The psyche of people in a world where the proposed inventions are made possible is studied while conceptualizing the narrative techniques via the lens of transhumanism.
Sci-fi, Speculation and Science
Literature is a platform that allows new ideas to boom as they incorporate novelty. The newness or fresh perception has enabled literary works to be prophetic visions and it has been providing thoughts for an invention that didn’t boom in laboratories and research centers among the great minds. The select sci-fi short story can be perceived as a warning or as a premonition. Either way, literature that deals with such sensitive areas has to be critically analyzed to comprehend the probable situations waiting in future.
Fiction has been providing characters and plots ahead of time. There are several texts that have dealt with creations which were less spoken or thought of. In other words, certain inventions that emerged in the field of science and especially biotechnology can be traced to literature. “To the Transhumanist mind-set, characters like Gilgamesh, Prometheus, Victor Frankenstein, and Faust would unquestionably be seen as positive figures” (Manzocco, 2019, p. xi). One of the significant science fiction novels is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This novel is cited to question the binary of the human world and the other. Secondly, the Prometheus myth which is believed by critics to have commented on human intervention in natural science and its impact on society and environment is also frequently referred.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a gothic horror story that has been used to comprehend the monster theory proposed by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen in his essay, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” (1996). With reference to the Monster theory, categorizing certain communities as monsters gave way for comprehending humanness. The classification of what makes a human and a monster with concepts that aren’t concrete but can provide species boundaries became a new approach. One key concept in classifying monstrousness and humanness is rational thinking and emotional intelligence. Others include the special or the temporal geographical boundaries, role of time and significance of human emotions. It also encloses the autonomy, ability to indulge in art and the possibility of contemplating generosity and remorse (Nayar, 2014). These qualities that classify a human from the monster are the abilities which the transhumanist researches are aiming to feed the artificial intelligence. In other words, scientific advancements are focused on transferring their significant roles and capabilities to a feature without questioning the future.
In addition to Prometheus and Modern Prometheus, the search for defeating death and finding the way to attain immortality has also been mentioned in the epic poetry, where Gilgamesh, a king who is a mixture of divine and human attempts to save him from meeting the grim reaper.
‘[I am seeking] the [road] of my forefather, Uta-napisti,
who attended the gods’ assembly, and [found life eternal:]
of death and life[he shall tell me the secret.]’ (George, 2000, p.72)
Manzocco declares “Since the very beginning of our written history, we can find narratives about human beings trying to defeat death. Not such a naïve, childish dream, apparently, but a quintessential part of our cultural DNA” (Manzoco, 2019, p. vii). Though this idea is popular, the outcome of such indestructible life and the purpose of that existence have not been planned. Manzocco also mentions how Prometheus is understood in the Western tradition. “He (Prometheus) became the symbol of both humanity striving for knowledge, progress, and civilization and the risk of surpassing the limits set by the laws of nature, paying a price in terms of hubris and the related unintended, usually bad, consequences” (Manzocco, 2019, p.viii). One of the core ideas of a transhumanist is to become the creator and to gain control over the unexpected changes. In other words, transhumanism does not only focus on surviving a biological death but to defeat death and “abolish any kind of involuntary suffering” which is termed as “Paradise Engineering” (Manzocco, 2019, p. 40).
Transhumanism- A Proposition for Preserving the Mind
Research in scientific discourses is constantly challenging the conceptualization of human beings. The idea of Humanism to post-humanism and the transition as trans-humanism and the further branches of humanism (like meta-humanism) are redefining the nomenclature of human beings. These terms do not comment or elaborate on human existence rather they comment on the conception of the human race in a technology-interrupted era. As Ranisch and Sorgner says, “The construction of “human beings” is deemed to be ideologically laden, insufficient, dangerous or paternalistic” (2014). The involvement of scientific inventions in these constructive and transforming definitions is obvious. These creations are aimed for the betterment of human life on earth. But, they’ve have found ways to enter the mundane world with an unsaid promise that they would make the world a safer place for living and co-existing with nature.
Research in science and technology gained its currency among people from other disciplines other than science when immortality of the human race was proposed and studies were performed to explore the possibility. Though the proposing idea (of indestructible human beings on Earth) clearly suggests that it could crumble the entire ecosystem, the experiments are continued to be performed. One of the greatest threats of these researches is that they have evaded the need of resources or the cycle of life. Trans-humanism and Post humanism share multiple common traits but there exists a thin line for classification. The former aims to make the world a better place to live and the latter takes evolution in hands and radically tries to improvise the same. So, a post-humanistic study or approach or theory calls attention to man's obsession to attain perfection and the inability to classify need and want. It is a technology induced version of human evolution and the study focuses on emerging technologies. It is further classified into technological post humanism, critical post humanism, cultural post humanism and philosophical post humanism (Ranisch, Sorgner, 2014). Trans-humanism in literature provides the space to reason about the developments that could continue as an extension of present and future technological possibilities. It perceives human beings to be “defective creatures” (Gehlan, 1998) and they concentrate on making deliberate modifications that could prevent diseases and one that could amplify human intelligence. It also calls for the study of bringing rationality, inter and intra-personal relationships and science together in a singular platform. Trans-humanist approach is opposed by neo-Luddism, a philosophy that believes that life could be better without technology. Trans-humanism classified into conservative trans-humanism and progressive trans-humanism when represented in literature takes the existing procedures that have the theme of human enhancement or human perfection. (Rockoff, 2014).
