I've turned into one of those women who colors. I'm not sure I like this new trend because it feels so... suburban white lady. But, my wife and I were at a Craft Swap the other day and I fell in love with a bucket of fancy markers. I do some visual art, but not so much that I actually need a huge collection of markers, so I grabbed an adult coloring book from another table on impulse.
I have other crafting hobbies that I feel more at home in like handsewing nerdy quilts. But, it's been ridiculously hot here in Minnesota and so I have not felt like sewing a bit heavy quilt. So last night, while listening to "Charlotte Incorporated" I colored pasley-flowered swirls.
"Charlotte Incorporated," by Rachel K. Jones (Lightspeed, February 2016) https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/charlotte-incorporated/
I actually ended up listening to this story twice.
I have a document file where I keep track of all of the short stories that I've listened to or read so, like with books, I won't accidentally read the same thing twice. Well, somehow "Charlotte Incorporated" evaded my notetaking!
But that turned out to be okay because I ended up having two very different experiences with this story.
Initially, "Charlotte Incorporated" read to me as a story about not being in the right body and how expensive it is to transition. Our titualar heroine, Charlotte, is a literal brain in a jar (with what amounts to a automated wheelchair to get around in). She has been saving her pennies to be incorporated, which in this case, means having her brain put into a physical body. She puts up with fairly awful living conditions and a job where she gets shoved into a cheap "Henry" body in the meantime.
This reasonates with me for a lot of REASONS, so it's not surprising that's what I most related to the first time through this story.
When I listened to it again last night, what struck me was the poverty. I think that this story got listed among cyberpunk short stories by the Reddit thread that I found it on because of the absolutely heart-wrenching poverty that Charlotte lives in and the fact that a couple of setbacks have utterly devestating consequences.
Many of us are Charlotte in this last regard. Maybe not everyone can strongly relate to body dysphoria, but a shocking number of us know what it's like to 1) live with subpar equipment, etc., and 2) have the kind of financial existance where we are one car accident from total collapse.
Right now, in fact, I'm composing this journal on a computer that I spilled coffee on several months ago. This has resulted in a glitch that--especially on humid days--causes a sticky key reaction and my keyboard will just produce a bunch of 6s all in a row. I was already using a wireless keyboard on this computer because half of the laptop's original keys are borked or missing. And, laptops aren't even all that expensive for most people? I'm especially hard on my laptops, so I tend to be a bit cautious about just buying another one like it's no big deal, because I can not afford to replace my laptop that often. So I just live with it. And will do until money falls into my lap or the laptop finally, completely gives up the ghost.
In that way, I'm like Charlotte with her scuffed dome and wearing-out parts.
And it's all so cyberpunk, you know? So dystopian, the way many of us have just learned to live with subpar or glitching products. Our society is so consumer-based, yet as Cory Doctorow noted there is a grand "enshitification" of the products we buy. Three years ago my Amazon Prime subscription bought me ad-free streaming. Now? Now, I just have to put up with interruptions. My once ad-free podcasts are interrupted by ads promoting AI or cars I can't afford or weightloss miracles--as are my YouTube videos, etc. There's this "what can we do?" attitude about it all, too. Like Charlotte, we just deal with the squeaky wheel because that's all we can afford, even as we hold onto this false dream of escaping our current socio-economic class, if we can just, somehow, save enough or make enough.
The ending of this one, which I will not spoil, is interesting in that it ends on a moral high note. The situation Charlotte is somewhat improved, but the real victory is a moral one.
So, if you're intregued, check it out.
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