CZM Book Club: Hermetica, by Alan Lea, Part Seven

Margaret brings you the conclusion of the tale of Hermetica.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Call Zone Media book Club, book Club, book Club, book Club. Hello,
Welcome nichols On Media book Club, the only book club
where you don't have to do the reading, because I
do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
every week I bring you stories, and this week I
bring you the conclusion of her Medica by Alan Lee.

(00:25):
In the past six weeks, you've been listening to me
read you her Medica, unless you're binging it all at once,
in which case it wasn't the last six weeks, it
was the last I don't know, four hours. Or you
might actually be listening to just part seven and not
the rest of it because you just want to know
how it ends, in which case, congratulations, you're going to

(00:45):
learn how it ends anyway. Alan Lee is a pen
name for Peter Gelderlops, who's a nonfiction author, but Allen
Lee is the name that he writes science fiction under.
And last time on her Medica Days met a person
named Shauna, an author who worked on the storylines. After

(01:07):
the slow collapse caused by climate change, pandemics and eroding
faith in the current systems, the government had turned to compartmentalization,
whereby people were warehoused and essentially prisons and fed lies
about the nature of their world to keep them confined, complacent,
and productive. Her Medica was one of these compartments a

(01:27):
storyline that produced scientific progress. Residents like Zimp who were
doing research on the starship were actually running very small
and specific parts of other scientific inquiries, and the rest
of everyone, like Days, kept the whole thing going. Nobody
has ever given enough information to pick apart the whole.
Truth and compliance and non questioning attitude is prized. After

(01:52):
Shawna has taken away, Days woke up to a screen
with eight buttons. Two deactivated indicated that they wouldn't be
able to choose to return to Hermetica or the Secession,
which is also a storyline designed to keep violent fascist
self contained. And there are six possible worlds to choose from,
and just as a head's up, this final part of

(02:12):
the story deals with intense topics, including starvation and suicide,
and so listen to it at a pace that works
for you if you feel like Days awoke their head hurt,
the cell was immaculate, there was no sign of their outburst.
The column pinged. Days found a cup of water within.

(02:35):
They drank it down. They went back to sleep. Days
had been half awake for a long time before they
finally forced their eyes all the way opened and rolled
out of the cot. They drank some water and crossed
to the other corner to piss, Finally letting out a
long sigh, They went back to the screen with a

(02:57):
bitter obedience. They put a finger to the fourth square.
The image was of a beautiful white building on a
cliff with a majestic staircase winding down to a sandy
beach on an azure sea. People arrived in resplendent vehicles,
people evincing confidence, charm, and power. The video, however, focused

(03:20):
on those attending them, bringing them to their rooms, cooking
and serving their food, massaging them. Days was surprised to
see them use their hands directly and not any machines
fitting them into scoop gear on the back of a
small boat. The attendants were also elegant, always smiling, always

(03:40):
right on time, in the perfect place in a carefully
choreographed dance. The guests seemed very appreciative. One even shared
a bottle of wine with an attendant on the edge
of a hot tub. Days looked back at the cell,
raising an eyebrow. Being tracked was always insult, they realized,

(04:01):
thinking back to the aptitudes. But when the system read
you so wrong, the insult seemed even worse. Then again,
they had no way of knowing if the option had
not been placed on the screen to elicit exactly that reaction,
to push them to another choice, or at least to
inflate the feeling of how many choices were available? Could

(04:21):
one even speak of choice? Surely the system had already
calculated the probability of every choice on the whole menu.
There were probably only two days might feasibly choose. Maybe
even that calculation was optimistic. Perhaps the modeling was so
exact that everything from the mood and the lighting and
the promos to the order of the options were presented

(04:43):
in were all designed to produce a single outcome. Which scenario,
had the system determined days could fit into best. They
moved their finger, if only to stop the parade of
luxury in its servile attendance. The next image was quite
the contrast. A forest ancient trees. Three people trekked through.

(05:07):
They were tired, dirty, but there was strength in their eyes.
They seemed like friends. One of them stopped, excited, They
had seen something. The others gathered around. It was a
moss growing at the base of a tree. They knelt
down reverently, and one carefully scooped a sample into a
small self ceiling bag. Later they were at a small station.

