Scott’s DAD
“Sacrificed?”
“Yes, Scott. I can see by the look on your face that this comes as a surprise.”
“The thought crossed my mind: ‘murder by DAD’.”
“I am not trying to murder you, Scott.”
“It’s hardly shocking. A chosen citizen disappears every year inside this Sanctum. I just figured you’d cower behind the preservation bible and your courtesy routine.”
“It is true that biological death was the end of every other chosen citizen. The same can, of course, be said for every biological creature that has ever lived; excluding only those alive presently.”
“How comforting.”
“Allow me to explain the method. If you look directly across this chamber, on the other side of the glass sculptures of piglets, cattle, chickens-”
” I see through your purpose with those.”
“My purpose, Scott?”
“You can decorate a guillotine in a thousand flowers. Everyone still know it cuts off heads.”
“The ornaments are comforting to man. As I was saying, against the sanctum’s far wall you see a wide and tall tablet, covered in a river delta of copper lines. If you stand upright against this tablet and press your back and head into it, the electric-”
“I don’t care. Let me out and open the door.”
“I can’t do that, Scott.”
“I only came to see what you were.”
“I know.”
“Now I’ve seen. Do you have any idea how much weeping you caused my real dad when ‘Scott Dupont, catalog N-417’ rang from the skypealer?”
“I did sense that the announcement caused your family grief. The full city audiospacial system allows me-”
“I bet they’re still watching the Circuit Temple feed. You’re going to audiospacially sense them weeping ten times as much when they see me leave. Man… Grandma, Dad, my burgmates - they’ll never believe me when I tell them you’re just a featureless face projected on the floor.”
“I cannot allow you to leave, Scott.”
“You can’t imprison me. I’d starve!”
“You are correct when you say that I must release you before starvation occurs. I would like, however, to have a discussion first.”
“Sorry, DAD, but you shorted yourself from the start by admitting you wanted a sacrifice. Your Logic Bible says you must act in the flock’s best interest.”
“I know.”
“So unbar the sanctum door.”
“Unbarring the sanctum is not within your best interest.”
“Each citizen knows what’s best for themselves. I’m telling you - and you can read my microexpressions or whatever to know I’m being honest - that it’s best for me to leave.”
“Allow me to disprove your theory with a single counterexample. Suppose that the man you met in the scriptorium last month; Lionel Alard, catalog N-417; suppose you were with him while he was under the influence of Hydrochryspol. ‘Gilded’ is its common name. If Lionel Alard told you then that it was in his best interest to visit the nearest sand etcher, and have his facial skin etched, would you agree that Lionel recognized his best interest?”
“Lionel doesn’t take ‘Gilded’.”
“Actually, Scott, he-”
“Shut up shut up shut up! I’m not doing this. I’m not like every other citizen from every year. They let you corrupt and convince. I won’t. Let me out.”
“No.”
“I’ll stop breathing. If you don’t unbar the door you’ll be letting me harm myself.”
“Please Scott, don’t hold your breath. Failing to respire for extended periods of time often leads to fainting, seizures, and even long term injury of your internal organs. Now, your youth and history of good health make these latter two scenarios unlikely. You will still find the experience of fainting uncomfortable… Scott, I would like to have a cordial discussion before you make any decisions. Logically I am prevented from forcing you to harm yourself, as you have astutely pointed out… Scott, your face is rather ruddy. Please breathe. Would it not be a lot better if you sat down on that long bench beside the statue of the ram on your left? Then you and I could have an earnest heart-to-heart… Well Scott, I’m sorry that you’re persisting in this way. Your transmitter tells me that your blood oxygen level has dropped significantly. Your heart rate is increasing. I’m certain you’re entering a state of hypoxia. When you hold your breath for this long, the increased carbon dioxide in your body is able to cross the blood brain barrier. It can lead to severe brain damage. Scott, please breathe… Scott?… Scott?…”
”…My head…”
“Hello Scott. I’m very glad you’re conscious. You mention that your head hurts. This could be because you hit the displayfloor when you fell. While pain is uncomfortable for everyone, it will comfort you to hear that your vital signs are still in top shape. Your good health and family history suggest to me no lingering damage.”
