#severance show

The lady at the birthing cabins felt like a big clue, but this episode confirms my suspicions.

The main purpose of the severance procedure that we've seen so far is to separate your work life from your home life. That's how it's marketed, you go to work and you get paid, but you don't have to remember whatever boring work you actually did. All the benefits, none of the hassle.

And now we see Gemma, who is not just severed but absolutely fucking shattered. Dozens of rooms, each of which is a gateway to a different identity. One makes her mouth hurt, one makes her hand hurt, but she has no memory of how any of that happened.

So if you don't have to remember going to work, and if you don't have to remember giving birth... what else can you cut out? Going to the dentist is no fun, and neither is writing thank-you cards, and what if you have a fear of flying? Unfortunately all those things are sometimes necessary, but what if you didn't have to experience them?

When I was a kid, sometimes I'd make my parents skip past the scary parts in movies. What if you could just skip past the scary or boring or unpleasant parts of your life? What if you could flip a switch, and be done with your workout? Press a button, and your house is clean? Don't hire a gardener or a maid, and if you don't like driving don't hire a chauffeur! Just get severed.

It's the ultimate leisure lifestyle. All the benefits of hard work, and none of the effort! Just partition all those unpleasant memories away, so you don't have to think about it.

The Macrodata Refinement Dept slogan

Imagine existing numbing yourself to every mildly unpleasant experience, surgically removing every emotion that you don't want to deal with, sanitizing your own life

And imagine only having those experiences, existing only to perform the social duties another version of yourself didn't want to deal with, living in a body that is not really yours, being forbidden from experiencing complexity