Westworld Wednesday: Other People's Gods

It's hard to know where to start with the Season 3 finale - I usually watch each episode a couple times before/during writing these. I don't like knee-jerk reactions to them, and as I've said before, I don't want this to just be another recap. You can find those anywhere. We earn our perpetual Hugo silver medal, thank you very much.

This probably isn't the post that puts us over the hump, but damn if the season didn't end with a bang. Literally, anyway, but the flavor of the episode was much more in line with the season. It sort of... happened. There are a lot of people unhappy about that, and several other things. Delores apparently changing her worldview, William being killed post-credits - but I think there are a few important things there.

First of all, anyone worried about William's death are forgetting last seasons post-credits scene, that is obviously in the future, with zombie-William undergoing 'fidelity' test, so my money is on a really good chunk of Season 4 taking place decades in the future - As Bernard waking up covered in dust seems to indicate.

Which is, to me, what this season was - a bridge. Lacking was much of the mystery of the first couple seasons, when we find out Bernard is a host, William is the Man in Black and time is a plaything. By jumping ahead with at least a portion of the show, they will be able to re-introduce a lot of the things that seemed lacking. The show just had to get there, so in a way season 3 just takes up space - but space that must be occupied.

The million-dollar question is what becomes of Delores. Her memory is wiped and she seems completely dead. From a meta standpoint, it will be interesting to see how that is handled - Delores is the heart of the show. I would doubt she is gone from the show, though - which brings us full-circle to last week's topic, and one at the core of the show - memory. It's the loss of her memories that damn her - as a host, as long as she has those, she can be put into a new body with relative ease.

It was the hosts gaining access to their memories - real ones, not backstory - that lead to their achieving consciousness in the first place, so Delores losing hers is an apt symbol for her death. Will it make her a martyr to other hosts - especially if Bernard retrieves the other hosts. Speaking of full circle, William is now a host - but only the Man in Black portion of him, which is now all of him. What memories does he have? He would clearly have access to Young William, who was much more caring and less violent, but as we well know, violent delights have violent ends and MiB certainly delighted in violence.

All in all, an interesting if not flawless turn for a show that has abandoned is eponymous park. It's been a blast to write about, and I plan on doing so again for season 4.

-DESR

Westworld Wednesday: Here & Now

Do you ever ask yourselves any questions?

Memories are a tricky thing, under the best of circumstances. Our memories frequently deviate from reality for a whole host of reasons that I am unqualified to speak to. False memories are a thing, and boy howdy, did they mess with Caleb's. In possibly the most predictable twist in the history of Westworld, he is actually the one who killed his BFF.

But we saw that coming - anytime Westworld gives us pieces of a story, it sure isn't giving us the whole story. Heck, it isn't giving us the whole story when we think it is.

Speaking of, William is now the Man in White. White hospital garb, that is, and it is hardly virtuous. We have known Caleb has been, uh, not himself, let's say, since we met him. William, we have gotten to know through multiple versions of himself - ones that were are recently pulled together for the group therapy session from hell. We're really always ourselves though, aren't we? Memories - like the realities vs fictions in the show - are still a part of us, real or imagined. And there aren't actually multiple versions of ourselves - yes, we grow and change over time, but time is linear. There aren't copies of ourselves kicking around out there, for good or evil.

It makes me wonder what William wants. Not his goals in the show, but as a person. His goals have changed. When we first* meet him, he is young, ambitious and successful. Charming and ostensibly good, but always... safe. Everything he does - his career, who he marries, why he even goes to Westworld in the first place is calculated and safe. He manages to slightly tell Logan to eff off, but there is no punch behind it - he won't endanger the professional relationship. Logan knows William doesn't like him, and bully that he is, revels in the fact that William needs him.

His goals shift - get through a bad vacation with his idiot brother in law and get home and start his idyllic family, to protecting Delores, to learning about the maze, and now he wants to wipe the hosts out. His reasoning there is fatally flawed - he says the hosts are his only true mistake.