(05:30):
It seemed to be in the middle of the same forest.
They were running tests, and one of them seemed to
be giving first day to a small amphibian, a variety
Days had never seen before. The animal seemed to have
some transparent oily substance on its skin. It was suffering,
but the person tended it lovingly, cleaning it off, giving

(05:52):
it an injection with a tiny needle. Later they were
gathered around a pond, releasing the amphibian. Now healthy, it
swam out into the water, joining others like it. The
final square showed an angry crowd in a street, perhaps
a protest. Days did not tap on the image. They

(06:14):
let their hand drop to their side as a deep
sigh escaped their lungs. They turned and sat down on
the cot. Six options, six possible futures. One they had
not yet seen, another they definitely did not want. Two
of them were appealing, but they only seemed tenable for

(06:34):
those times when they were on the up, and when
would they be possibly feeling that way again, after all
they had been through, after what they had to do.
Now the other two they might work. They could imagine
choosing a life like that, But no, they realized angrily,
it wasn't their choice. None of these lives would ever
be their choice. And then they realized why had They

(06:57):
had never been allowed to see anyone who worked in
this pre not even a simple robot. With no one
else here, no one who held authority over them. The
place was merely a circumstance, a fork in the road,
and not a prison, not a box someone had decided
to lock them up inside. All of it reinforced the

(07:17):
illusion of choice, as though they were in dialogue with
those six options on the screen, as though they were
about to choose their future life. But those worlds and
all the worlds, were like the prison itself, totally designed
by those who had control, completely inoculated against any choices
they might make. The fact that they were invisible, the

(07:38):
illusion that Days could control how they lived, only augmented
the architect's power. Looking back at the PLEXI, Days thought
about the button that had portrayed her medica. It had
initially been presented as inactivated and then removed entirely. At
first that made perfect sense. Why should they want to
return to Medica where they had been so unhappy? Everything

(08:00):
about it was a lie? But then they reconsidered that
was their home, the place they had grown up, everyone
they knew was there still, What right did those in
charge have to remove Days? With a wave of disgust
that hit like nausea, they realized the arrogance of it all,
the compartmentalization, the pretension of designing a world for them

(08:23):
to live in, circumscribing their futures, but always in the
guise of offering them choices. If humans could go uninvited
to another star system, why couldn't they go anywhere they
pleased on their own planet? And who had the authority
to keep Days from going home? They had no idea
who the architects were, but they certainly didn't live on
Days's block. And to whom did a block belong if

(08:46):
not to those who lived on it. Did they just
think they owned everything? No, Suddenly it was clear what
they wanted. Days banged on the PLEXI her Metica, I
want you to send me back to her her Medica.
They yelled at the cell with growing conviction. Her Medica
was hell and that was why Days had to go back. Zimp, milty,

(09:10):
even Axa. They were all trapped there, trapped in the line.
None of them deserved that, and Days didn't deserve to
be torn away from them, even though they had spent
so much of their lives in solitude. But even the
shrubs and flowers on the green had been their companions,
and the sky. They banged again on the PLEXI, let

(09:30):
me go back to her Metica. With Snookum still there,
it didn't seem like the cat would be able to
find Days here. They started banging louder. They would go back.
They would find their old friends. It wouldn't be perfect,
the loneliness, the old anxieties. They would be waiting for
them too, but they would tell them, and together they

(09:50):
would change things. Could it be possible? Would the system
let them go back? Shawna had said the system was
set up for everyone to be productive in some way,
and the purpose of Hermetica was to produce scientists. Surely
the passengers would still be productive even if they knew
the truth. Days couldn't imagine that Zimp would ever give
up teaching quantum mechanics. The others too would continue with

(10:15):
their pursuits, only they would do it on their own terms.
They would get to decide what was useful or necessary,
once they were actually allowed to know the world they
lived in. Could the system countenance such a modification? Would
it deign to engage in dialogue with its subjects? But
you know who will always engage in dialogue with their subjects.

