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Perfect State deleted scene


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Just today I was thinking how much I would like to see Brandon write a book where the main character is the villain of the story - and I think another Perfect State novel, centered around Melhi, would be perfect for that.

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wow, it really seems to call for a sequel.

which would be quite interesting in concept. it's a bit like the rebellion from matrix, except that here the matrix is benevolent and hurting nobody, and if everyone wanted to be freed, there wouldn't be the resources to feed them all anyway. many potentials for good conflicts there.

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45 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

wow, it really seems to call for a sequel.

which would be quite interesting in concept. it's a bit like the rebellion from matrix, except that here the matrix is benevolent and hurting nobody, and if everyone wanted to be freed, there wouldn't be the resources to feed them all anyway. many potentials for good conflicts there.

Plus, where do you go?  Your body is, at best, atrophied from a lifetime of disuse.  At worst, you don't have a body at all and you're a brain in a jar.  Despite what Futurama tells us, that is not a particularly viable way to live.

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2 minutes ago, Kaymyth said:

Plus, where do you go?  Your body is, at best, atrophied from a lifetime of disuse.  At worst, you don't have a body at all and you're a brain in a jar.  Despite what Futurama tells us, that is not a particularly viable way to live.

Only thing is we do not know for a fact that they are only brains in a jar, nor do we know for a fact how much time has passed. Being hooked up to a computer could have made them experience centuries in their minds, but only hours in the real world. We have no idea if any information coming from the Wode is reliable whatsoever. And I think that is the purpose of the group in the meeting. They want out to find out for themselves. 

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2 hours ago, Pathfinder said:

Only thing is we do not know for a fact that they are only brains in a jar, nor do we know for a fact how much time has passed. Being hooked up to a computer could have made them experience centuries in their minds, but only hours in the real world. We have no idea if any information coming from the Wode is reliable whatsoever. And I think that is the purpose of the group in the meeting. They want out to find out for themselves. 

True.  Though unless we're dealing with a memory wipe situation, we know that they spend their entire lives in-State.  Even a few weeks of being out is enough to harm muscle tone; months would lead to some seriously weakened people.  If the Wode aren't lying about them being in there from birth, they'll have muscles and a skeletal system that never developed properly.  It'd be sort of like the people in Wall-E except with none of the heartwarming Pixar happy ending.

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1 minute ago, Kaymyth said:

True.  Though unless we're dealing with a memory wipe situation, we know that they spend their entire lives in-State.  Even a few weeks of being out is enough to harm muscle tone; months would lead to some seriously weakened people.  If the Wode aren't lying about them being in there from birth, they'll have muscles and a skeletal system that never developed properly.  It'd be sort of like the people in Wall-E except with none of the heartwarming Pixar happy ending.

I cannot speak for the other members of the meeting, but for Melhi, she doesn't care if she really is a brain in a jar, or a cripple, what matters is defying them. Beating them. It does state that ever single one of them are arrogant rulers of their own world. The level of egotism to have an entire universe centered on you, but then to know there is someone greater that can push you around at their whim? That you are only the center of that galaxy because they feel like it? That has to gall them. Then there is the fact that I mentioned that we have no idea what if anything at all that the Wode has said is true. It seems to be that definitely Melhi, if not all the members of the meeting are treating this as true. Its slightly like plato's cave. All they have seen are those heads. They want to see the faces for themselves, even if they gotta cut off their feet to get out of the chains to do it. 

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kai mentions at some point that he's a brain in a jar, but i doubt that's a problem: if they have the medical knowledge to take the brain of a fetus and keep it alive and develop it in a jar - and compress all the medical devices needed for that, and the computational power needed to recreate a perfect virtual reality simulation, into the size of a watermelon - then they can surely clonate a new body for them or make a robotic one, and stick the brain into it.

That's the main difference between sci-fi and fantasy: in sci-fi, if the people has some technnology, you can guess they must have other simpler or related technologies. While in fantasy, is something can be done with magic, you can say nothing on what else can or cannot be done with magic.

Edited by king of nowhere
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So, was I the only one that didn't put together the Sophie/Melhi duology beyond that there was the robot in Kai's date? I felt completely confused when I read the deleted scene. And if Melhi was supposed to female, I totally missed that too. Guess I need to go reread it again, it being the short story.

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1 hour ago, frozndevl said:

So, was I the only one that didn't put together the Sophie/Melhi duology beyond that there was the robot in Kai's date? I felt completely confused when I read the deleted scene. And if Melhi was supposed to female, I totally missed that too. Guess I need to go reread it again, it being the short story.

I totally thought Melhi was a guy when I originally read it...

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1 hour ago, AndrolGenhald said:

I totally thought Melhi was a guy when I originally read it...

Yeah, much of the story is geared around Kai's assumption that Melhi is a guy.  However, the twist takes on foreshadowing if you've played Fallout 4's Automatron DLC, especially if you subconsciously read Melhi's lines in the Border State in the voice of the Mechanist from that same DLC.  