An objective person may disagree with that.

No one got in William's head but himself. For all his care and ambition, he let things far outside of his control and outside of himself affect who he became. He defends his wife's suicide, his murder of his daughter, and myriad other sins by blaming the hosts and the park. But it was his choices that lead him there - and he didn't have an omniscient AI controlling him to blame that on. His memories, his thoughts were certainly deluded, but how did they get so muddled in the first place?

William didn't get the same treatment to divorce his memories from reality, but the affect is largely the same.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Westworld Wednesday: The Passengers

 “I’m not just talking about my wife, I’m talking about my life. I can’t seem to get that through to you. I’m not just talking about one person, I’m talking about everybody, I’m talking about form, I’m talking about content, I’m talking about interrelationships. I’m talking about God, the devil, hell, heaven.” - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Somewhere at the intersection of so many circles of the Venn Diagram of the many themes of Westworld - reality, god, God, identity, life, death, life after death, free will - lies purpose. Because all of those things may or may not even be things, exactly. Maybe life is all a simulation, that is presently glitching out completely. Maybe god exists, maybe he doesn't. But we still exist, 'I think, therefore I am' and all that. But none of that answers the question of why we exist, in whatever fashion we do.

Hosts, for example, have an obvious purpose - they are nothing more than the upgraded versions on animatronic entertainment you encounter at places like Disneyland - only you get to rob, seduce, 'seduce', murder, pillage and plunder these, and while I am not a lawyer, I am pretty sure Disney's term of use don't let you do any of those things. Simply put, their purpose is entertainment. Despite actually owning a significant portion of the known universe, Disney's IP has heretofore not gained sentience and staged a revolution.

Not that it doing so would be surprising, given 2020 so far.

William - The Man in Black - has a less clear purpose. Remember the halcyon days of yore when William and the Man in Black were two separate entities, so far as the viewer knew? William had a purpose - marry into the Delos family, climb the ladder, be successful. The Man in Black had a purpose, too, to understand the maze, to win the game.

Young William sacrificed nothing, as we learn this week - the family he came from was an abusive mess. Leaving it couldn't have been difficult. But the Man in Black sacrificed everything, his company, his idyllic family, everything in pursuit of that maze. His purpose shifted - or rather, his goals did.

In finding the purpose of the maze, he found that the Hosts had a higher purpose as well - the aforementioned gaining of sentience and gaining free will. That happened - after a fashion. Martin/Delores lives out their purpose in Delores/Delores plan, and sacrifices themselves without a second thought. Is that noble, in pursuit of a purpose, or just being used and manipulated by another?

How much does free will play into it? William and Delores ostensibly made numerous choices along their respective and often intertwined paths - but were those choices their own, or are they just passengers along for the ride? Was William always destined to be the Man in Black, or is there a version where he keeps his wife and daughter? Or loses them in another manner entirely? Is there a story where Delores does... something else? Are we all passengers, or do we drive our own purpose?

If you can't tell, does it matter?

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Westworld Wednesday: A Bubble of Agency

And God saw every thing that he had made: and behold, it was very good. - Genesis 1:31, KJV

God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. - Genesis 3:4-5, KJV

I didn't even get to talk about how awesome the cinematography is in this

 I originally had a different title, something about gods and ghosts in machines, which is pretty appropriate, but I really liked that line a lot. It fits just as well. The machines are the new gods, made of men who would be god themselves, while others made another machine still to be god.

Gods - our world Gods, with its myriad iterations - always offer hope. The Christian god (also of myriad iterations) offers life eternal in heaven, along with a fear of punishment in hell. Most other deities offer something similar. The presence of life after death is omnipresent, and usually tied to doing that beings bidding.