(10:38):
Its products and services are benevolent overlords. And we're back.
Of course, Days knew that all cybernets entailed dialogue, and

(11:02):
machine learning itself was based on seeking out maximum inputs.
But there was another factor that had always been there,
beneath the endless circuits of conversation, the socials, the peer reviews,
the near infinite data that circulated on her Medica. Even now,
the entire system was seated just across the plexi from Days.
The cell itself constituted a dialogue, one that Days had

(11:25):
no role in shaping. They had been taught that science
was freedom, the freedom to explore, to advance any argument,
tied with a responsibility to test those arguments and consider
any criticism. The examples of Terran Litt. They had been
given to read in primary school often centered protagonists who

(11:47):
burned with a desire to say what they really believed.
Basic history from Terra was full of the same theme,
like the heroic contests between Socrates and the city or
between Galileo and the Church. In a flash, Days realized
the inputs they had been given as children steered them
all towards a pre selected conclusion. Just as the Church

(12:09):
had lulled its followers into a new prison by warning
them of the dangers of idols and god kings, Hermetica
had frightened them with tales of irrationality or excess and
given them blinder so they could move more efficiently along
the one dimensional path they had been assured was the
best one. The social technologies that had linked freedom with

(12:30):
expression had become obsolete a century ago, if indeed they
were ever real Thinking furiously, Days contrasted what they knew
of the old world, the world of Edna and Galileo,
with what they knew of cybernetics. The true test to
distinguished between a free system and a totalitarian system, they realized,

(12:50):
had nothing to do with expression. On the contrary, totalitarian
systems were now based on free expression as much as possible.
The real test was not communication, but action and influence,
Grasping for some way to make sense of it all.
A model that might interpret these disparate data. Days thought

(13:11):
back to programming classes from before. The aptitudes and programmatic
terms are all elements enabled to rewrite code that could
be the mark of a free system. Days supposed when
you write a program to scan for content in the library,
or to tell the block when to water the flowers
on the garden, you're assuming that the books don't have

(13:31):
their own lines. They would rather share that you know
better than the flowers how much water they need. Scale
up to a system full of people, a system like Hermetica,
and now programmers are scanning people for specific content, deciding
how to feed and water them, as though the programmers
and not the objects of their program. No Best Days

(13:53):
got a visit from a safety investigator because some of
their behaviors tripped a security program. Days was not even
aware of Modules. Recommendations for Days regarding medication, diet, entertainment,
and all the rest were based on other programs. Days
that had no hand in crafting Days might be invited
to evaluate the program, to rate it, and in fact,

(14:13):
Module constantly sought out feedback from Days in the form
of biostats and cognitive indicators, but they never had authorship
over it. While the program's parameters surely aimed to ensure
Days's health, it was clear that a more fundamental parameter
was the security of the overall system, the continued operation
of central programming. If they were free, According to this

(14:37):
rudimentary definition, if they could reprogram the program they were
caught up in the elements on Hermetica, the people would
mostly want to continue their research. Days was sure of it.
After all. One of the things that had set them
apart was, unlike the rest of their cohort they did
not feel fulfilled by their work. Nearly everyone else did,

(14:57):
and if they could, the others would want to redesign
the work, modify its objectives and parameters. If instead of
being trapped in a line, they were allowed to dialogue
with the other elements of the Earth system, formulating their
own needs and requests pertaining to scientific research, they might
arrive at shared sets of objectives and parameters. That's what
a free system looked like. It didn't mean you were

(15:19):
free of consequences or free of the need to compromise,
but that every step of the way, you had a
hand in shaping outcomes, and you could refuse a collaboration
that was contrary to your interests. Surely that was a
viable parameter. Days felt breathless, wondered if Galileo had had
a moment like this one. Their mind raced ahead. How

(15:40):
does this thing, this free system as they were venturing
to call it, compare to its other Perhaps the question
posed was an overly binary lens, but it was a
useful one for now. So if her Medica or the
whole world, as seemed to be the case, were not
a free system but a tutalitarian system, what defined it
as such? A totalitarian system? Days felt confident in their hunch,

(16:05):
would encourage input from all elements. But where would those
inputs go? Not to the elements themselves? Need to know
the new safety trust the experts remember the wiki as
well as the parallel world Shawna had described. All these
data seemed to point to the same fact. Only those

(16:25):
with an exclusive administrative access would be able to analyze
the inputs and decide how to act on them. Of
the system's total code, a large proportion would be fundamental
protocols that the vast majority of elements would have no
ability to alter. Again, alterations would be the prerogative of admin. Sure,

(16:46):
some portion of the code could be modified by everyday
elements with something like a guest or user level access,
but the changes would be largely cosmetic, and the parameters
for those changes would be limited in advance by In
the end, it didn't even matter who got to be
admined so long as most people were just guests in

(17:06):
their own system. So if Days were allowed to go back,
if the people on her Medica could get free, it
wouldn't mean the end of existence for whomever was in control.
It simply meant that they would have to shift from
elations of command to relations of reciprocity. Were they up
for the change? What could Days do but insist they