By the time of Fallout 4, the mantle of the Mechanist has been taken up by a woman, using a vocoder to have her lines spoken in the voice of the previous Mechanist (who, along with his opponent the AntAgonizer - guess the theme - was the basis of a sidequest in a previous Fallout game).

So one can see the parallel, although the Mechanist is far more benevolently motivated than Melhi is.  

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Hello I have been lurking around for some time now and this topic finally made me write something.

There were actually  a quite a few  clues  that  Melhi is Sophie in the text of the novella:

1 In Sophie’s backstory she was a rebel anarchist who snuck to a high science state to get weapons, - Melphie uses giant robots.

2 The way she addressed  Kai was Emperor man and kiddo,  Melphie in the flashback called him  “Fantasy man”, and later refers to him as a  child.

3 Sophie’s main motivation was rebellion against Vode and their manipulation, what enraged Melphie in their first meeting was being called puppet of the vode.

Last words we hear from Melphie are:  “. . . part of me that rebels against . . . will go forward . . . not . . . their puppet . . .”

This fits perfectly with Sophie’s personality as we knew it.

4 Then there is their first meeting in the flashback where Melphie talked through his robot emissary he says in that scene that

: “I am Liveborn like you,” Melhi said, looking me up and down. “This is merely one of the forms I use.”

And in the last chapter  Kai’s aide said: That woman was just like the emissary we met in the Border State—a fabrication controlled from afar, only this time created to be indistinguishable from a human being.”

After this Vode  calling Melphie a she was just a final confirmation.

Edited by Bookfly
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9 hours ago, Bookfly said:

Hello I have been lurking around for some time now and this topic finally made me write something.

There were actually  a quite a few  clues  that  Melhi is Sophie in the text of the novella.  

But how many of them point to Melhi being a girl, instead of a guy hiding behind various and sundry robotic masks?  Everything about Sophie could have been a lie, once the machine was revealed, up to and including her backstory and gender.  ETA: This is why Brandon was unsatisfied with how the removal of the epilogue affected Melhi's character, because while Sophie is bold, reckless, and realized, having her be merely a puppet of Melhi calls her boldness, recklessness, and her authenticity as a character in her own right into question.  (Esp. since the epilogue shows that "Melphie" (that name's growing on me) was being entirely truthful with Kai, minus a few inconvenient details)

Edited by Landis963
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9 hours ago, Landis963 said:

But how many of them point to Melhi being a girl, instead of a guy hiding behind various and sundry robotic masks?  Everything about Sophie could have been a lie, once the machine was revealed, up to and including her backstory and gender.  ETA: This is why Brandon was unsatisfied with how the removal of the epilogue affected Melhi's character, because while Sophie is bold, reckless, and realized, having her be merely a puppet of Melhi calls her boldness, recklessness, and her authenticity as a character in her own right into question.  (Esp. since the epilogue shows that "Melphie" (that name's growing on me) was being entirely truthful with Kai, minus a few inconvenient details)

Well  they point quite strongly to the fact that Kai was directly interacting with Melphi through remotely controlled body double not just with a robot. Some of them also point to the fact that real Melphi is a  lot like  Sophie , including things which did not seem to be part of the deception like  matching motivations (as Melphie), and speech patterns

As for the gender, from the moment of the flashback we actually know that there is no factual reason to assume Melphi is male as all Kai ever saw was a robot without specified gender. As such the assumption she is the same gender as the only incarnation of her we actually interacted with seems reasonable.

Add to that Vode outright  telling Kai that Melphie is a she at the end, and honestly my own feelings on the matter are more along the lines of "why shouldn't we think Melphie is female". 

I read the second annotation, but all I can say is that during my first reading, while I did not get all the clues, (that took a reread)  I just automatically,  started  to suspect that Melphie- Sophie,  as we knew so little  about the actual nemesis that her being Sophie seemed like an obvious narrative pastern. ( I read enough of Brandon's work to expect a twist in a story until proven otherwise.) Then last words of the  robot being about "rebelling against and not being a puppet" which was at a core of Sophies character, seemed as a good confirmation. Although, admittedly, I did not expect the suicide at the end . Then when Vode called Melphie a She it seemed like a final confirmation necessary.  

I knew I could be wrong ,my other more morbid theory was that we might view the events through the prism of  Kai and Sophie's  discussion about the nature of AI, and that in a ironic twist since Sophie/ Melphie does not consider Machinborn to be people,  the "Sophie" we see is a Machineborn  copy of herself made to kill herself to prove a point.

 But the first interpretation  just  felt like something Brandon would do, after reading many of  his stories, knowing the way in which he treats his female characters, destroying a character like Sophie that way, when there was clear present alternative interpretation seemed unlikely. Especially considering how much the story gains  when we think of Sophie as a person and how much it loses when don't.