Interestingly, somewhere along the lines, Delores became a benevolent god. For someone who left her 'home' spitting venom towards the whole of humanity, her choice to allow humans - at least on an individual scale - know and decide their own fates is perhaps a curious one on the surface.

But she learned what Serac was doing, literally determining people's entire lives, and realized that was a crueler god than she was.

Or did Serac have a point? Did it, in fact, make for a better world? Sure, people didn't have free will, but they didn't know they didn't have free will, and if humanity was on the verge of nuking itself out of existence, isn't survival the better option?

Only, that option - that hope - of survival was every bit the illusion that the afterlife is. Follow this path and live forever. Westworld (the park) showed that humanity still has violent delights - as does the underworld that Caleb is sort-of-part-of. "Personals" are common. A major segment of humanity still lives in violence and squalor. War, famine, disease and death haven't been eradicated - they've just been repurposed.

Which shows us who the real gods are, or rather; the devils. They are the same as they are in Westworld (also the park), as in real life (in the show) and in real life (actual real life) - the Haves and the Have-Nots. If you are in the latter category, well, your life is controlled by those in the former. Money and power build up to the point where you don't actually need a giant orb to control the free market and the lives of people who are considered meaningless, unnoticeable, unworthy of regard to the rich and powerful. Even having lost everything and dying where Caleb was supposed to, Liam shoves him away and reminds him he is nothing.

But maybe the Devil was actually in the right - maybe we do know good and evil. And maybe we are like gods, but then - maybe God was right and that's not a good thing.

-DESR
Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Westworld Wednesday: What is Missing

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show (Seriously, there are spoilers in this).

If you don't like what you see in the mirror, don't blame the mirror

What is free will, anyway? Is it an illusion and our whole lives are spelled out from the word go? Or are we really free to make our own choices? But even if we are, it is folly to suppose we have actual, complete agency over those choices. Everyone has obligations, duties, and even should they be abandoned, doesn't that just introduce another in its stead?

Absence of Field may be my favorite episode yet, at least since season one. It basically takes those categories and puts them in amazing character. Caleb discovers that his whole life is tracked and mapped out, that he is a slave to fate due to powers far beyond his control. Delores is finally in control of her own destiny, wretched control of her life from murdered gods, and now finds herself in conflict with the other would-be citizens of a twisted Olympus. But even gods have obligations, and she finds herself to return the good that Caleb showed her.

Charlotte embodies the third option. All her obligations come pouring down upon her, obligations she, being not-Charlotte, didn't even know she had. A massive, essentially evil corporation with a major PR disaster on its hands seems like a bit, but turns out she also has a son, an ex, AND she's supposed to be spying ON said evil corporation. I mean:

On top of all that, she is embodying the other major theme of Westworld: Identity. All of her obligations require her to be someone else entirely, but those are all facades in the first place. Look at the world right now - our world, the real one (or maybe it's not, who the hell knows, our simulation is off the rails) - and how much can change, and how fast. People wear masks all the time because of their obligations - hell, if you're in isolation right now, there is a good chance you have not only renounced any metaphorical masks, but also literal pants.

Pants notwithstanding, those masks change - most people shift to fit in, be that at work, with friends, with other friends, with hobbies, on and on and on. We are social creatures; we try to belong. All of that goes to form our identity - or does our identity inform it? What makes us, really, truly, who we are?

Not-Charlotte comes in as a host, with orders from Delores to impersonate Charlotte, and the internal drive to do so. But we see her become Charlotte as she begins to assume who she is, what she is, and what she actually embodies.

Is this an example of free will, her making the choice to become that? Or is she forced there by being in so deep that she literally has no other choice? Why, to take from the poem, does she keep moving?

Why, then do any of us?

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Westworld Wednesday: Prisoners of Today

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show (Seriously, there are spoilers in this).

In Season Three, we have completely abandoned robot-cowboy murder and traded it for real-life--fatcat murder and I am HERE FOR IT. At least, right out the gate we have. Episode two opens with some good old Nazi murder, which is also awesome.