(17:27):
went back to banging. Their fist was bruising. Finally, Cell
recognized that ignoring Days was no longer the best option,
which metric had been tripped to change its stance physical
damage to Day's body damage to the cell. Were there
other people farther down the corridor who might hear before

(17:49):
Days could consider what options for action. These different possibilities
might present a damage prone PLEXI A cell coded to
protect their bodily integrity other prisoners with whom they might communicate.
The plexi phased back into a screen. This time only
one item appeared, though it was huge and took up
half the wall a little unsubtle. It was the icon

(18:12):
for the Hermitica button, an inactivated gray scale situated inside
a red circle with a diagonal red line crossing it
out for good measure. Her Medica is not an option.
You have a zero percent chance of being reassigned to Hermetica.
You have six options and must choose one of them

(18:32):
before moving on to the next stage of your rehabilitation.
This is your last warning to cease attempted destructive activity
of the structures of this cell. Nowadays slammed both fists
into the plexi again and again, followed by a series
of frontal kicks. You motherfuckers, they screamed, taking the insult

(18:54):
shawnahad to use. You kidnapping motherfuckers. Send me home. Fuck
your six choices, Send me home. They were crying. Now
that's my family, Give me my family back, you motherfucker's.
A hissing sound came from the duckted above days awoke
their head hurt. The PLEXI was intact. Six squares glowed

(19:18):
softly in its center. There would be no dialogue. Whatever
Days might want or need was completely irrelevant. They were
a machine to be programmed. They stayed a long time
in bed. Your wants and needs are never irrelevant to
the products and services who support this show. I'm sorry

(19:38):
the content keeps getting heavier and heavier and throwing too
ads feels. I don't know whatever your's ads to keep
us paid. You could make your own choices about if
you listen to them or not. I guess, and we're back.

(20:04):
What would Shauna do, they wondered, crawling out of a
sordid dream. If they were a writer, Days could think
of a fantastical ending to this story. They would choose
one of the options Cell offered them. They would explore
their new world, make friends together. They would find a
crack in the system, escape out into the real world,
and live happily ever after. Or at least the story

(20:27):
would end ambiguously, with all the possibilities of the new
world left unexplored, Readers encouraged to hope for the best.
Another closed system, bounded by the complicity of spectators who
violated the first law of thermodynamics, creating something out of nothing,
summoning hope and possibility out of a history that offered neither.

(20:49):
They were in an eternal present. Days realized there were
no cracks, There was no outside the system. There was
no real world apart from this one, the unseen. What
they could not know from their present vantage, that terra
incognita in which they safely stashed their neurosis about a
better world. It wasn't an outside, and it certainly wasn't

(21:11):
a whole world. The only shadows of possibility lay behind
another enclosure. It was the darkness within a closed box,
bounded and contained, and inside nothing but Schrodinger's cat. Within
that darkness, that uncertainty. Days might imagine a whole world
of possibilities, but really there were only two. The cat

(21:32):
was either dead or trapped within the box. Death or imprisonment.
There were no other possibilities. Days would not tell themselves lies.
Days drifted in and out of sleep. The column pinged,
There were pings in their dreams. How many times they
did not get up. They stayed in bed until their

(21:52):
body ached, stayed until it was past aching, stayed until
their dreams went on strike, and sleep refused to rescue them.
They got up, went to the toilet. The pain in
their midsection began to subside. They drank some water from
the column. The pain in their throat began to subside.

(22:13):
They paced back and forth a few times, felt their
blood flow. Their mind come awake. Something whispered back there.
It was like a pressure, a little package begging to
be opened. The column pinged again, and the thought was lost.
It was clear now they would keep them in here

(22:33):
until they chose. There were six options, and that was
all they were prepared to feed them, to keep them
alive indefinitely, a sort of suspended animation, until they agreed
to one of those six futures, and that consent would
be their first form of participation. From then on, all
their actions would be modulated to improve their life within

(22:55):
the bounds the architects had set. When would an opportunity
ever arise for something different? When could they possibly hope
to be in a situation where they had more leverage
than those in charge? A simple thought popped into their mind,
If not now? When the whisper at the back of

(23:15):
their mind returned, and they repeated the question, if not now?
When the pressure grew the shape revealed itself, and as
Days led it unfold, they came through with a sudden
force of violins and crescendo. It was a song, the
song they had been trying to summon for the last
few days. It was Vivaldi's can Scare though number two

(23:36):
in G minor lestette presto, and it thundered from their
mind and throughout their very being, out their fingertips and
from their feet into the floor. The walls of the
cell shook with the song. Cell was not entirely immune
to life either, and Days remembered another storm, and the
most important lesson of all, There are always other choices.