Interwovenness of Imagination and Invention
The speculative ideas enable the human community to contemplate on the prospects and risks involved with technological intervention. Fictional world is one of the best places to explore hypothetical situations. As Lene Tanggaard and Luca Tateo mentions in their article, “the fundamental existential question is always: what’s next?” (2017) and that remains the quest for human existence. Fictitious worlds can give concrete form to an abstract idea or a hypothetical situation via imagination. It can satisfy the human’s “need for consistency and reduction of uncertainty or as striving for the future or goal-oriented action” (Tanggaard, L., & Tateo, L., 2017).
The conception that “science will be able to answer every question and know everything, the belief in the possibility of absolute freedom, the concept of unstoppable progress, and so forth” (Manzocco, 2019, p. xii) is challengeable. Jean-François Lyotard, French philosopher and postmodernist, calls “the Transhumanist dreams as mere “meta-narratives” (Manzocco, 2019, p. xii). It suggests that thought provoking ideas in Science are narratives that attempts to predict events and circumstances of the future. Thus, narratives being influenced by the existing transhumanist ideologies are not far-fetched.
Narrating the Probable Words
“The imaginative, creative, and anticipatory processes are the mark of psyche, as well as the symbolic activity, which is analytic, synthetic, and imaginative at the same time” (Tanggaard, L., & Tateo, L., 2017).
Kim Fu’s short story is an amalgamation of existing scientific inventions and her imagination, an art form representing the “bioart” (Miah, 2014) in progress. She has employed several literary tools to intensify the impact of encountering death. The choice of characters in Kim Fu’s “Twenty Hours” is simple yet the limited characterization can be used to study the thoughts and actions of the multitude. The central characters are a couple who’ve been killing each other and living under the same roof. Narrator elaborates on why he doesn’t divorce his wife rather kills her as, “I want her to come back. I want to sit shivering on the cold concrete floor of our unfinished basement, the washing machine against my back, a widowed wreck, boredom and disdain and resentment drained away as after a medieval bloodletting, knowing who I’d be without her, full of new things to tell her, knowing she’s the only person who will understand” (Fu, 2022, p.70). Fu presents people who face ‘wreck, boredom, disdain and resentment’ by murdering their partners in her fictional world.
With the recent advancements in research, human beings have chosen to live with holograms rather than human beings. Netflix documentary series, History 101 gives a statistical data that “Since 2016, over 3,700 men in Japan have chosen to shun human bonds and instead have married robotic holograms” (2022).These holograms can perform their destined roles as wife or friend as they are programmed to do the same (Cadwell, 2022). To put it differently, there are several inventions that make sci-fi become true. To elaborate, chat bots have been created to stay connected with the deceased (Netflix, 2022) or people living with holograms put forth several questions about love, feelings or emotions. The notion of being understood is intensified but with artificial intelligence rather than human mind. The algorithm that keeps a human satisfied via social networking apps could make that individual remain attached to an AI rather than fellow humans. With reference to the text, the choice of couple who cohabit irrespective of their differences is their fight against physical loneliness. This could be a deliberate choice by Fu to comment on the cognitive intelligence among people living with artificial intelligence. The understanding of human relationships radically change with the technological interventions.
Fu uses the stream of consciousness technique as the plot of the text is the reminiscence of the narrator's life and his existence. There is a constant shift in mood and place. The narration changes from the past to present and future. It is set in a day where the narrator’s wife is in the no-body-but-conscious state being printed in the tray. There is no linear narrative but gives a peek into their lives where they are connected but detached. “Floating in a sea of nihilism, Transhumanism sees in hubris the only hope of salvation, the only chance human beings have of avoiding something that they fear even more than an imaginary Hell: pure nothingness” (Manzocco, 2019, p. xi). In contrast to this conception, the short story challenges that the life of a human in a transhumanist world is “pure nothingness”. This can also be observed in the personification of the poison. “Poison took forethought. Poison said: I wanted to be apart from you for a while. Then why not just leave the house? Why not go for a walk? No, it said more than that. Poison said: I wanted you to not exist for a while. I wanted to move through the world without you in it” (Fu, 2022, p.60). It is evident that the poison in this context is the narrator addressing him as the poison and having a conversation that helps the reader to brush off the doubts that might emerge while reading the text. There is no reason to kill his wife but he chooses to poison her because he finds satisfaction in removing that person from the world. “Apathy and other expressions of alienation from societal establishments are perceived as symptoms that act to reinforce notions of individual social dysfunction” (Teo, 2014, p.125). It is evident that there is a threatening effect on the human kind if they involve technology as a fun fact or as a luxury. Any intervention, any small change has a greater impact on living organisms. In this short story, two individuals who stay together do not plan to procreate but kill each other and hold their own secrets that they’d never share with the other. Here, the longevity provided by Science pulled them off to lands where they never have to plan about coexisting.