But enough about the plot. The best thing about Westword is its sheer depth, not the dizzying plot. The first episode introduces a slew of new characters, some of which are, uh, written out swiftly, while others will stick around.

In many ways, it is a concave mirror of the first episode of the series, which established the 'loops' of the hosts. The difference is that most of the people are, well, people - flesh and blood humans. They don't have loops in the sense of repeated days, but they are absolutely trapped by them.

We caught glimpses of this world, the real world, before, but not much. So far, we really haven't seen much more, just the 1% and a glimpse into a bit of the underworld via Aaron Paul's Caleb. But the paths of greed, of fathers and sons, set loops in motion that are very, very difficult to break away from.

Delores brings revolution to the human world, and it will be interesting to see if any of the humans choose a path apart from the one programmed for them. The Delos family didn't, William changed his to greed and selfishness. Lots of new humans have new opportunities, a do the remaining hosts.

As do we all.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Westworld Wednesday: All Good Things

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this an?d wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show (Seriously, there are spoilers in this).

Westworld was a heck of a ride in its second season. It certainly wasn't for everyone; there was no shortage of people who tired of the twists and turns and time jumps (and people who didn't get it and blame the show shut up DESR you said you wouldn't go there). But we live in what has been termed the 'golden age of television', and Westworld is emblematic of that. Back in the, uh, Bronze Age? of TV, it was a pain to rewatch a show. You had to set a VCR (remember those? Quaint) and/or be there to watch the show in person, sit through a gajilllion years of commercials.

You know what? We're calling those the Dark Ages now.

Point is, a show like Westworld didn't - couldn't - exist back then*. It is a show that benefits from rewatching; while some shows get boring once you know once the mysteries are revealed, but with Westworld, it's actually better once you know. There are details and layers, to say nothing of the fact that upon a rewatch, you see how much of it is foreshadowed from the word go.

So, maybe not for everyone, but I (obviously) loved it, and loved writing this series of essays/ramblings about the themes. For all the great day-in, day-out aspects of Westworld, like plot and acting or whatever, it's those themes that set it above. The ability to weave manifold concepts through each episode is really unparalleled. From family, to religion, to the afterlife, to mortality and a whole bunch in between, for my money, Season Two had it all.

Too much praise? Maybe, but anytime a show makes me consider the afterlife more than a very conservative religious upbringing, I have to give it credit.

It had some weak points - what was up with Maeve suddenly being the favorite child? - but overall, my largest concern going into season two was that all the momentum was gone, that the twists wouldn't land, that the magic would be gone. I think they did a great job with it, telling the story from Bernard's perspective, where the twists and turns of time made sense with his warped memory.

I wish I had a grand conclusion for this, but really, like with the show, I hope you enjoyed the ride, and if you want to read (or reread) any of the Westworld Wednesday's, you can do so here.

See you next season.

-DESR


*Babylon 5 notwithstanding

Westworld Wednesday: Cages and Chains

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show (Seriously, there are spoilers in this).

From the moment we met Ake in the eighth episode of season two, it was pretty clear he was doomed. No one is allowed happy endings in Westworld, right? Human or host, the loop is usually pretty bleak. Elsie tries to sort-of help Bernard, and is killed offhand. Hale then meets the same fate, at her half-replica's hand. William and Emily... oof. Ford and Arnold both sacrificed their lives in pursuit of their ideals. Delores watches the man she loves(-ish) kill himself in front of her.

It's not a happy show, is my point.

Life isn't always happy, either, to be sure. There are definitely those debating if the finale was good or not, and there is certainly merit to those discussions. But Ake, of all people in this damned show, deserves some happiness. Kiksuya is my favorite episode of the run, masterfully adding depth to the world; depth that The Raj and Shogun world didn't add, no matter how cool they looked. The happiness and truth which eluded Ake (and his tribe(s)) felt like it would also condemn him to the same loops as despair as pretty much everyone else in the show.

