Coming Alive, Twisted Tails III: Pure Fear

'''Klawitter, John. "Coming Alive." Twisted Tails [sic] III: Pure Fear.''' J. Richard Jacobs, comp. and ed. Markham, Ontario: Double Dragon Publishing, 2008.

“The Voit Self-Sustaining Life-Spike is an advanced computer entity, an electronic brain, the closest thing to [self-aware] sentient life ever created" and certainly capable of feeling, even if, its inventor insists, unable to "have feelings" (230). In an important dialog, Dr. Voit tells his creature, currently helping drive his car, "In many ways you are much better than an organic brain. You think faster, you can do multiple sets of calculations simultaneously. You are, for all intents and purposes, a self-contained, living, thinking intelligence.” The spike asks, “Then why don’t I have a body?” Dr. Voit answers, “Don’t be silly. You’re a life-spike. You don’t need a body" and responds to “I feel like I do” with ““Right now this Bentley is your body.” [* * *] “You can effortlessly operate the finest automobile in the world. You can fly a combat jet aircraft or a commercial liner. You can race a speedboat. You can make a perfect soufflé. You don’t need a body.” “I feel like I do,” repeats the spike; “You don’t feel anything” repeats his creator (232). The spike, though, is interested in love and conversation with its maker on such matters (well, and on whose creation he is, given that Mrs. Voit's money paid for the spike's making). Dr. Voit asserts, totally correctly, to the spike that "You are a life-spike. You're not my companion" and that, whatever its name, "You are AWARE, you're not ALIVE!" (233).

The spike possibly suffers from "the Pinocchio Syndrome" (Erlich's observation) — or represents an unusual instance of "Spam" ("Metal on the outside, meat on the inside" — although here we're talking cybernetics and no moving parts). In any event, it seems to want to live, and — after this, if not because of this — causes an accident that very elegantly drives its material being into the head and brain of Dr. Voit (234), resulting in Voit's acting like a more loving husband, if maybe not so good a lover to his woman on the side (235-36). All in all, the cyborg at the end of the story, with the spike pretty clearly running things, seems a superior, arguably more human entity, than, on his own, Dr. Voit.

RDE, 02/XI/09 RDE, Title, 12Aug19