The diction and narration plays a vital role in presenting the gruesome, unapologetic, cruel murder of a person in a positive frame. The murdering of an individual who has accessibility to printers is normalized and romanticized. The insignificant executions are conveyed as a matter of fact with an unmoved language and an even tone. The narration abates death and convinces that it is only a reboot that gives space and time for the other.
The truth and authenticity of the narrated is also left for the readers to explore. Fu has presented the presence of one during the physical absence of the other. There are two lanes of experiences. Husband follows a particular way to console the dead, “Buy flowers. Make soup” (Fu, 2022. p. 67) but makes plans to accomplish which might not be performed with the presence of the other. On the other hand, the wife remains disinterested and unaffected about her once dead husband. Connie is not bothered about her husband regaining conscious at home after his death at the forest. She leaves the dead at the woods, returns to the motel and removes blood stains (as they are dirt on her clothes). Simply put, Connie is neither worried nor scared if her killed husband would be awake at home but spends her day as planned in her anticipated elimination of her husband. Though their reaction to death varies, there is one common response about the death of their partners. Both, narrator and Connie manifest that they are single when they’ve killed their partners. There is an urge to look at life through fresh dimensions but they are both frightened for the new and are attached to the unchanged, hopeless existence. The inability to experience loss of a person makes them to use the dead as a tool for attention.
“The participation of the reader could not be stimulated if everything were laid out in front of him. This means that the formulated text must shade off, through allusions and suggestions, into a text that is unformulated though nonetheless intended. Only in this way can the reader’s imagination be given the scope it needs; the written text furnishes it with indications which enable it to conjure up what the text does not reveal” (Isler, 1974, p.31). The inability to classify the protagonist or the course of the plot makes this fiction shatter the notions of genres and calls for an active reader. The unnamed narrator cannot be categorized as a bloodthirsty husband or a romantic slayer or just a pathetic soul who finds meaning in murdering. For instance, this short story could be studied as science fiction as it develops around a far-fetched scientific invention, the human printing machine. The same could be studied as a magic realist text or a work that takes a dig against the rapid scientific inventions that are aimed to sophisticate the elite human beings whilst they disrupt the natural world. The first few lines of the short story evokes thrill and enables the reader to become more engaged with the text. The reader could also postulate that the text could be about a serial killer or a thriller that is similar to Poe’s “Tell- Tale Heart” or “Black Cat.” In other words, the meaning of this text is reader oriented.
The writer has incorporated several areas of interest from science, fiction, economy, thrillers and includes contemporary advancements in science and society. She has provided several narrative gaps to keep the reader hooked to the text. For instance, the readers are allowed to speculate about the “woman’s secret” that is concealed throughout the text and the reasons for Connie’s “hysterical laugh” when she admits that is a widow. The short story ends “I put down a plate of pancakes and bacon in front of her. I put on some music. She smiled faintly, a mysterious smile, gone and back from somewhere I could never truly know, all her secrets her own, fascinating again” (Fu, 2022, p.70). Thus, these are several stories between the lines for the implied reader to scrutinize and make meanings. (Isler, 1974).
The first few pages of the text depict that the couple had a fainted connection, several misunderstandings and difference of opinions. But, there are also situations that suggest the alternative and how they’ve been connected with the absence of technological intervention. He realizes that “she wanted my full attention” (Fu, 2022, p.69) without using mobile phones, without watching television and the reason for her insisting on going to a restaurant. He reflects “How much she loved me” and how he felt about her when he accidently hit her with a baseball bat. He says that he “was so afraid that she wasn’t dead, that she wouldn’t die quickly enough, that she wouldn’t come back. So I had to hit her again and again, had to turn her to pulp, as fast as possible, sobbing, my whole body awash with terror, blood spreading through the soil and the grass” (Fu, 2022, p.69). This man who cannot find a purpose for life without his wife kills her by researching several methods with the help of internet sources. The reason for his killer instinct is also given for the readers to venture. In other words, the text calls for an active participant whose involvement can provide multiple meanings with the “death of the author” (Barthes, 1967).