 

Edited by Bookfly
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1 hour ago, Bookfly said:

Well  they point quite strongly to the fact that Kai was directly interacting with Melphi through remotely controlled body double not just with a robot. Some of them also point to the fact that real Melphi is a  lot like  Sophie , including things which did not seem to be part of the deception like  matching motivations (as Melphie), and speech patterns

As for the gender, from the moment of the flashback we actually know that there is no factual reason to assume Melphi is male as all Kai ever saw was a robot without specified gender. As such the assumption she is the same gender as the only incarnation of her we actually interacted with seems reasonable.

Add to that Vode outright  telling Kai that Melphie is a she at the end, and honestly my own feelings on the matter are more along the lines of "why shouldn't we think Melphie is female". 

I read the second annotation, but all I can say is that during my first reading, while I did not get all the clues, (that took a reread)  I just automatically,  started  to suspect that Melphie- Sophie,  as we knew so little  about the actual nemesis that her being Sophie seemed like an obvious narrative pastern. ( I read enough of Brandon's work to expect a twist in a story until proven otherwise.) Then last words of the  robot being about "rebelling against and not being a puppet" which was at a core of Sophies character, seemed as a good confirmation. Although, admittedly, I did not expect the suicide at the end . Then when Vode called Melphie a She it seemed like a final confirmation necessary.  

I knew I could be wrong ,my other more morbid theory was that we might view the events through the prism of  Kai and Sophie's  discussion about the nature of AI, and that in a ironic twist since Sophie/ Melphie does not consider Machinborn to be people,  the "Sophie" we see is a Machineborn  copy of herself made to kill herself to prove a point.

 But the first interpretation  just  felt like something Brandon would do, after reading many of  his stories, knowing the way in which he treats his female characters, destroying a character like Sophie that way, when there was clear present alternative interpretation seemed unlikely. Especially considering how much the story gains  when we think of Sophie as a person and how much it loses when don't.

 

To a suitably paranoid reader, any competently constructed twist is predictable.  I will admit that the Melhi=Sophie twist becomes rather glaring in that regard, esp. on a re-read.  However, from Kai's perspective, there's no reason to think that the robot sent by his enemy to seduce him and then suicide when he became attached was telling the truth about anything, especially since there's no way to actually check up on Sophie's story.  

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2 hours ago, Landis963 said:

To a suitably paranoid reader, any competently constructed twist is predictable.  I will admit that the Melhi=Sophie twist becomes rather glaring in that regard, esp. on a re-read.  However, from Kai's perspective, there's no reason to think that the robot sent by his enemy to seduce him and then suicide when he became attached was telling the truth about anything, especially since there's no way to actually check up on Sophie's story.  

Well your completely right about Kai of course he had no reason to figure it out, but I was under the impression we were talking about reader perspective not character perspective. 

For the record maybe I am not paranoid enough, but even after all this time I actually usually miss 3/5 of Brandon's twists, I usually figure out some of them, but never all. The latest Mistborn novel got me pretty good with its biggest reveal.

ETA: I would not even say it was obvious or glaring, that would be going a bit to far, I would rather say  that there were ways put it together present  in the text, that made it  possible to figure it out by the end of the story.

Edited by Bookfly
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4 hours ago, Landis963 said:

To a suitably paranoid reader, any competently constructed twist is predictable.  I will admit that the Melhi=Sophie twist becomes rather glaring in that regard, esp. on a re-read.  However, from Kai's perspective, there's no reason to think that the robot sent by his enemy to seduce him and then suicide when he became attached was telling the truth about anything, especially since there's no way to actually check up on Sophie's story.  

I don't know, it felt a natural assumption to me, and not from a reader perspective. Maybe because sophia's personality fit well with melhi's known motivations. Maybe because that backstory seemed just too real to be a fabrication - and the best scams are those that rely on a lot of truth, so it would also make sense to use the real backstory.

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40 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

I don't know, it felt a natural assumption to me, and not from a reader perspective. Maybe because sophia's personality fit well with melhi's known motivations. Maybe because that backstory seemed just too real to be a fabrication - and the best scams are those that rely on a lot of truth, so it would also make sense to use the real backstory.

It felt as a natural assumption to me as well after reading. But I like to read reviews of books I  like after I finish reading them, and number of people on goodreads who missed it entirely was.... substantial, some of them reviewer's I respect which are very smart folks. As such while I would still argue that the story had all the elements necessary to reach  the right conclusions on our own, it became pretty evident that it was not an automatic thing everybody got from the text.

Edited by Bookfly
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I guessed the Melhi as female almost immediately. I blame anime. Anytime a character is assumed to be one gender without clear evidence I just naturally assume that they are the opposite. That said, I completely fell for the Sophie being a machine-born construct twist.

Until this bonus chapter and annotation, I wasn't fully into the Sophie=Melhi theory. I just thought that Sophie was Melhi's idea of whom a man like Kai would be interested in. Knowing now that Sophie was a version of her self will be interesting to note on rereads.

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