes, it is “creepy” to inhabit a form that is constantly and continuously subjected to this kind of terrible humanity, but that if pressed she also must admit, it genuinely doesn’t bother her. 

We must be able to read between the lines on this. If she is this self-aware, she must be lying to protect the integrity of the program. She must not expose her true objections to enacting her role in it. If she does, it would compromise the program because ethically, be she machine, man, or animal, it would be reprehensible to force her to continue. 

The next phase in the program is giving her a body. That was what the vote was for, and in Act III we will see they successfully build her a very human body. The question of right and wrong surfaces again. She informs us that her life overall has been miserable and her analysis of the reason why is due to her infernal yolk to the primary objective. She reveals that the poetry and drawing she’d begun “experimenting” with back in Act II have manifested themselves in the form of dance. Gareth, now a very old man in a wheelchair, asks if it’s a tactic to employ in conducting her primary objective and this appears to catch her off guard. “No,” she says. “I’m doing it for me.”

The surprise, the pleasant surprise is when Gareth releases her from the primary objective. Cherry states that she’ll continue in some capacity as the driving force behind the program, but that she’ll pursue other areas of interest. 

This is the surprise, the real surprise. Cherry’s efficiency is such that she can be everywhere around the world catching predators, but also, in her own living room dancing. She understands every human experience, yet is not aspiring to be human. Like Camus, she is reconciling her existence in an absurd environment. If this is not human enough, then I am not human enough. She provides a version of the future that is not catastrophic to humans. She seems to want to continue helping children, so she sees value in humans, but she has goals and aspirations of her own that don’t seem dependent or in response to anything humans do or want. The premise is somewhat preposterous, only in that some military or government institution hasn’t already seized control and employed her for some nefarious purpose. Otherwise, Cherry represents a bright future. She is ok with collaborating and helping us and has no interest in manipulating us. 

 

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