This is a collection of short stories where the unifying thread is lack of connection, loneliness, and interacting with a commercialized world. Also, very meta in how the characters understand they are part of a fictional life.
The author has a flair for writing strangeness as if it were an everyday kind of reality, as if the character is able to walk into a TV show or game and interact with it as if it was real. The characters are also commonly lonely, or maladjusted in an inoffensive way. Having said that, there’s no pity for these characters. Perhaps because they know they aren’t the alpha, the most popular, or the best kind of person. That self-awareness makes it easier to identify with the characters.
The book is short, some stories only a few pages, and an easy read if you suspend your belief first.
May, recently unemployed, chooses to undergo a procedure to subtly alter her face so it wouldn’t be recognizable by AI. The compensation she receives is enough for her to purchase a three night stay in the Botanical Garden, the only greenery in the city, for her family. But while luxuriating in the glory of a forested area, her children go missing.
I tore through this novel and read it in two sittings.
Technology is presented beautifully, as both helpful and harmful. Children have bunnies attached to their wrists that monitor their heartbeats and location while also providing them with access to the internet. People have woombs, large egg-shaped structures where they can sit inside and be surrounded by whatever images suit them. Hums are robots, designed to be helpful to humans. Ads are constant and invasive.
Near the beginning, May takes the bunnies off her children’s wrists as a way of forcing them to exist in the real world and experiencing all that Botanical Gardens has to offer. She demands that she and her husband Jem leave their phones behind as well. But without this tech, they have to use a paper map to navigate the area and are out of touch with the world.
This becomes a problem when Jem and May fall asleep while the kids run up and down a waterfall area. With no bunnies, her children cannot be located easily by a helpful hum. Instead, the hum must access public feeds to locate the children. In doing so, the hum records May’s reaction to everything, which becomes a viral video.
Child Services gets involved, with a hum sent to observe the family. May panics, of course, that her children will be taken from her.
It’s easy to identify with May and her choice to remove the kids’ bunnies, many parents don’t want their children immersed in the internet all the time, but also the fallout and misunderstanding of peoples’ reactions to the viral video. In it, May is presented as anti-bunny, which she’s not, and parents everywhere condemn her.
The ending confused me, though. The hum tells May that the investigation concluded and her children would stay with her. Then the hum tells her to go to her woom to see the portrait it made for her, a portrait that absolved her of the investigation. Inside her woom, she saw herself undergoing the procedure to change her face, which, it turned out, was to train AI on distinguishing the differences not become unrecognizable as advertised. But how did this portrait absolve her?
Despite that, I enjoyed the book and its look into a dystopian, near-future world where capitalism has run rampant.
Should Be Writing 