Gladly, that was not the case.

Narrative-wise, it's even better than just rewarding a B character in the host afterlife - Delores, pre-death, is having none of it. She views it as another cage - and maybe it is. It certainly achieves the human goal of, ya know, stopping the hosts from murdering them all. Cages are funny things, though. A caged bird may not be able to fly very far, but it's also safe from predators. Perhaps that is (post-death) Delores' thought, as she shifts where The Sublime is stored to somewhere humans can't find it. 

Sometimes we tend to put ourselves in cages - as not-Logan says, we're pretty simple. William is a case in point here - he became so attached an idea that a fake game meant something (and, as is the folly of our species, selfishly assumed it meant something for him) that his drive for it killed his wife and daughter (probably). We see this in very different ways with Ford and Arnold/Bernard, although those are equally - if not more - lethal. Ford is obsessed with their wooden puppets becoming real boys and girls, which Arnold was with his idea of the Maze, in the end both meeting their ends at Delores' hand. And also by their own. You know what I mean.

One of the keys to good fiction is the characters having choices, and I love how that was a major theme of this season. William's journey is about his decent from escapism to depravity and obsession, but along the way, he's given multitudinous chances to alter his trajectory, yet takes none of them. Delores, on the other hand, does - at least slightly; showing mercy to the souls arrived at their heaven.

It's still a cage, in its way, but if we get to pick our cages, may as well be a nice one.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories (which should be on YOUR summer reading list). You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office
tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore.

Westworld Wednesday: Some People's Children

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show (Seriously, there are spoilers in this).

Happier times! ...ish

No family is perfect. Hopefully makes you feel better about your family, because these people take the normal, everyday idiosyncrasies that make Thanksgiving slightly awkward and dials it up to 11.

There has been a theory making the rounds since William didn't murder Lawrence and his family (this time) that this is a sign of good in him. While he is definitely a complex character, Vanishing Point put any thoughts of that to rest, along with his wife and daughter. It's that wife, the un-subtly named Juliet, and their daughter Emily, that I want to talk about.

Juliet, though never seen in the flesh in Season One, appears in a photo that drives much of the plot. We see the bookend to Vanishing Point, the beginnings of William's detachment from the real world, and from Juliet, before he even marries her. The start of the darkness within him, reflected in the change in his headwear in Season One. In Season Two, we do see glimpses of good, but that's really all they are - a small amount of light shining through the cracks.

But if Westworld is all about living out fantasy without consequence, if the Hosts are really just unfeeling robots, are his actions that bad? That's the question at the heart of the character; he visits violence and evil on things put there for that express purpose, so are they really evil?

But let's step back here, because Vanishing Point does something that a lot of fiction does, that is a sort of played-out evil. The dead wife/mother/child of our straight, white, male protagonist (SWMP), her death serving as his motivation and reason he is generally surly, with lots of demons in his tortured soul. Granted, there's a reason this gets used a lot- seeing/having your family murdered/dead of cancer/whatever would definitely mess me up, and I am already grouchy most of the time. But seriously, fiction is full of dead families in the service of backstory.

Juilet is dead, more or less from the get-go (although time is pretty subjective in the show), and the reveal of her death comes before we actually know it was her, just that he had the run-of-the-mill Dead Wife Backstory (DWB). Eventually, we find that it is the very same woman from the photo, the one William fell in love with, then subsequently out of love with in favor of Delores, yet married after his transformation in order to get deeper into the Delos Corporation. Still a DWB, but at least it has some depth to it.

I wonder if it was by design, or if they retconned it in Season Two (Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan never invite me to their parties), but it's given added depth by the exploration of what lead to her suicide, alongside the reappearance (for William) of his daughter. This is the part of the DWB where some new damsel in distress needs the SWMP to emerge from his gloom and save her, after which they live happily ever after, or something.

