‘418: I Am a Teapot’ warns of an automated, and unsettling, future
How do we define our humanity? And who gets to make that definition? Edgar Scott’s “418: I Am a Teapot,” a futuristic dystopian tale of a world where inner and outer lives may have little to do with one another, gives the reader much to ponder – and to be wary of.
Brian Agarwal, who calls himself King, has designed his life to be the best it can be. He runs his father’s company, which provides “staff” for other companies. His wife, Imelda, is a stay-at-home mother to their son, Prince. He sends his son to school in a hired AI one-person vehicle and takes his own AI car to work. He accesses the internet the way you and I do, through a screen. He has an ideal life, although not all may agree.
Many people – indeed, most people – choose a different path. They choose to be “staff,” the gender-indeterminate workers that Brian’s company hires out as cheap labor. When a young person chooses to become staff, they are implanted with a kind of neural net that gives them 24/7 immersive internet, a virtual reality, along with a type of guiding AI interface persona called a “concierge” who can take over their body and control it for any or all tasks. It’s worth noting that adults can also be forced to be staff as a punishment for a crime or for failing to pay debts.
Staff think they are living the good life. While their bodies are at work, controlled by their implanted concierge, their minds are gambling in Vegas, or partying on a beach or anywhere in the world that they want to be
– virtually, of course. They need have no conscious knowledge of whatever task their bodies are sent to accomplish; the training is downloaded into their neural net and the concierge takes over. They are fed bland mush through a tube, as well as various pharmaceuticals, to keep them happy and healthy. They can get “married” to other staff who they never meet in person, only online, and in fact would not (do not) know if they are next to each other.
It’s an ideal life, but not one that Brian has ever wanted to know more about – he just rents out his staff to wherever they are needed and enjoys watching them collect the garbage in his lot every week, on schedule to the minute. To him and others like him, staff aren’t really human anymore. They are referred to as “it” if they are spoken about at all, and are definitely never talked to. Brian might as well talk to the furniture.
Then the unexpected happens. Staff 686318KAA418, known as 418, is involved in an exception – a car accident, an extremely rare event – and Brian, as 418’s overseer, is drawn into the drama of 418’s possible rehabilitation or retirement. As the insurance claim drags out over whether 418 is, essentially, totaled or not, Brian keeps visiting the staff and finds out to his surprise that 418 is quite human after all.
418, who thinks of himself as George Wojciech, finds his life as staff much different after his disastrous exception and rehab, not the least of which is his continuing friendship outside the world of VR with King. Is 418 braindamaged after all? Is there life after forced retirement?
“418: I Am a Teapot” also asks some bigger questions: When inner and outer lives clash, what is reality? Who has a more fulfilling, more “real” life? Scott’s experience as a computer scientist gives this dystopian tale eerie veracity as his characters’ limited beliefs imprison them in a life they don’t want to live.
Evoking such sciencefiction classics as Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot,” Scott shows us the extremes of escaping our reality and leaving our bodies behind. It’s an unsettling tale of a world where humans give away their physical natures in exchange for pleasures of the mind, and one cannot help but see it as a warning for our internet-addicted age.