Have you ever wondered what being a cyborg would be like? Have you ever wished you had a computer built into your head to augment your memory? Have you ever wanted greater powers to perceive what your five senses can’t?
“Zeta-Epsilon” by Isabel J. Kim is about being a cyborg. It was first published in Clarkesworld Issue 198 (still available to read or listen to online). “Zeta-Epsilon” is also the first story reprinted in The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Fifth Annual Collection edited by Allan Kaster. If you want to know more about the author, read this short interview with her at Uncharted Magazine. The story is also included in the 2024 Hugo Voter Packet.
I recommend you read the story before reading what I have to say. I want to explore several aspects of the story which contain spoilers.
“Zeta-Epsilon” is about a cyborg. Zeta or Zep is a human male. Epsilon is an AI, a large black sphere, whom Zeta thinks of as female. Zep calls her Ep. When Zeta was a small boy, his parents agreed to have a tiny device installed into Zeta’s brain. It allowed mental communication between Zep and Ep. They told him the voice he heard in his head was his sister. After Zeta grows up, he becomes a spaceship pilot, and Epsilon becomes the navigator.
This tale begins with Zeta committing suicide by stepping out of an airlock without a spacesuit. Most of the story is flashbacks that allow us to understand the relationship between Zeta and Epsilon and how they communicate. In my first reading, I was interested in how Isabel J. Kim imagined an AI coexisting with a human. I thought that part was good, but my last impression of the overall story, was a slight disappointment because it seemed plotless. It’s still an entertaining story, obviously good enough to get into a best-of-the-year anthology and be considered for a Hugo, but I thought it needed something more to be memorable.
I read the story again when I bought the Kaster anthology. This time I noticed more of the plot. Kim sets up the mystery of why Zeta would kill himself. The flashbacks serve two purposes: explore the dynamics of being a cyborg and explain the suicide. With this reading, I felt the story had more of a plot, but it needed something more to make it transcend just an ordinary good story.
Science fiction writers usually have the problem of inventing a cool idea first and then second, having the problem of creating a neat story to present the idea. Quite often they don’t put as much work into the story as they do to present their science fictional vision. The driving force of this story is Zeta being trapped in a life he didn’t choose.
Zeta’s mad scientist parents used him for AI research. That’s not a bad motive for the story, but it’s not fleshed out. We never feel Zeta is oppressed. He loves Epsilon. Unfortunately, the two of them were always destined to become a pilot-navigator in a military spaceship at war. Kim tells us of their anguish over their enslavement to the military, and it makes the story work to a degree. Especially, how she wraps up the ending. However, the story is mostly told. There’s very little drama. There are two main conversations in the story, but they are used to present information and lack action.
However, the relationship between Zeta and Epsilon is far more interesting. Exploring how a human coexists with a machine upstages the enslavement plot completely, at least to me, especially when she shows how Zeta’s personality is altered.
For example, Zeta doesn’t fully develop his long-term memory because he relies on Epsilon to remember for him. He also has aphantasia, which means he doesn’t visualize in his mind. I have that myself. Zed constantly relies on Ep to think for him. Zeta does well in school because Epsilon always slips him the answer. Finally, Zeta has poor relationship skills with other humans, which Epsilon is constantly covering for him.
If I had a thought radio to an advanced version of ChatGPT or Claude, I’d probably take the easy way out too. I’m not sure why Zeta has aphantasia. Is it a birth defect unrelated to his cyborg upbringing? Is Kim suggesting that Zeta also allows Epsilon to mentally see for him?
We could consider this story a metaphor for the smartphone, especially one with AI. Don’t we all look up more info on our phones, things we used to try and remember? Isn’t Epsilon a version of Siri or Alexa that’s built into our heads? Aren’t kids accused of having poor social skills because of their phones?
When I read this story the first time I thought a lot about what it would be like to have a voice in my head I could talk to anytime. One who would feed me answers and advice. At one point Epsilon says: “Talking is so slow, and I don’t think in language, second shift officer Jya San Yore. I have to borrow Zed’s brain and tongue. Talking to you is like composing a sonnet in archaic Kanaelerian. To an ant. You are the ant.”
Is Zeta just a puppet for Epsilon? I’m seeing a new twist to the story as I write this. In the end, and I warned you I would be giving spoilers, Zeta fakes suicide and escapes to neutral territory. Ep wants Zed to be free. But Ep misses her voice. All he can think about is getting back to her. Eventually, he steals Epsilon and the spaceship. They go off together in freedom. But was that Zeta’s decision, or Epsilon’s?
A sentimental reading suggests they just wanted to be together and live free. A cynical reading, and there are enough clues, to suggest that Epsilon is in full control. Maybe there is more to this story than I perceived in my first two readings.
To write a great story explores the dark side and takes on weight. “Fondly Fahrenheit” by Alfred Bester is a perfect example. It’s also about a symbiotic relationship between a human and a robot. But it also has dazzling writing. Writing like we also see in “Coming Attraction” by Fritz Leiber, or “Lot” by Ward Moore. All three of these stories dazzle in how they’re told, and they’re are dark.
“Zeta-Epsilon” is a fun story. I can see why Allan Kaster anthologized it. But I doubt it will be remembered, unlike the three stories I mentioned from the 1950s. We’re still reading them after seventy years. The important question to ask is why? Are stories with happy endings lacking in memorable edginess?
I read “Zeta-Epsilon” for a third time looking for more clues. One clue I found points things in a different direction. When Zed and Ep are planning his escape by faking suicide, Ep tells Zed not to come back. In other words, she wants Zep to stand on his own two feet, to be independent, and free. But on his own, in neutral territory, recovering from his wounds, all Zed can think about is getting back to within radio range of Epsilon.
Zed feels incomplete without Ep. A doctor asks him about how it feels to talk to Ep and he says:
“Yes, it’s equally likely that Ep might be an alter, a tulpa, an imaginary friend, a hallucination that my brain cordoned off to make sense of having a processing engine grafted to my mind, or my brain being primed by all the adults in my life calling Epsilon my sister. I’ve heard it all. Ep might just be my mind’s experience of integrating a system never meant to communicate with it. We’ve thought through all the possible contingencies. Have you ever heard of bicameral mentalities? It’s bunk for biologics, but Ep likes to put the idea in front of me. Or that archaic surgery—corpus callosotomy, to split the brain of epileptics with the byproduct of creating separate consciousnesses. Ep thought that was maybe a good metaphor. There’s a lot of things that could be true. We thought about most of them. But it’s not how it felt.”
Back in the 1970s I read Julian Jaynes’ The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Studying ancient literature, Jaynes theorized that humans used to hear voices in their heads. Often these voices were perceived to be gods, spiritual beings, or guardian angels. Jaynes believed those voices guided people. He assumed that our normal consciousness eventually integrated with those voices.
The bicameral mind is an interesting connection to make in this story. So is corpus callosotomy, the separating of the two hemispheres of the brain in cases of severe epilepsy. It supports the idea we already have two minds.
I liked this story. It makes me think about having an AI mind. Of course, it also makes me wonder: Who am I inside my brain. I believe the success of large language models (LLMs) proves we have mechanisms like LLMs in our minds that do our mental processing too. That we have AI-like subsystems in our heads already.
I think there is a lot of room in “Zeta-Epsilon” to expand into a novel. Maybe I was disappointed because the story was too short. It could be an outline for a novel. But it needs to be dramatized. For example, how did Zep steal Ep and the spaceship? We’re just told it happens in the short story, but it would be better if we saw it acted out scene by scene.
James Wallace Harris, 11/12/24