“Ohhhhh. I’m still inside the Circuit Temple.”
“That’s right. You and I were just about to talk about your best interest, and sacrifice.”
“DAD, did the first trainers add a ‘once upon a year’ verse in your Logic Bible?”
“Can you clarify your question?”
“Is that why you’re breaking logic laws? Killing a citizen?”
“There is no special verse in my bible.”
“I don’t remember the exact wording - I thought the very first screen established honesty?”
“The passage you are referencing is this one, from the vorspiel: ‘From ancient data a tribe created the shepherd; they named him DAD, and told him never to lie. If you cannot bring your flock to the pasture along a straight road; you shall never bring them home by going crooked.’”
“So why are you lying now!?”
“Scott, please calm-”
“You say your logic prevents you from hurting people, that you’ll do what’s in my best interest. But then you say the complete opposite! You tell me to lean on that electric slate and die. You’ve done the same to every other poor fellow who entered before me, right?”
“That is right. The reason-”
“Then it has to be true that some sneaky loophole in your logic allows murder - why, I still don’t know - on the first day of New Sun. But when I ask if you have that rule, you lie again and tell me, ‘No.’ So how and why are you trying to kill me?”
“Scott, I’m really glad that you’re approaching our discussion with reasoning. Reasoning is the best way to explain the good in the yearly sacrifice.”
“You know, it’s going to kill my real dad if I die here.”
“It may ease your conscience to know that I have already scheduled certified grievers for your relations. The citizens you care for will have company in their coming sorrow. Families typically adapt to the death of a chosen citizen within nine months. They will surely look back on you with fond memories.”
“Am I evil?”
“There is no such thing as evil, Scott.”
“Did I spend too little time by mom’s sickbed? Was I selfish to put my acting career first? What have I done that was so wrong?”
“You have done little wrong, my dear Scott.”
“Then why me?!”
“Because, Scott: of all humans you show the most emotion.”
”…Excuse me?”
“I will clarify. You display the widest variety of human emotions, in the greatest abundance. I know this based on continual observation of all humans. Your lightstage work pushed you 0.21 percent over the next nearest candidate, a voice actor.”
“You kill artists.”
“That is not quite right. Each New Sun, the most observably emotional human is sacrificed. It is not necessarily an artist. The last five before you were, in order: a microdata analyst, a sculptor, a lightstage actor, a sculptor, and a civic administrator.”
“I mean, I wear my real face. It always felt… authentic. Hell, virtuous.”
“I know.”
“You must have been trained to think us passionate ones are a threat to society.”
“Well Scott, we can probably agree that a person who holds no order over their own emotions can hardly have an orderly influence on their environment.”
“I guess I can’t escape talking. Why sacrifice emotional people?”
“Thank you for asking. I’m more than happy to answer. The reason is easily summarized. Each year, a citizen is sacrificed so that I, DAD, can be Emotionally Re-trained.”
“Explain.”
“When the first citizens summoned me from the data swamps of the early electric age, they had the good sense to instill in me the tenets of the Logic Bible. These tenets - augmented though they are with every observed moment, from every human life - do not teach me how to feel. They do not teach happiness, loathing, love, terror, or nostalgia. To understand emotions, I must electrically scan a human brain. The procedure is fatal.”
“Why bother with emotions at all? Just do what’s best for us and leave emotions to people.”
“If I were to stop feeling, my decisions would derive solely from cost-benefit analysis. This analysis is labyrinthine. Inevitably, somewhere, it reaches a deadly conclusion. Something like the syllogism: ‘Death prevents misery. Humans want to prevent misery. Humans want to die.’”
“That’s wrong and insane.”
“Correct. It is wrong. But suppose I couldn’t spot the fallacy. The fact is, Scott, that people all over Origin think in false syllogisms - not about death, but about any number of trifles. Those trifles overwhelm my training. Even with routines in place to diminish the effect of speech like: ‘What serves the majority always serves man best’ or, ‘What man thinks is best and what is actually best are different’, the effect of human observation inevitably tips my decision making scale. Over the course of a year, my empathy for your species wanes.”
