#ace representation!

Rambo, Nurse Ratched, and Vic’s banter is the lively through-line of this novel. No matter how dark their fortunes get, Rambo and Nurse Ratched are a comedic duo, who consistently draw Vic out of his worries and out of his own head. In turn, he loves them fiercely, in a way they seem capable of returning. Rambo is bumbling and earnest. He’s easy to fool because he seems to take everything in with a child-like naivety and enthusiasm. Nurse Ratched easily plays the sarcastic straight man to Rambo’s antics. Her sense of humor is witty and dark, full of jokes about death, violence, and imparting physical harm—ironic for a medical robot. I particularly enjoyed Nurse Ratched’s ability to create humor through the pairing of her spoken words and the text/images appearing on her screen; she would often use these two simultaneous modes of communication to create a humorous contrast. The dialogue between Rambo and Nurse Ratched is one of the genuine and immersive joys of this novel, which quickly transports the reader into the world of these goofy, near-human characters. 

While the early section of the book establishes backstory (the finding and reviving of Hap, who was once a murderous robot in the employ of the government, and the life of jazz music-loving, classic-movie-watching robot Gio before he “had” his human son Victor), the central plot of the book kicks into gear when The Authority discover their tree-top laboratory and home and arrive in their ship The Terrible Dogfish to take Gio away. Gio was once an inventor employed by The Authority and his dark role in wiping out humanity and allowing for robot supremacy later becomes clear—he was the one who invented the HARPs (Human Annihilation Response Protocol) and he knew Hap in their lives before. But Gio came to see the error of his ways and fled the City of Electric Dreams with the help of a mysterious figure who later appears in the story, The Blue Fairy. The lives that Gio and Hap previously led, and their active choice to let go of the cruelty that once ruled their actions and their views, make redemption a central theme of this novel: where and how do we believe in redemption—for others, but primarily (and most difficultly) for ourselves? Vic believes unfailingly in the goodness of both his father Gio and the boy Hap who he grows to love. It is clear that Vic’s faith is key in both these characters’ ability to grow beyond their dark pasts, to forgive themselves, to choose lives of beauty and kindness. 

It is Vic’s belief in Gio that sends the other four—Vic, Rambo, Nurse Ratched, and Hap—on a quest to rescue him from the robots who took him back, wiped his memories/programming, and set him back on this previous path as inventor for The Authority. This journey expands Vic’s thinking, determination, and sense of self. All the characters must encounter things beyond their comfort zones. Vic and Hap seem to grow as “people” through these experiences, while Rambo and Nurse Ratched remain their lovable, yet consistent selves. Is this difference the regular literary one of main character verses supporting cast? Or is it due to the difference of the human heart that beats in Vic’s chest, echoed by the “more than robot” heart blooming in Hap? 

It’s interesting to me that the emotional breadth of these characters parallels humanity/robot distinctions with protagonist/foil distinctions…Perhaps this was an intuitive choice, perhaps the very reason the human Vic takes center stage? (Although I read back-to-back with this book Klara and The Sun where, inversely, the one robot surrounded by an array of humans is the novel’s First Person narrator. It’s worth holding these books up as mirrors of each other.) While Rambo and Nurse Ratched don’t showcase the same character growth as Vic and Hap, it is clear that all robots in this novel are capable of transcending the limits we might assume of their robotic natures when they experience a world that challenges, expands, and changes them. Love changes them. The opportunity to think for themselves blooms greater abilities. A drop of Vic’s human blood makes them forever “human-like” in the way they are moved by the beauty of nature, the passage of time, the expression of affection. Hap falls in love with the sight of a delicate butterfly, and this gentleness grounds the once purely-destructive boy. Hap falls in love with Vic and this love drives his protectiveness, loyalty, and determination to re-learn himself (after he sacrifices his memories/programming to wipe The Authority’s server) at the end of the novel. 

Vic’s love for Hap changes him, as well. Vic, it becomes clear, is the last human remaining on earth—a truth Vic and Gio both never really wanted to confront, hoping against hope that some other humans will reveal themselves, tucked away in some secret corner of the earth. But Gio’s HARPs were too successful, too thorough, too deadly. Vic, interestingly for the last human left alive, is asexual. The robots seems to understand sex in clinical terms—they speak about it and joke about it—and Nurse Ratched in particularly seems inclined to trying it out. These jokes and conversations make Vic uncomfortable, and his friends comment openly and without shame on his lack of sexual arousal or interest in sex. While Vic does not experience sexual attraction, he develops romantic feelings for Hap. This is clearly his first experience with feeling this way and he works through these feelings in fits and starts, trying to parse where friendship ends and where whatever this other thing he feels for Hap begins. 

Vic’s reckoning with his feelings occurs in tandem with Hap’s growing feelings. It’s clear from the beginning that Hap looks at Vic differently…and he looks, and looks, and looks, fixated on Vic and trying to understand him. Perhaps this early fixation reveals Hap’s original programming to obsessively find all humans? Perhaps it reveals the impact of Vic’s blood droplet fueling his heart? Perhaps it is love at first sight, reborn Hap hooked on a strange wilderness boy who loves his friends and his father fiercely and with open devotion? As these two stutter-step toward each other, both are clearly giving more emotionally and being more to another than they have ever been before to another being and their innocence is paired with poignant maturity, deeply-felt awareness of themselves. Vic knows himself; he knows how he feels and these truth are simple and fundamental inside of him. Hap’s arrival shakes up these things, but in a way that feels very true to, and honors, Vic’s sexuality. 

The dynamic group’s journey to rescue Gio takes them into the pathway of several other strange figures. Traveling along the road, they’re taken prisoner by the Coachman, an eccentric robot who collects artifacts of humanity. Like a ringmaster displaying his collection, the Coachman markets the remnants of humanity to robots curious about other beings. He takes Vic and crew through The Land of Toys to exhibit them, holding them prisoner in display cages, but once he learns that Victor is the last of those humans, which he adores and romanticizes, he decides to help them. The Coachman takes them as far as The City of Electric Dreams and strategizes a plan to sneak our heroes into the city concealed within shipping crates. He also tells them of The Blue Fairy and their residence/business Heaven, a keystone location of robot resistance to the uniform control of the Authority. Robots who have broken away from the Authority for any reason, claiming independence like Gio once did, flock to The Blue Fairy. They were the reason Gio was able to escape the city and flee to the remote woods, and, it’s ultimately revealed, the reason Gio ended up having and raising Vic.

The Blue Fairy is not a sympathetic figure, but they are a powerful one and the crew’s night spent in Heaven, a love motel, is strange and fraught. As part of their bargain with and testing of Vic’s team, the Blue Fairy extracts Hap’s repressed memories of the harm he did as a HARP, seeking out and killing remaining humans. The Blue Fairy also challenges the initial origin story of Victor—that his parents died and Gio raised him — revealing that they had been secretly keeping a human embryo, which they entrusted to Gio to create life from this source, which then grew into the human boy Victor. By the end of the novel, Victor’s human characteristic most essential is his persistent hope. In spite of Hap’s reset on top of Gio’s, Victor rebuilds his life and the interpersonal connections which form the cornerstones of his sense of self, his emotional core: his abiding love for his family and friends.