minor spoilers

Should the UI program be revealed to the world?

The genie is out of its lamp and UIs are, if not quite everywhere, coming to a town near you, or a weapon’s deal or a private server. You create people who can travel and inhabit the internet and you’ve got to live with the consequences.

Except those consequences are exactly a repeat of what came before – people being enslaved to do others’ bidding.

If Chandra assumed he’d done something noble in order not to be lonely his naivety and lack of political wisdom have led directly to the creation of a new class of slaves and the deaths of many people.

The trouble is, Chandra doesn’t consider himself a human anymore and so any solidarity he might feel has been lost. For this UI there are only his goals, his agenda and what he needs to do to achieve that. This lack of solidarity is an intensification of what seemed to be his experience of life while sill a fleshy human but nevertheless, this lack of sympathy is yet another sign he has lost what made him who he really was when alive.

The others aren’t much different. Of them all, the only one to hold onto any of his humanity is Maddie’s father, anchored as he is by his very aware family.

Laurie is lost, already too far decayed for any solution to The Flaw to help her and, unlike Chandra, she wants the world to know. She believes in the hackers’ mantra – information wants to be free. She also believes people have a right to know she exists, that UI exist.

These competing agendas drive the first war among these demi-gods, and give the name for the show its meaning. Although I enjoyed it this conflict feels inevitable and that robs it of some of its power – the readiness of the characters to resort to violence, to walk away from discussion without really engaging in discussion at all is both depressing and all too plausible. However, it’s that plausibility that feels like narrative and less like these characters being authentic. It’s a small point because the momentum of this kind of story leads us in this direction but I do wonder what other kind of tale could have been told about these newly emergent intelligences.

Especially because each and every one of them is brilliant in some way.

Against this we have Caspian – drifting as he processes what he’s learned about his life. He is struggling, trying to understand who he is and what kind of choices he can make. Except, at the same time, he ends up doing exactly that for which he was made. This gentle contrasting of free will vs. determination or even nature vs. nurture is interesting because we get a sense that Caspian wants to be his own person yet at the same time feels most ecstatically alive when he does the very thing for which others groomed him. It’s great writing.

Verdict: We’re almost at the end of this story and I’m loving it. I feel like we aren’t at the conclusion though, that there are going to be many questions left unanswered. It could lead to further seasons of the show. Part of me would like it to end with some resolution, but with a clear opening that asks us not to follow the story as the world changes. Instead I’d love it if it put that change on the table in front of us and demanded to know if it’s the kind of world we want.

Rating? 9 servers on cargo ships out of 10.

Stewart Hotston