by Matt McHugh
Matt McHugh leads a guided tour through the rambling, overlapping streets of thought he traveled in writing his short story “If This Flesh Were Thought”, available in our [November/December issue, on sale now!]
Contemplating how things that exist came to be interests me.
Every object, technology, social movement, work of art… they all seem complete unto themselves, yet are products of influences, overt and subtle, that have converged over time to shape their present state. Nothing springs into existence fully formed. Everything is a tapestry of intentional threads interlaced with random strands caught in the weave. (I have this mental image of someone working a loom when an oblivious bystander wanders too close and is unaware their cable-knit sweater has been snagged and is slowly becoming part of an area rug.)
What was I talking about?
Oh yeah… unraveling the random influences that made a thing what it is.
It’s fascinating. It’s also difficult. Distinct objects—be they physical or conceptual—have a tendency to obscure what’s behind them. You look at a thing and think “I know what that is” and make a host of assumptions on how it came to be. For example, take the Cybertruck. I pretty much assume it was originally drawn on a napkin by an eight-year-old who just saw Back to the Future. I may be imposing my own flights-of-fancy on something that has a much more grounded explanation—though, in this particular case, I’m unwilling to dignify that monstrosity with actual research.
What I’m trying to say is that subjective perceptions interfere with contemplating what Kant called the “Ding an sich.” (That’s German for “thing in itself.” I’m probably using it wrong, but it’s so much fun to say I’m leaving it in.) The human mind is easily distracted by random thoughts and ill-suited to focusing on the volume, complexity, and opacity of the actual facts behind any phenomenon.
Phenomenon
Do doo be-do-do
Phenomenon
Do do-do do
Great. Now that’s in my head.
(Seriously, how do I get any work done? BTW, if you want to go down an amusing where-it-came-from rabbit hole, google “Mah-Nà Mah-Nà.”)
My point is everything comes from something else and figuring that out can be fraught with subjective misinterpretations. There’s a passage from Richard III where I made one of my favorite misinterpretations:
I… Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.
I confused the word “descant” (to sing or speak about) with “decant” (to pour out a liquid) and thought: “Oh, he’s peeing on his own shadow. What a vivid image for self-loathing!” It wasn’t until after I wrote an essay about it in college that I learned of my mistake. In my defense, I bet Shakespeare would have used it had he thought of it, but the Bard of Avon never stooped to the double entendre.
(“Ding-dong! Avon calling!” If you get that reference, it may be time to take your Geritol®.)
So, again, it’s hard to analyze something without mixing in your own random, subjective thoughts. However, there is one area where subjective analysis rightfully holds sway:
Your own work.
I’ve often bristled at the old “Write what you know” chestnut. It’s a reasonable starting point, but if you only ever did that, what would you learn? “Write what you think about” is more my guiding principle.
My short story “If This Flesh Were Thought” started with an ad for the Apple Vision Pro. It’s a VR headset with the most sophisticated eye-tracking on any consumer device (though, at $3500, I’m not sure who’s consuming it). The interface responds instantly to what you look at on screen, then you need only make tiny finger movements or voice commands to interact. Technology like that has been promised for years to assist people with disabilities, but I don’t know how much has actually made it to market. It seemed to me that Apple gizmo could lead to a mass-adoption breakthrough.
So I thought about that for a while.
If someone with limited mobility can interact with a computer with enhanced efficiency, then they could easily operate remote-controlled devices. They could pilot drones or Cybertrucks as a way to interact with the world.
No, that doesn’t make sense.
It’s too impersonal. You’d need a face to communicate directly with people. Also, to deal with the ergonomics of stairs and doors, you’d want arms and legs. So, rather than an anonymous drone, the piloted device would have to be a humanoid robotic proxy.
OK. That’s got some story potential.