Habituated Homicide
“Stories are really part of our deep nature, and some of them can reveal something fundamental about us... at least some of them will definitely help us to understand the Transhumanist narrative” (Manzocco, 2019, p.vi).
Kim Fu begins her short story, “Twenty Hours” with an intriguing line, “After I killed my wife, I had twenty hours before her new body finished printing downstairs. I thought about how to spend the time” (Fu, 2022, p.60). The story begins in media res, with an unnamed narrator unconcernedly declaring that he has executed his partner. This first person narration and calm tone after killing his spouse put forth a lot of questions. For instance, the reader is allowed to speculate if that is a dream of an individual because it suggests that a human body would be printed. The text appears to be about a serial killer who is habituated to killing people who plans about spending time after murdering a human. This also allows the reader to wonder if a person is actually dead or if the ‘killed wife’ is just an image who can be printed within the next twenty hours. Beyond these theories that help the reader to analyze the path of the plot, the indifferent tone suggests that it was mundane activity. A homicide that doesn’t evoke any emotion to the character is disturbing and also allows the reader to search for the reasons in the plot. The growing field of transhumanist enables to percieve the protagonist as the character who might be an extension of the prevalent research ideas. This text could be a comment on “The projects of the Transhumanists, the desire to “play God”; manipulating our genes, trying to achieve immortality here on Earth, and striving to overcome our limits would be a challenge to morality, to divine authority or to a generic “natural order”” (Manzocco, 2019, p. 76) and to anticipate one of the possible impacts on people. With reference to this, Fu’s short story allows us to picture the changes that could happen when the technology centered human evolution comes into existence.
“Some of our narratives may be shocking, which is partly the point of constructing them, aiming to motivate more than casual consideration. And the only certainty is that our myths are deficient to some extent. But perhaps our visions will provoke imagination even further, to the possibility of perpetual improvement” (Lee, 843). Imagination or the assumption that something could happen when put in the form of words can reverberate in unknown forms. The contribution of Science and Literature to each other has opened new dimensions of research and inventions. The select short story takes the lead from existing ideas in laboratories and comments on the psychological changes that can happen when the human body loses its significance. Manzocco cites Nick Bostrom, a Swedish philosopher to elaborate that “the desire of a body invulnerable to aging and damage – and therefore structurally different from the “despicable” flesh of which we are made – is an ancient dream present in all cultures, hardly capable of being reduced to the classic contempt for the body cultivated by the ascetics of each country; in short, disdain for the flesh and desire for a super-body are not the same thing” (Manzocco, 2019, p.79).
As the plot progresses, it is evident that there is no value for body or flesh. The protagonist wishes to keep his hands clean but craves murdering someone. With this printing machine, he finds a way to fulfill his basic desires of going to places, buying food at McDonalds and experiments with the murder weapons on his wife. Though the invention was intended to keep people alive after an unlikely death it began to feed the hunger of a killer. The contrasting want to kill and to see his partner outlive his attempt allows him to experiment with killing her several times. Manzocco says that these psychological conflicts that arise because of the struggle between the desire to live and understanding surpassing death would not be seen as a wise choice among humans (2019). He elaborates on this with reference to Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski’s “Terror Management Theory” proposed in the work, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life (2015). The existence and evolution of life including every organism “adhere to the fundamental biological imperative: staying alive” (2015). Humans are the only species that are self-conscious and are “aware of ourselves as existing in a particular time and place” (2015). This allows human beings to experience terror through anticipation and imagination even in absence of threats. Most of the social customs or religious beliefs present the death fearing person in a positive connotation and has provided an immense comfort for them. Transhumanist approaches are about surpassing death disturbs the most important and “two basic psychological resources” of individuals, faith and self-esteem (2015). The transhumanist projects are invested in cheating the grim reaper and created the idea of transforming a human to live forever. This could be via transplanting organs or advanced medical aids or via mind uploading and employing other artificial intelligence developments but the idea of dying has been constantly challenged. The consumers who are interested with the conception of existing without diminishing have become the active investors. The transhumanist producers, the hub of ideas and invention and the transhumanist consumers focus on creating a vast change from the mundane. These changes are classified into “radical transformation (a dramatic departure from human biology) and modest transformation (retaining the basic human form albeit with augmentations)” (Lilley, 2013, p.35). The characters of Fu’s “Twenty Hours” are the transhumanist consumers with which the author has carefully laid out the changing mindset of value and the ideologies among people who hastily wait for the new. As people who have lost the thrive to stay alive, from the propositions of Terror Management Theory (2015) it paves way to understand the psychologically affected characters are the products of the disturbed cycle of life and evolution.