(23:59):
There was always another way out. And then they saw
the opportunity. They saw the exact point where they had
more leverage than those great and invisible who built entire worlds.
Knowing Cell was watching, knowing their gesture mattered whether it
had an audience or not, because it was an action
that struck at the very nexus where all the system's

(24:19):
powers came to a focus. Days got up. They walked
to the column and opened it. They took out the
tray of food. There it was the next meal, the
bland mash of calories and vitamins that would keep them
in this state of suspended animation until they made a choice.
One of the choices the system offered another world identical

(24:39):
to this one in all but appearance. Would they have
the chance to make this choice their own choice. They trembled,
frozen to the spot they doubted. Then they turned one
foot in front of the other. They crossed the toilet.
Days didn't know they would have the strength to follow
their plan to the bitter. They didn't know what their

(25:02):
jailers would do to try to stop them. They were
in uncharted territory, and that meant they were free already.
Days up ended the tray, dumping all the food into
the shallow bowl of the toilet. Still trembling, they returned
the tray to the column, closed the little door, and
sat back down on the cop There would be no

(25:24):
suspended animation, no slowly wearing them down until they chose
a world immune to their touch. Over this their own self.
They had more leverage than the architects. Ever, could they
had made their move, they would refuse every one of
their offered choices. They were breaking out. The storm thundered

(25:44):
and crashed all around, but within days was tranquil, calm,
ready for what might come. Days lay on the cot,
hugging their knees to their chest. The pangs had left
them some time ago. Now their body felt warm and light.
They were on their way. The cell came and went.

(26:06):
They had seen simp Milty had called out to them,
but their friends couldn't hear. Not yet Snookums had visited,
though Days couldn't remember if that had been in the
cell or back on her medica. It was a joyful reunion.
They'll be coming for me soon, Days thought to themselves.
They had supposed from the start they wouldn't be allowed

(26:26):
to just waste away. The jailers, whoever they were, could
resort to force feeding, but at least then they would
have to appear to abandon their conceit that this was
a circumstance and not a prison, one that they built
and maintained. Days could count that as a victory, and
no small one. A shudder passed through their body. It

(26:48):
came with the force of catastrophe, like the whole world
were shaking. Days found themselves panting as a subsided. They
let out a long, trembling sigh, but still their heart raced.
They were stretched out now, They rubbed their arms, embracing themselves.
You did all right. If they didn't give themselves love,

(27:11):
who would. It had been a hard life, not the
one they'd wanted so little to look back on. But
as the light trembled and sputtered, malnourished, disbelieved, Days felt
another life ready to open like a flower and draw
them in. They imagined trumpets blowing and towers falling, and
they smiled at the thought, you did all right, barely

(27:36):
a whisper. Everything was warmth. No one would remember them,
but it was okay. Days had never wanted recognition. They
would never be a hero. The neighbors from their block
practical people, They would disparage Days's sacrifice if they knew,
or at least try to dissuade them. Their world could

(27:56):
not hold itself up If Days were right, Their labyrinths
were long longer to run. But it didn't matter. There
were no winners here. Footsteps seemed to echo in the corridor.
It didn't matter. Days doubted anyone could overcome their simple decision.
They smiled, Let them try. None of it mattered. Everything

(28:19):
was warmth. Days could hear it now, not the chorridor,
not the cell, the music behind the music. They'd felt
it there their entire life, and now it sounded clearly,
the colors, the sounds everywhere in everything. Days smiled, days cried,

(28:40):
They were on their way the end. I'm not going
to discuss the story too much today because we're going
to do a discussion with the author in the near future.
But yeah, thanks to listening to her Metica by Alan Lee.

(29:00):
And if you want to read more by the author,
you can look him up under the other name he
writes under Peter Gelderlos, which is g E L D
E R l o O S. And he has a
substack you can subscribe to to hear his takes on
all the stuff going on in the world. And wherever

(29:23):
you are listening to this, I hope you're taking care
of yourself and yeah, you.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Well, it could happen here as a production of cool
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(29:47):
for listening,