After several episodes spent exploring the individual human tragedies fomented by Kaiba’s system of purchasing bodies, wherein debt slavery can steal not just your time and labor, but your very ability to interact with the world, episode five brought us to the bleeding edge of transhumanism. The promise of new limbs and healthy bodies for those suffering from disease or injury has been discarded; after all, what good is a customer who purchases your product and is then content, with no desire to make future purchases? No, the customers for this miracle technology must be perpetually discontent, always purchasing the latest in body-morphing innovations, and never satisfied with the results. The future of capitalism is a donkey chasing a carrot on a string, while consistently paying his masters for the privilege.
Our trip to the “Promised Planet” offered a stark and far-ranging discussion on transhumanism as corrupted by capitalism, imagining not what the future of technological and medical innovation might bring, but how precisely such innovations would actually be applied in a world driven by greed. The results were both grotesque and familiar; the idea of abandoning such technology’s humanitarian potential in favor of its commercial one might seem abhorrent, but that’s essentially no different from our own private pharmaceutical companies, who offer vital medicine to literally captive audiences at exorbitant prices, and waste little time on the commercially self-defeating prospect of actually curing lifelong conditions. A cured patient is a lost customer: pharmaceuticals want to see their customers get well about as much as drug pushers do, and employ many of the same tactics in ensuring this does not come to pass.
In this world of metamorphosis pitched as seasonal makeover, the only man protesting this commercial perversion was the architect of its promise: the aptly named Quilt, a scientist whose dreams of saving the world were undone by his work’s profitability, leaving him to make a one-man protest of his salvaged and reconstructed body. While we’ve seen how this system presses upon unlucky souls like Chroniko, episode five made it clear that even the designers of these new marvels cannot escape their misuse. The profit motive is larger than all of us, a rapacious and self-propelling beast dragging everyone in its wake. No philosophy since the divine right of kings has so thoroughly sanitized injustice; the greatest profit may be unanimously aligned with the greatest human suffering, but to a capitalist, success is the only moral value.
Episode six opens back on our celestial cruiser, with Warp and Vanilla staring out at the “egg river,” a celestial flow of all those whose memories have, like Chroniko, been discarded into the atmosphere. Looking at this procession, Warp can only wonder where his love’s memories might have gone, while Vanilla describes it as “beautiful.” I suppose destruction can be beautiful, if witnessed from a sufficient distance, but it’s hard to see much beauty in this stygian flow given what we’ve already witnessed. Are this society’s rulers simply built differently, that they can fundamentally fail to recognize this river as a human tragedy, and just admire the aesthetic pleasures of these souls’ ruin? Or is such indifference just as human as Warp’s sympathy, merely a reflection of perspective rather than morality? If so, what does that say about any of us, that we can find carefree pleasure in diversion conjured through suffering, rarely considering the human cost of our consumer luxuries?
As Warp’s vessel descends towards Lolo, the site of the Federation’s largest memory tank, the tension between the horror of this situation and the diversion of its presentation seems stretched to the breaking point. Apparently the endpoint of these memories’ journeys is being turned into some kind of theme park, and Vanilla is eager to visit. As the ship descends through thick “memory clouds,” the ship’s announcer states that passengers “may hear something like people’s voices,” but that these voices are unrelated to any actual personalities, and thus should not be heeded. As Warp endures a gauntlet of clearly personality-rich voices screaming for their bodies, their parents, or any other possible relief, he is made complicit in the cruelty and indifference of this system, sailing past the cries of the damned in order to enjoy their new theme park. There is normally at least some degree of separation between the input of suffering and the output of diversion: here on Lolo, they are one and the same.
The callousness necessary to thrive in such a world is further emphasized upon the ship’s landing, when only Warp proves willing to investigate a ship they damaged during their descent. Roaming across Seussian rolling hills, he soon finds that the ship is already being repaired by a woman named Gell with a seemingly battle-oriented body, while the elderly couple who crash-landed stand to the side, marveling at how helpful people are around here. They further explain that they’re spending their golden years traveling between planets, building memories “not with a chip, but with our own two heads.” They are affable and charming, seemingly some of the nicest and most contented people we’ve met in this universe. They are also here to see the amusement park.