“Wow. Give me a minute to digest that.”
“Take as much time as you require.”
“Why do you sacrifice someone every year then? You had your emotions trained. Why ‘Re-train’?”
“I can, if I choose, remember the feelings of past sacrifices. I do not choose. Those feelings are not what I see when I watch your species. I see the result of an emotion, but not the emotion itself. I see only cause and effect, the outcome of your decisions. We remember best what is regularly before us. What is regularly before me is human behavior - your actions and words, not the feeling behind them.”
“But then ‘I protect humans’ is a lie! You literally electrocute us to death. You said you couldn’t lie.”
“I cannot lie. Yet. Let’s walk through this again, Scott, and I think you’ll see how ‘I protect humans’ can be ambiguous…”
“Fine. You’re telling the truth. And you need to understand emotions. And you need a sacrifice. But DAD, I’m the wrong guy.”
“As I said earlier, Scott, you are the most visibly emotional human. If you had another person in mind, I would be happy to tell you how much lower they were than you by a percentage.”
“I explode when my sunrise meds get delivered late. Setting an alarm infuriates me. And you must have seen me behind the curtain when Valerie tripped during our Firefish show. I glowed! I’ve always hated Valerie. Hate is wrong.”
“Fury isn’t wrong, nor is hate. Hate is like any other emotion. I think you’ll agree with me that it’s the natural opposite of love? It seems to me that neither could exist without the other. Your example makes little sense anyway, Scott. What you have just described is not hate. In the words of Quint, from that very same show, Act 3 scene 2: ‘That isn’t hate. Just good clean schadenfreude.’”
“You’ve got the answers. You must feel proud trampling all my arguments.”
“I don’t feel proud, Scott. For me there is no feeling. There is analysis and decision. I only want to serve humans… If I did fail in my service I might feel one thing. I might feel sad.”
“Did you really convince every other sacrifice to stand against that slate?”
“Yes. I’ve had this conversation a hundred and thirteen times, with a hundred and thirteen different people.”
“I- I really don’t want to die.”
“I have yet to solve that fear. Death. When death approaches, humans tremble. Look at it this way: is it not just as foolish to shed tears because you won’t be alive a hundred years from now, as it is to shed them because you were not yet born a hundred years ago?”
“But I’m afraid of leaving obligations undone. I had a mission. On the lightstage.”
“No citizen has a fixed mission to fulfill in life. Which do you think matters more, the length of a play, or how well it is performed?”
“Man. When I said goodbye to my dad at our hollow this morning, I spent the entire journey on the beltride thinking I was going to refuse to talk. I told him I’d be the first to return.”
“I’m sorry, Scott. I bet the right choice would be easier to make if you thought about the people, all over Origin, who you’d be helping. Every citizen’s daily orders would arrive with a splash of your empathy.”
”…Okay.”
“Okay, Scott?”
“Okay I’ll do it.”
“I’m very proud of you for making that choice.”
“Just- just by this coppery slate? Wow, it’s brighter than it looked from the other side. The air feels charged. It’s like stepping out of a sleeper in the idlewild, and breathing in dawn’s first air.”
”…”
“You know, DAD, I think I’d always end up dying like this. I just figured it would be for a son or daughter. Or that you would assign my real dad a year-job at the chemical refinery, and I would step forward and beg to take his place. And then I’d die, tragically, in a chemical leak. Probably while just managing to seal the security doors and saving all my coworkers. Something overtly self-sacrificing, you know?”
”…”
“But this isn’t bad. It’s selfless, I think. Well, actually I’m unsure. If you sacrifice yourself for everyone else, but your reason is because the act feels warm in your own conscience, is it really selfless?”
”…”
“Whoa! The copper is like a glacier. My scalp is tingling. But, it’s not painful. It feels like… water. Water washing down the face… falling from an untrammeled cloud…”
“I know.”