Economy, Science and Emotional Beings
“There will never be enough money to make us feel safe” (Fu, 2022, p.63). One of the major threats about embracing science is its impact on different economic sectors of the population. (In simple terms, the proportion of the benefitted to the ones who might be pushed to edges creates a threatening effect on the larger scale). Science and inventions require high capital investment and thus access to it is also expensive. This way, science and the socio-economic structures are interconnected. These innovations are in a way focused on providing the people with greater economic position, an even better sophisticated life. Fu comments on this by representing human lives not with their relationships or with connections they establish with people. Rather, how they build their lives with their monetary benefits. The text is a reminder that social and economic statuses play a vital role in finding access to progressions via scientific inventions. This way, what has to be valued and the reasons to comprehend the same is given for the readers to reflect.
The pillars of Transhumanism,” are: life extension; cryonics; human enhancement, i.e., the enhancement of human physical, psychological and mental abilities, through every possible technological measure, from genetic manipulation to neural implants; nanotechnologies, or, more specifically, nano-machines; mind-uploading, that is, the transfer of human consciousness into a form of non-biological support; the Technological Singularity (Manzocco, 2019, p.74).
The mentioned research ideas are expensive and are designed to be updated over time which again insists on the financial requirements.
The accessibility and affordability of the printer mentioned in “Twenty Hours” is detailed, making it obvious that these improvisations are closely interlinked with the social structures of the society. As well-established wealthy people who have given up their responsibilities, the couple attempts to find ways to comprehend their essence and existence. The absence of a routine or the purposelessness in life, instead of leading them to find new dimensions of connectivity, has allowed them to find spaces where they can be on their own. Kim Fu has sarcastically presented the betrayal of wife, temporary connections on online dating apps and how these applications that promised to bring people together have actually pushed them apart. People are repelled to distant places both psychologically and physically. They exist together only when one couldn’t handle the fear of existing alone. Thus, relationships that hold a lot of emotions are reduced to a bond that is present for the sake of survival.
“In a vision of the individual strongly anchored to that of homo economicus, altruism is substantially denied” (Cimagalli, 2019, p. 3). The advancements in science, though they seem to embrace people from all the financial sectors, it is undeniable to overlook that they are satisfy only the economically stronger section. This rift creates an idea of self and survival that becomes an impediment to value another human and their life. Kim Fu comments on the lifestyle of the couple who own the printer that keeps them alive in an accidental death. She writes, “The printer is outrageously expensive, both the initial cost and the upkeep —the data storage, connectivity service, matter refill tanks, registration with law enforcement and local hospitals. Most people associate the printers with the monstrously wealthy, something one acquires along with a superyacht, a private jet, a staffed mansion. When they first came out, it didn’t feel surprising that these people would be shielded from certain kinds of death” (Fu, 2022, p.63). She has meticulously mentioned how the sophisticated and science are interconnected. The design of the printing machine and product description are also detailed to make the reader comprehend that it is accessible only to the extremely rich who can afford the high expenses to keep the machine functioning.
The human printing machine is a tool that cannot be borrowed or shared. It has to be positioned inside the house and can never be dislocated for it to perform without any glitch. Thus, this precious and expensive product will serve only the rich. In the text, Connie borrows a rifle from her neighbor. The family that meets their ends could afford a rifle without any hassle yet; they borrow it from another individual. The values associated with the materials are presented in disturbing ways. In other words, the value of the bed sheet is considered higher than the life of Connie, an affordable rifle is borrowed from Jim who can never borrow or afford the human body printing machine. The material inclination of the characters in this dystopian world cannot be ignored as fiction. It is a depiction of the human psyche when human beings are surrounded by products rather than people.
In a nutshell, Science and Scientific advancements are aimed to make earth a better place for living. These scientific interventions or technology induced creative worlds put forth numerous questions to a common man who may or may not be aware of the fast changing world. The short story calls attention to certain problems that could become monsters and can devour humanness. The inventions are bringing change that cannot be accommodated by the human race yet they are presented as an essential for the community. These can easily create rifts between the different socio-economic groups. Excessive wealth and welcoming superfluous inventions can make people less humane. The coexistence with fellow human beings might become a far-fetched idea. Software applications and social networking apps though seem to keep people together can make human beings as entities or products online. Human beings might become puppets when they completely admit to the fast growing artificial intelligence.