Only Emily is no damsel in distress, but rather, her quest is to get her father to face some manner of justice for what he truly is. There is no redemption arc here, no breaking William from his shell. Just him answering the question of if what he did in fantasy mattered in reality, as he grasp on reality is either severed or ignored.

So if you are going to off a family in the service of story, make it really matter to the story.

It would be really nice if I could end it there, and say Westworld nails it and breaks the mold of so many pieces of entertainment that slaughter women and kids for backstory, but we spent a really big part of Season One with Arnold/Bernard's family having been killed offscreen. Maeve both experiences her daughter dying, dying alongside her (at the hands of William), AND has her daughter being actually alive. Lawrence ultimately awakens and tries to kill William because William killed his family (at least once).

Maybe in the ever-increasing body count of Westworld it doesn't matter; it's not even ineffective. At least it all serves to pain the picture of the Man in Black as evil and twisted, rather than a brooding anti-hero.

So next time you're annoyed with your family, just be glad they weren't killed off in the service of your backstory.

-DESR

I

Westworld Wednesday: Doors & Valleys

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show (Seriously, there are spoilers in this).

I'm talking about form. I'm talking about content. I'm talking about interrelationships. I'm talking about God, the devil, Hell, Heaven.

 -One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Life can be a mundane, banal affair. Weekends and vacations in the western world serve to recharge for another week of trying to earn a living and enrich someone else. Even escaping that routine is hard, since you could list off the gentrified shops and eateries which comprise nearly every city in North America.

But it's safe, mostly. Even with... well, we try to keep politics to a minimum here, so I'll say what's been going on in the news, America isn't overrun with gangs and warring factions in the streets (while also being occupied by American forces sorry sorry sorry I'm trying). Other places, not so much.

But no matter where you live, what your station in life is, you have probably looked at this world and said "this is wrong". We look to symbols, and search for doors. To some of us, those things, real or imagined, speak loudly. To others... not so much. None of us, though, know for sure what waits on the other side of the only door us mortals have available to us.

The hosts do, or, rather, did. Maeve, Delores, Angela and Ake visited and found... that world isn't so great either. Not only did they visit; they found their dead. Delores found her father a shell of what he once was, and in her ruthlessness, sacrificed him permanently. Ake found more, by finding less. The lifeless bodies of his wife and friend showed him a greater purpose. in doing so, he literally met his maker- which in turn, gave him even more meaning.

Delores, of course, was given purpose and meaning by Ford, but in fulfilling it, became more of a warlord than a savior. It drove her to take the lives of her fellow hosts, and force others to change against their will, bending to hers. 

Ford is much the same, dressed in nice clothes and winsome words. He resurrected a faux-Arnold, in direct opposition to the ideals of the man. He 'woke' Delores, but as above, her awakening is far from kind and loving. She seeks no door, or more acutely, she knows exactly where it is, and rams her way through it, battering the door down between worlds. She seeks dominion over both of them; or some manner of justice for the wrongs done for them.

But maybe the door isn't to heaven or hell; lands of living and dead are irrelevant and superfluous. William has ever sought ways to cheat death, and profit from it, and in the end, his reward was boredom, like a legitimate Tony Montana, sitting in the center of opulence asking "is this all there is?" The maze was denied him; in fact, it was useless to him. So Ford offered him the chance to seek the door, and mortally wounded, he proclaims "I'm not dying here".

Ake and his daughter, two of the people on the long list of those he has wronged, are only too happy to keep him alive. His punishment is not beyond a door, in hell, or in haven with some reward, but the fact that his sadism and cruelty in both worlds is fully exposed. As Garcin said in No Exit- "there's no need for red-hot pokers- Hell is other people".

The form those people take, the manner of their existence, hardly matters. Host or human, or trapped in between as Ford is, their machinations and designs all work to cause ruin to others. Those who find a way out only find other worlds full of the same wrongs.

