The Janitor on Mars (Reflections on the Future of the Universe)

Amis, Marin. "The Janitor on Mars (Reflections on the Future of the Universe)." The New Yorker, 26 Oct. & 2 Nov. 1998): 208 f., to 228.

The "Janitor" is a very ancient Martian robot, paired in the narrarion with a human janitor on Earth. The Janitor on Mars tells humankind the history of Mars and Earth and the universes (plural) generally: a story it has waited to tell until we are doomed and in which our insignificance is stressed. The Janitor likes human art—we excell at art, and only art, even by more than universal standards—otherwise, it is not very nice to us. From the point of view of the human janitor, "his Martian counterpart" is a soul-brother and hero: "The air of brusque obstructiveness, the grudge-harboring slant of his gaze" plus "something subtler," something "that struck Pop," the human janitor, "as so quintessentially janitorial. Alertness to the threat of effort. ... The day has come, he thought. The day when at last the janitors ..." (215-16)—the thought isn't completed, but the Janitorial "self-sufficiency" and contempt for humanity (216) may be balanced by something happening to Pop and humankind. "In this new time, when he, in common with everyone else on Earth, was submitting to an obscure yet disgustingly luminous reaffiliation, Pop Jones found that thing in himself that had never been there before: the necessary species of self-love" (228). In the ambiguous ending, this new self-love may lead to some moments of goodness, or horror. (RDE, 05/12/98)