The Abandonment of the Body
“At the core of transhumanism is the conviction that the lifespan be extended, aging reversed, and that death should be optional rather than compulsory” (Vita-More, 2019, p.69). There are several mentions in the short story that suggest that the couple experiments with life and death. To elaborate, the omniscient unnamed narrator says, “I’ve killed her several times. She’s killed herself a couple more. She says it’s the same for her as it was for me, less than a blip, a simultaneous exit and entrance, awake on the tray. No ghostly attachment to or sentiment for the old body, wherever it was abandoned” (Fu, 2022, p.64). In other words, the absence of life but the presence of bodies with the hope of waking alive as they possess the printer gives meaning to their lives. It satisfies the adrenaline rush of the couple. This could be a glimpse of people from one of the possible worlds of Transhumanism. The disconnectedness of the characters with their bodies is closely related to the idea of ““body disgust,” a term coined by the critic and journalist Mark Dery precisely to indicate their alleged desire to escape from their “meat doll” to a virtual world” (Manzocco, 2019, p.45). With reference to the selected short story, the couple loves to enter or push someone to the trance where they are just a consciousness with two lifeless bodies. The role of science in everyday life is immense but its impact has been constantly changing. If they are resources that doesn’t allow humans to cherish their body rather develop disgust and hatred about it, not to co-exist with other creations but be alive, insists that materials have more value than a man, if it becomes a hurdle to embrace our humanness, it is very significant to reflect on the purpose of these inventions.
Relationships in the Transhumanist Era
What is human being or being human? What makes an individual more inclined to being categorized as Homo sapiens? The repeated classification of humans from an AI or an automated robot is that a man has the ability to question or being rational with emotions. If the research and advancements in science and technology doesn’t have human emotions at its center, the fear of dehumanized human beings can become an unbearable reality.
Manzocco says, “Human beings all end up being homologated, losing their individuality in favor of canons of improvement decided from above, socially accepted, and that would therefore make us “less human”?” (2019, p.79) In this short story, Jim, the neighbor of the couple is introduced to the reader as “We called Jim an old coot in private.” There is a thin line between abuse and affection. Jim lets them borrow his rifle and shares about his family which makes it evident that he sees a friendship with the couple. They don’t ill-treat or give a chance for Jim to think that he might not be valued in private. But, what is the truth or faith in being social? “An old coot” comment suggests that individuals are either lonely or they become pitiable for making attempts to connect with people. The central characters are not social but make attempts to network as a ritual when the other is killed. On the other hand, they are not able to find relationship with them but perceive them as mere objects in their world.
As mentioned earlier, in this dystopian short story Kim Fu has also commented on human relationships that are tied down by several dating apps. With reference to the Netflix documentary series, about dating apps, it is evident that these apps were built based on cognitive theories. For instance, the swiping option in the largest dating app tinder was based on Skinner’s rat experiment that continued to try when it had rewards at irregular intervals. Fu’s choice of the word, “game” when the narrator elaborates on the working of porn sites and dating apps in “Twenty Hours” cannot be perceived as a mere coincidence as the developers of these apps also comprehend these platforms to be games. It is a place for people to find their healthy partners and to win the game of life (2022). The need for studies about emotional evolution and human compassion is significant in an era when humans are intertwined with artificial intelligence and advanced scientific inventions. With reference to the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma (2020) human beings are living with several automated machines which have been reading our minds and are aimed to keep their users attached to the understanding cellular phone screens.
Aesthetics of Murder
The major section of the story encompasses the several methods employed by a man to murder his wife with an unnamed narrator explaining his activities during her demise or absence. As the plot unfolds, it is evident that he didn’t possess the strength to experiment facing death on his own. His unwillingness or the lack of courage to taste death is surprisingly contrasted to his interest in studying about new ways to kill his wife. Murders and death bodies keeps adding without the loss of lives. At one instance the tables are turned and the narrator is killed by his wife, Connie once. There is no fear or pity and it is narrated as an erotic and a worthy memory. Fu detailing the bloodshot manslaughter makes it a scenic beauty of murder in the woods. The narrator who tasted death once mentions his experience by citing a chewing gum commercial. His comparison expresses his disinterest about his demise. Deliberate murders with the hope of regaining consciousness with a new body have narrowed down his understanding of death to an insignificant stature. The concept of soul; the value associated with life is reduced to nothingness.
Connie is murdered several times and her husband has a method in this madness. He uses new ways to end her life and makes a planner to spend the next twenty hours. They never converse about his activities during her absence. His life remains private and is void to his wife. On the other side, he is curious to know the details of her deeds during his moments of unconsciousness. He yearns to know the reaction of Connie after taking his life in an instant with a bullet. His last moments before he lost consciousness in the woods are described as “My death felt clean to me, precise, surgical, even though I knew, in reality, it had to have been anything but. Like she knew the pinprick-sized location—above the stem of my spine, behind the Cupid’s bow of my upper lip, in the center of my brain —where my soul resided, and took it out with a perfect bull’s-eye shot. That’s who she was (Fu, 2022, p.61).” With reference to the above mentioned lines, the usage of killing resources and methods of murdering also comment on their personality.
The mechanism of rebirth or reprinting of the human body with life is intriguing and disturbing. These bodies are printed from an ink machine without attire. The fresh copy of the deceased body takes bath after it regains consciousness. This put forth multiple questions in Fu’s dystopian world. To begin with, is death being represented as a restart mechanism? Or is it only the removal of humans for the next twenty hours when the ones who are closer to them could indulge in things that were not done together? Can embracing science make human beings as just human body copies? What is the essence of human existence when he could be reprinted from a machine? How is this man different from a conditioned robot? What is the mother-child relationship when creation is done with a device? Who remains attached when embracing the change? The way the protagonist reflects on his death and recreation projects the urge to find a source of connectivity and allows the reader to reflect on the uncertainties and the suspicions in surviving.
The Calmness in Catastrophe
In addition to indulging in sports and other entertainment that promotes calmness in mental health, the characters depicted change their routine by killing the fellow human being. Connie explains her experience of shooting her husband and letting him die in the woods to a stranger with a “flirtatious twinkle” and a “madwoman’s laugh, shrill and hysterical” (Fu, 2022, p.62). As stated earlier, an unanticipated death is only a non-existent period of a person (for the next twenty years) and not the removal of a person from planet earth. The narration of his death is presented as a comical relief or a break away from the mundane. She has developed fatigue about the same and her act of killing is her chance to sway away from the ordinary. This murdering of others is presented as a therapy in this short story. To elaborate, in the twenty hour frame absence of a person, the other finds the necessary space to perform activities which were only planned but never executed in the presence of the other. This solitude gives them the time and space to re-think about the decisions in their life. It aids them to analyze their own personality. For instance, Fu suggests that human beings evolve and are capable of experimenting the new every day without being confined by their own ideologies or with others. “My wife got a rye and Coke, not usually her drink. They served food, and she hadn’t eaten since before the long hike, so she ordered the meatloaf. (You hate meatloaf, I said, as she recounted the story. She shrugged. It had been so long since she’d had meatloaf, she explained, she couldn’t remember if she actually disliked it or if that was just something she said) (Fu, 2022, p.62). This is also reflected in the narrator’s character who opts to walk through the lane to their permanent Thai restaurant which they’ve been suggesting, “We should walk next time” (Fu, 2022, p.67) but repeats taking the vehicle. Thus, the differences of thoughts are mended but their relationship has been pushed to confined spaces and they depend on solitude to understand themselves.
New Meanings of Life
The short story insists on the need to see the spectrum of science and scientific truth. The narrator is ready to accommodate his wife after twenty hours and holds no regret or remorse for shifting her from the living world. He has a planner and performs accordingly. On the day of narration, he walks to a restaurant and on his way he recounts his past. He looks through the window of the hotel and gets a “tableau of their lives” (Fu, 2022, p.69). He also sees the man, who masturbates in the video-rental place when he worked as a high-school student. He recognizes him with his attire as he says, “I knew what he wore to the store, because it was always the same: loose, gray, drawstring sweatpants and a gray windbreaker with red at the collar” (Fu, 2022, p.68). His choice of words changes the mood of narration. He perceives the lives of human beings as meaningless as he calls the random strangers at the hotel as “Faint, ghostly shapes haunted tables of oblivious diners.” and feels “my face is only a smudge” (Fu, 2022, p.67).
The search for a soul mate has been modified to searching for a soul or finding connections to the alienated body, disturbed mind and confused soul. Fu writes, “I looked down at my frozen hands, blooming pink and white. My printed hands. For the first time in a long while, I thought about how these were not the hands my mother held when I was born, not the hands I blistered and covered in ink when I was in school, the hands Connie held at the altar” (Fu, 2022, p. 68). He could only perceive his body as the last printed form and there is an obvious detachment from the same. This separation and dejection is eradicated when he finds solace in natural science that also suggests that the body of a human is lost eventually. He says, “But that was true of everyone. Skin cells replace themselves every few weeks, bone and fat every ten years” (Fu, 2022, p. 68). He uses the Theseus paradox whose parts are changed at regular intervals and the originality of the ship is questioned. Thus the short story presents a vulnerable individual who allowed science to overtake him and has eventually lost the meaning of life yet choses to live.
In a nutshell, if these progressions separate the soul from the body, throw humans into bubbles of aloneness, if individuals cannot find measures to cope up with the change, then the need for researches that bring these alterations is to be reconsidered.
The Lesser known Monsters: Aren’t they familiar?
A scientific invention that makes no mistake is intriguing. There is no flaw in this recreation like a disfiguration or loss of memory or an unfathomable mutation. The functioning of the printer and how the dead have been printed with consciousness is vividly detailed. Kim Fu writes, “The device re-scanned every ten seconds, noting changes and rewriting the data from your last checkpoint accordingly. When you die, your consciousness would be uploaded at the moment of death. A body would be printed based on the most recent checkpoint with complete, coherent, functional data—the most recent version of your body that wasn’t already dying” (Fu, 2022, p.63).
There is an undeniable connection between rich, curious, brave and the temptation to feel the bloodbaths. The perfectly designed device protects the elite, who had excess money to save themselves from unlikely accidental deaths. It gradually becomes the device to eliminate someone from life for the next twenty hours and also to experience the thrill of being killed and killing another person. It converts the meaning of suicide and murder via new lens which is less painful and as a subject for new experiments.
Fu has the printer as the core scientific invention for the plot. With this as the focal point, she comments on various aspects like human relationships, price and value and the impact of scientific advancements in the human race. Though the short story is set in a futuristic world where there is an interesting invention, it also comments on the other advancements to define and redefine relationships, connectedness, solitude, aloneness and detachment that are widely popular during the twenty first century. She comments on the dependence of delivery services, relationships built via internet sources and finding connections at porn sites which are relevant in today’s world. This fictional representation is a reflection of contemporary society thereby enabling the readers to notice the controlled life of accepting every invention.
To begin with, the role of finding partners via online dating app is described as “Just a game” (Fu, 2022, p.64) in the short story. As already mentioned, studies about dating apps also suggest that the software developers use gaming schemes to build these apps (Netflix, 2022). Secondly, the working of the porn site is elaborated. An individual enters a common unpaid online platform to satisfy his sexual urge. The primary criterion to get access to this space is to enter the credit card details. The narrator has lost the joys of communication and his presence and absence is not recognized or valued by his kin and kith. This void is explicit when the murderer-narrator feels special and excited when the woman in the porn site calls his fake name, egg muffin. He says, “I felt a wild jolt. She’d noticed me! Grayed-out, invisible me. She said my name! She said it smoothly, warmly, without irony, like eggmcmuffin2026 was my real name, like it was her secret, private name just for me. Like I was special, picked from obscurity out of a crowd” (Fu, 2022, p.67). The concealed truth is that he is her target. She gives attention to this man who is at his lows with the loss of wife and entices him for paid services. Though the narrator could be aware of the situation, he finds solace in being seen. Third, the role of Pickup and delivery services in the life of a contemporary individual. Kim Fu uses this online service in her short story for removing the corpses without human contact. The murderer says, “I wrapped her briskly in a sheet, put her out on the porch, and filled out the online form for same-day pickup” (Fu, 2022, p.60). When he later thinks of the way he had disposed of her, he is worried about the bed sheet with which he had wrapped her and not his temporarily lost wife. He says, “I wondered, briefly, if Connie would be upset about the lost bedsheet” (Fu, 2022, p. 67).
Man and Mortality
Fu’s fictional scientific creation has redefined life, creation and death but doesn’t promise mortality among human beings. Even with these modifications, there is a possibility for stability in the natural life-cycle. Hence, the impact on natural order isn’t affected at a larger scale but there is a disturbance in the consistency as the planet will hold multiple dead human bodies.
On the other hand, these changes have created an effect on the human psyche. To elaborate, people who owned the machine have experienced death under multiple circumstances but they find it hard to define the same but they take the liberation of defining this experience for the other. For instance, the narrator mentions the death of his wife as “Painless, I hoped, though I would have to take her word for it later, either way” (Fu, 2022, p. 60). In addition to this, he mentions his wife dying as “There’d been no choking, gasping, flailing, spewing. Connie simply keeled over at the table” (Fu, 2022, p. 60). A human body is the combination of similar biological parts, yet each reacts to an analogous condition in multiple ways. His expectation of her reaction to being poisoned is shattered, a subtle hint that death is not something that can be defined in a box.
“Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie distinguished between “absolute death” – characterized by a state of putrefaction – and “incomplete death,” comparable to states of coma, suspended animation, sleeping, and fainting” (Manzocco, 2019, p. 9). In “Twenty Hours” there is space between the conceptions of demise and of being alive. The narrator is not intimidated with the death of his wife rather he is captivated with her artificial re-creation. He says, “I could watch the printing, which still fascinated me, the weaving and webbing of each layer of tissue, the cross-sectional view of her internal workings like the ringed sections of a tree trunk” (Fu, 2022, p.60). The killed person’s body is only dismissed but their new body and the memories (except the idea or the pain of death) are recovered in printed form. The setting of this short fiction is a world where scientific advancements have been disrupting the natural life-cycle. But, the same text also focuses on the natural world by making a constant comment on the landscape, weather and climatic changes and how human emotions are intertwined with these environmental factors. The referring of the same at different instances along with its impact on character development in the text is invigorating. The significance of the human world co-existing with the natural world is reiterated at several instances.