How would the average Joe react to sharing public space with robots remotely controlled by disabled persons? Judging by the sighs I’ve heard from commuters when a bus has to kneel to let on a wheelchair, not always tolerantly, I’d wager. The idea that someone who can’t walk is driving around a steel chassis bigger and stronger than you will not go over well at the town meeting open mic. The proxies would have to appear frail—free from uncanny valley creepiness, or any detail that might trigger empathy—so us normies can still feel comfortable in our able-bodied superiority.
So what should a proxy look like? I used to have on my desk an action figure of the Star Wars 8D “smelter droid,” a spindly, stick-figure bot that looks like you could knock it down with a good backhand. Yeah. That’ll play in Peoria.
What if a remote-controlled proxy were actually used to commit a crime?
Oh, how we love to seize upon any isolated example involving perceived outsiders and tar an entire demographic with the same brush (“migrant crime” anyone?). People with limited access are just trying to get by, and we put up barriers to give the illusion of security. Yep, that sounds like us.
But maybe not all of us. There are some folks with enough emotional awareness and intellectual honesty to recognize that judging all by the actions of a few is unreasonable. Let’s pair one of those with a proxy operator and see what happens.
On to pairing. The “buddy cop” is one of the great tropes of our time. Take a mismatched couple, give them a crime to solve, then sit back and watch the hijinks. The detective duo has a long and storied history. Holmes and Watson. Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Nick and Nora. Turner and Hooch. (How’d that get in there? Out, damned Spot!) Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw. Ooh, I’d love to do something like that.
Now all I need is a murder, a motive, a red herring or two, and a pair of characters with different backgrounds and distinct voices. (I must say I was very disappointed, very disappointed indeed, that no one in my beta-reader circle got the “Goofy Gophers” dialog reference. I consider that a classic.)
Throw in some random musings on gun violence, health care, class oppression, ubiquitous surveillance, law enforcement, legal shenanigans, prejudice, paranoia, a line plucked from a sonnet (my go-to source for titles) and let it all stew until something interesting bubbles up. A story has to emerge from an organic discovery process or else it just reeks of contrivance. (The only non-negotiable contrivance I shoehorned in was my take on the “He’s an imposter! No, he’s the imposter!” scenario—may the gods of organic narrative forgive my vanity.)
Ultimately, “If This Flesh Were Thought” is about watching two people become friends. That simple progression may still be the most satisfying story arc I’ve yet found. When strangers with differing perspectives come together in mutually sympathetic understanding, well, it’s pretty much the only thing in this world that gives me any hope for the future.
Writing, to me, is half a conversation. I try to formulate and express my thoughts as coherently as possible. I’m convinced I’m right on some points; others, I’m not so sure about. What do you think? It’s a back-and-forth discussion that occurs only in our respective imaginations, and if done with openness on each side, one hopes both parties feel some enrichment.
I’ve often bristled at the old “Write what you know” chestnut. It’s a reasonable starting point, but if you only ever did that, what would you learn? “Write what you think about” is more my guiding principle. It can be tricky. Projecting yourself into experiences and identities unfamiliar to you means you can get things wrong. No matter what research you undertake, you can still generalize, stereotype, or give offense where none was intended. It’s a risk innate to the speculative nature of fiction (be it speculative fiction or not).
The best defense is to know thyself, to examine your own preconceptions, then set them aside—even if briefly and imperfectly—to imagine what it’s like to live in another’s skin. If you do that when you read or write, then maybe you can discover something about yourself you might have otherwise overlooked. (For example, I’ve recently discovered I use too many parentheses and pointlessly quoted “asides.”)
It’s easy to accept things we believe we already know. The challenge is to consider how those things came to be—and why we do what we do—and contemplate the Ding an sich in its entirety rather than fixate on an isolated phenomenon.
Phenomenon.
Do doo be-do-do.
Damn it. That will be in my head all day now.
The Astounding Analog Companion 
I’m just curious, is the author aware of the Locked in series by John Scalzi, which has a similar idea of proxies, up to a Star Wars reference?
I liked the story, will be glad to read more
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