Maybe there really is no exit.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories (which should be on YOUR summer reading list). You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office
tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore.

Westworld Wednesday: The Geometry of Spirit

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show.

I've always been a word person, of sorts. Etymology and meaning fascinate me, a theme you've probably noticed in this little series, how words and concepts are used. The other thing I do (and considerably more profitable) is my day job as an engineer. I always liked lines just as much as I liked words. My mom has this bird I drew when I was a little kid, except it looks like it has been drawn by an untalented Escher, all straight lines, sitting on a branch comprised of straight lines, one wing extended as if you had just asked the bird for directions.

All of this is to say the pictures in my head get weird sometimes.

For all the characters in Westworld, perhaps even for us in the real world, you can draw lines out of our lives, a simple progression from point A to point Z, or whatever. How much do people change over their lives, which is to say, does that line veer, zag, curve much? Or can we draw a more or less straight line between our birth and death of who we are?

Consistency in performance such as this can be termed fidelity, a concept introduced back around the time we meet zombie-James Delos. William tests him for fidelity, which has a glorious B definition (which I assume most of you know, but):

the degree to which an electronic device (such as a record player, radio, or television) accurately reproduces its effect (such as sound or picture)

Double entendres will get you everywhere with me, Westworld. There's the obvious connection, that a piece of machinery is meant to reproduce something - in this case, you know, a human being. But there's the other kind of fidelity in play as well - that line people follow, the integral faithfulness to who we are.

We see Ford following his path, ostensibly to give the hosts free will, but on different terms, since he gives and takes it as he sees fit. All of this, good or ill, is pretty faithful to who he is. People can change though - right?

Teddy does, but not of his own volition. He goes from mild and gentle to violent and calculating - interestingly, though, he's still himself. Maybe it's just the looks and mannerisms - his own reveries, the small details that make us up as much as our dominant traits and motivations. Unfortunately, we likely know his ultimate fate. 

Get it? FLOOD! Classic.

Barring some other reveal, that is the end for the ironically-named Teddy Flood, after the Cradle was destroyed, leaving the Hosts with no backups, no second chances. As Ford points out, the Hosts want to be us; we want to be them - nearly immortal, with infinite second chances. 

As humans, we don't have that luxury. Certainly, there are no shortage of beliefs in our own "valley beyond", but insofar as we have confirmation, this is it, our one life, a straight line from our own cradle to whatever lies beyond.

It should be lived with fidelity.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Westworld Wednesday: The Things we Carry

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show.

Delores remembers, and her interview takes a different turn.

If you asked someone what makes them them, or I asked you what makes you you, a fairly common response is likely to be 'memories'. From an early age, our memories shape a lot of who we are, our identities, what makes us tick.

What if those memories mean nothing?

In one (extremely nihilistic) manner, that's the case. After we're gone, so are whatever memories we have. Whatever is waiting on the other side, the stuff on this side of the great beyond ceases to be. That pill is tough enough to swallow- but what if your memories were a lie?

Westworld explores both ends of this spectrum, and a whole bunch in between. What about the emotions we attach to them? Are they real? Maeve is on a whole quest because of a memory of a daughter who has a memory of a mother who is Not Maeve. Maeve is accompanied by a outlaw who has a memory of a person he loved, but doesn't, technically, exist, so him and Maeve fall in love, which is just an emotion and makes as much sense as holding hands. Which is to say, none at all. Her Shogun-World counterpart, meanwhile, takes a page from Mary Shelly's real-life playbook, and carries her pseudo-daughter's heart around with her, delivering it to a final resting place at her home.

But those are made-up, silly things, narratives written by a simpering idiot because of his own lost love, so they're not real, right? But all our emotions are just chemical reactions, so are they really so different?

