Work Text:
Holism sails into the feed like… well, like a spaceship-sized AI sails anywhere, I suppose: obnoxiously and pushing everything else out of the way. I scramble to keep my inputs ordered, and ART, who is very obviously more irked than actually inconvenienced by this, pauses our show.
Is there something I can help you with? ART says, and I wonder if it has a subroutine and formulas to balance politeness and sarcasm. (If there is, it seems to be too perfect, as Holism doesn’t seem to be irritated at all (which makes ART even more irritated, which would be funny except now I’m irritated too.))
I have heard about the events on the colony, Holism begins, and my performance reliability, which had been puttering along pleasantly, takes a screaming nosedive. What parts of the events on the colony?? There were many!
You used footage and research to create a documentary, which aided the colonists on the planet, Holism says. Three has also informed me that you enjoy media. (Three! You snitch! Why are you telling other bots things about me??) What of it, ART responds, since I’m apparently not even here (I mean, I wasn’t going to respond anyway, but that’s besides the point).
SecUnit may not be aware of the fact that the Pansystem Uni— (this conversation has already been painfully long, has Holism never heard of an anagram? (…Though would you even pronounce PUSMNT?)) — Tideland offers several classes on media studies. The assignments are often quite interesting.
Whatever interest I have in that idea is completely drowned out by a wave of irritation. I do not care that this should be something that I like. I don’t know if it’s because it’s the idea of assignments and rules, or that Holism’s offering because Three blabbed, or the thought of having stupid arguments with people who have wrong opinions about things I like. It’s probably all that, plus a combination of a bunch of other things too (but I’m not bored/pessimistic enough to bother making a full list. (For now.)). I do know that I will absolutely not be explaining any of this to Holism.
I heroically resist the urge to just leave Holism on message_status: received and very politely and tactfully send it a “amusement_sigil: thumbs_up”. That seems to be enough for it, and it also very politely withdraws from the feed.
ART has nothing to say to that, and since I’ve already had enough awkwardness for the cycle, I restart the show.
A few cycles later, ART and I are on our second watch of "The Rise and Fall of Wolf-Utni”. It’s a dramatic retelling of how a corporation became extremely powerful through misuse of alien remnants which eventually killed the entire board of directors and plunged the corp into receivership, hacked apart by competitors. I’ve been enjoying the scene of the security team reaming the corporates for not bothering to take safety precautions, when ART distracts me with its excitement bleeding through the feed.
I am so patient. (And it is impossible to enjoy media like this.) I pause the show. What is it. Why are you humming like a sonic drill.
ART pauses for almost a full second, and I’m suspicious enough to poke it through the feed.
I just realized that the name of the location of the artifact was a purposeful translation, referencing SilJave Mines. It was a location of a significant worker uprising that also destroyed a corporation.
Huh. I pause, and check out the background statistics of the movie. But this movie is super-popular in the CR, how did that manage to fly?
On it’s surface, it’s a reasonable, action-focused message about not interacting with alien remnants. I can tell ART is running searches elsewhere in its giant brain. But if the “artifact” is interpreted as a worker uprising due to this place name — and some other character names I’ve just referenced — then it seems to be more of a cautionary tale about how cruelly oppressing the workers can still destroy a company.
That’s… actually pretty clever.
The term for it is “allegory” — where the narrative can stand on its own but also be interpreted and reveal a hidden meaning.
Oh, like “On The Rim’s Edge”? The one with the early settlers and all the ways they messed up daily tasks? Gurathin mentioned something about it being a reference to corporate execs.
Correct. ART seems pleased. It’s been banned for many years in the CR because it wasn’t very subtle about its messaging.
I like the idea of sneaking a message into a show. It’s like malware via media.
ART is amused by that. There is a reason why the CR heavily employs censoring guidelines in the media it circulates. Anyone who wishes to criticize corporations must layer their message in references, or use various storytelling devices to subtly guide the user to their message.
Interesting, I say, flicking through ART’s catalog (it must have pulled new media from Holism’s and the University’s databases, I don’t recognize many of these).
You may enjoy "Hamish's Chariot”. It uses the concept of the naïf — a character who is immature or has limited knowledge — to critique the situation they find themselves in. (I suddenly think of Amena, and wonder if she’s enjoying her classes.) It features a young bot engineer who's never left his big city-station, and gets his first job in a very old and still-undeveloped colony planet. It is tagged as “cozy slice-of-life drama,” but it also touches on historical corporation wars as a plot point. It was considered groundbreaking for its time.
Alright, I say, queuing it up. What made it so groundbreaking?