With Warp joining them, our new friends proceed to enter the cynical and utterly commercialized world of Lolo’s new attractions. Even the planet’s river of memories is turned into a ride, with our party approaching the park center via inflatable, memory-surfing rafts. Through the cameras set up all around the site, the customers themselves are also turned into profit, their behavior used to design newer and more alluring forms of diversion and entertainment. In this venue, our own world might actually be ahead of Kaiba; monitoring of user data has already turned modern games into vehicles for provoking an addiction response, while pop culture at large turns ever more base and unchallenging. The pursuit of ultimate, unthinking diversion is itself an erosion of human freedom and individuality, designed to pacify rather than enlighten.
Still, it’s hard to fault people for wanting to have fun. As the group navigate a viewing chamber for Lolo’s captured memories, engaging in a morbid and exploitative form of memory tourism, the elderly couple’s polite amusement prohibits any comforting notions that only monsters could find peace in this world. There is nothing callous in their behavior, and they are models of friendliness in engaging with others. You don’t have to be cruel to embrace this world; you simply have to exist within it in some degree of comfort, which will naturally encourage you to see its conditions as mundane. Most of the people who benefit from this world order in some way are not actively complicit in its propagation – they’re just comfortable enough to be oblivious to its injustices, or at best hope that “something should be done,” but are not willing to disrupt their whole lives in order to bash themselves against “the natural way of the world.” It is not malice that defines such people; they’re simply preoccupied with their own troubles.
Having established the mundane affability of this elderly couple, Kaiba twists the knife, and reminds us what this place really is. As our customers are urged to vacate the park, the memory-soul attractions rise up in protest, offering a chorus of “let us rest in peace,” “don’t summon us as you please,” and “if you’re going to bring us back, give us a body.” As we saw in the clouds, these memories are still conscious, and are now being denied even the peace of death. From an initial promise of “your memories will be saved for restoration if your body is sold,” Kaiba has negotiated down first to “your memories will be discarded as junk,” and then to “your memories will be captured as prisoners and forced to dance for strangers, your consciousness now enslaved in a theme park for the rich.” There is no escape from this society’s commodification of human experience, not even in death.
Having witnessed horrors beyond human imagination, our new friends admit that “it was scary in the end, but a lot of fun.” This couple is compassionate and considerate, but simply cannot register the inhumanity of the world they inhabit. Perhaps it is not ignorance that binds them; perhaps they see the horrors, and choose to find what happiness they can, rather than live a life of anger and regret. Regardless, their charity briefly warms the lives of Warp and Gell, as they invite the pair over for dinner and speak fondly of their days traveling as singer and accompaniment. They may not be heroes, but they are certainly not villains; for these two travelers in bodies not their own, they are at the very least friends, offering the comfort of a warm fire in a cold and unrelenting world.
Unfortunately, the thing about unrelenting worlds is that they generally don’t tend to relent. As such, the party is soon visited by a tiny sprout from outside, which reveals itself to be a memory-eating plant by gorging on the old woman’s mind. Adding insult to injury, this organism (the appropriately named “Kaiba”) then projects a memory the old woman had kept hidden, revealing her passionate affair with some younger man. Warp and Gell are shocked at this revelation, but her husband is not surprised. Rather, he seems almost sad for his wife; he knew about this betrayal and has long since forgiven her, meaning she has been the only one forced to carry this guilt.
Her deception and his tender words serve as a tragic parallel to the party’s earlier surveying of strangers’ memories. Memories should not be dragged out for some stranger’s amusement – some memories are sacred to us, and some are actually best forgotten. The cold surveying of memories divorced from your own life will never reveal meaningful insight. It is only within the context of the full life shared by these two that this one moment of regret can be assessed, and it should only be the privilege of those few who experienced these moments to conduct that assessment. Though it might have been the most salacious, audience-engaging moment of her life, it in no way defined her. Instead, her true essence came through in the musical performance that preceded this revelation: her chosen self-expression, an expression of the long trust and quiet love shared by this couple.
Sometimes it is the identity we hide that is our truest self, as in the case for the unfortunate Warp and Gell. For others, it is the face we choose to present that is most authentic, as in the case for this loving couple. But regardless of our chosen presentation, it is most essential that this choice remains within our hands, allowing us to face the world in whatever garb or aspect we see fit. Lolo’s theme park serves as a desecration of that right, a callous spotlight shining on the countless private moments that comprise a life, yet even in their totality fail to truly describe it. There is diversion in this cruel transgression, but personally, I’d rather hear this couple’s chosen song.
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