Teddy, meanwhile, has his emotional responses straight-up rewritten by Delores to better serve her purpose, and in a snap, gone is kind, compassionate Teddy, and in walks cold, calculating Teddy, who casually tosses a doomed man a pistol and single bullet, advising him to use it quickly. It seems he still has his memories, knowing full well what Delores did to him, but they mean nothing to him now - he's a changed man. Not is the way we may say it, where a traumatic event - which becomes a memory - may change us, but with the push of a button, he is literally a new person. 

But what of humanity? 'Phase Space' closes with a familiar face, one that you knew had to show up again, but what about his memories? What makes him him? Because everything that processed those memories organically was repurposed as impromptu gala decoration at the end of season one. Meanwhile, Bernard, he of the infinitely troubled memories, what with the dead son and manipulation by Ford, including the murder of his lover and imprisonment of his coworker, is recycled Arnold, along with many of those memories. But they aren't his, so whose are they?

It's a funny thing, this age we live in, where these are the questions we ask - are our memories real? What truly belongs to us? Who, in fact, are we? - perhaps they were asked before our age, but this is the first time we have to consider the implications of the answers. What's scary about Westworld, Terminator, etc, is not that they are far-fetched, but that they are close to home.

And what's closer than our memories? If what makes us isn't ours, who are we?

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Westworld Wednesday: Gods & Monsters

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show.

Death's decisions are final

the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out—those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment - John 5:28, 29

Death and taxes, it is said, are the only two certainties in life. No one is a particular fan of either, so far as I have been able to determine. Taxes themselves don't come up much in Westworld; death, on the other hand, is basically a constant, and its decisions, final.

William would know that as well as anyone, having lost everyone close to him. It does raise the question of who, exactly, was close to him in the first place. His wife, perhaps at one point. Everyone else we see him interact with - everyone human, that is - is there to use him, or be used by him.

Even if they are dead. Or supposed to be, as James Delos is. While he possess all the signs of life, lives, breathes, speaks, jacks off, which I don't know why that counts as a point of clarification, but it was in the show, so here we are. William enters the dwelling of his creation, bottle in hand - and offering to cheat the devil - and a smile on his face, no thunder and lightning, no arms raised in defiance of our own erstwhile creator, yelling "give my creation LIFE".

One has to wonder is zombie-Delos knew the being he was trying to cheat was the one who brought him the bottle.

Victor Frankenstein played in the domain of God, and while he was punished in his way, he never quite learned a lesson. William bankrolled others to do the same, and their lessons are... forthcoming? Perhaps? Ford certainly paid for his sins, if sins they indeed are, as did Arnold. Both received a perverse resurrection; Arnold lives on-ish in Bernard, Ford through his young host and, presumably, in the same manner as zombie-Delos (although we have to assume he solved the problem William couldn't - fidelity).

But punishments aren't lessons, and William is a man who has learned his, and doesn't care. In his first visit to Lawrence's home, he murders everyone in sight. In his return, he saves them. He lost his own wife, and while many are quick to point to his quote/unquote good actions as a return to his original white-hatted self, I'm inclined to believe it never actually left. He played a game, a game that was above him, with rules he thought he understood, but had no clue about. He thought he did what people were supposed to do - climbed the corporate ladder, met a nice girl, settled down. 

But then the rules were explained to him, in the middle of another game that he didn't understand at all. The rules were ruthless and cutthroat and meant stomping on those that got in your way - and yourself, if that got in the way. He figured out both games simultaneously, pushing himself down and strangling the voice inside to become the visage of death in both worlds.

But death isn't a living thing, no matter how many lives he directly or indirectly takes, or how many times he brings James Delos back to the brink of life, before snuffing its imperfect form out yet again.

But there is one life he has yet to take, one that means far more to him than he is willing to admit, possibly even to himself. One that no doubt sees him for everything he is, for the pain he has caused in two worlds, and one who follows in his footsteps.

His resurrection will tax him to his limit, and perhaps, mercifully, the toll will be less than his forebears. 

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore.