A Complete Breakdown/Analysis of The Very Pulse of the Machine & Swarm (Episodes & Short Stories)

[Music] well it's almost been 3 years since I released my first video on this channel a deep dive into the love death and robots season 1 episode beyond the Aquilla Rift oh and how am I supposed to pronounce that again I got so many comments I was somehow pronouncing Aquilla wrong Aquilla Aquilla Aquilla Aquilla Aquilla Aquilla right anyway it's been 3 years since that video and while have to excuse the narration quality of my first video being a little rough it's still my most watched video and everybody seems to love the detail and Analysis love death and robots has already passed season 3 and I've been really meaning to tackle some more analysis videos from other Seasons with almost every ldr episode having a basis on a short story there's a lot of good discussions to be had so let's take a look at a few episodes from season 3 this season did a great job at showcasing these Animation Studios producing the highest tiers of creativity and retelling awesome science fiction stories in the vaulted halls in tombed showed us mind-blowing photo realism I mean just look at this detail I can't even tell its animation until about 2 or 3 minutes in and only because I'm really looking for the imperfections this one was made by Sony Pictures image Works who also created the season 1 episode Lucky 13 Pinkman TV the same Studio that created the season 1 episode the witness is back for their signature half animation half realistic style this time with a strange and creative episode hebo blur Studio created an enthralling pirate SL SciFi tale with bad traveling even most of the comedic episodes were fun to watch tit Mouse finally joins the crew with kill team kill and axis Studio returns with Mason's rats but as much as I'd like to analyze the whole season I really should just focus on two episodes I picked the two episodes with the most sci-fi basis and philosophical impact to give us enough material for a deeper analysis in my opinion these two were the very pulse of the machine and [Music] swarm unlike my other ldr video I'm going to attempt to break down both the episode and short story at the same time so we can talk about the differences with each right away and of course this is your usual spoiler warning for both of these episodes and short stories but first let's talk about our cast the very pulse of the machine was based on a 1996 short story of the same name written by Michael swanwick he also wrote Ice Age another short story found in a first season ldr episode both these short stories can be found in his collection Tales of old Earth you can buy a copy on Amazon Kindle for only $9 or grab a physical copy from your local bookstore and look at that there's an Easter egg in the episode where Juliet is reading the closely named poems of old Earth this love death and robots episode was animated by an ldr newcomer the Japanese Studio polygon pictures who is animated series such as Tron uprising Knights of Sedonia and did the 3D computer graphics for Ghost in the Shell 2 Innocents they've also done a bunch of other smaller projects our main protagonist Martha is voiced by McKenzie Davis an actress you may recognized from Halton Catch Fire Blade Runner 2049 Terminator dark fate and black Mir Holly Jade while she doesn't have as many credits to her name did a great job voicing Juliet Barton and IO the short story starts in the middle as a hook for the reader with only a quick flashback explaining the crash IO the very Moon she's traveling on is already starting to talk with Martha but she didn't quite know that yet Martha Martha is trying to rationalize what is going on oh I don't have time to figure out what unresolved psychological conflicts gave rise to whatever this [ __ ] is okay nonlinear storytelling is a common trick found in stories of all forms but I imagine a short 15minute visual episode like this would need to be as clear as possible so the episode opted to start right before the crash the actual crash was about the same but the short story didn't really go into specifics of how it happened only focusing on the immediate aftermath Burton dies in the same way and Martha in an almost instinctive measure to hide the gaping wound starts packing Burton's helmet with his sulfur dioxide snow found on the surface in the episode she gets an alert about an oxygen tank rupture and has to quickly plug her Supply into Burton in the short story Martha wasn't in danger of running out of oxygen immediately but she did only have 40 hours of Total oxygen to carry and a 45m journey to get back to the Lander while she did also need to use the extra o pack of Burton her main motivation behind dragging her body along was just a sense of responsibility to bring a friend and colleague back for a proper mourning and burial getting back to the present IO is still trying to explain how she is communicating Sous tribo electric and now I see with I Serene the very pulse of the machine words worth so Burton was a big fan of classical po poets she used to quote them to Martha all the time we get a hint of this in the episode with the poems of old Earth book we learn later that IO has a much easier time using poetry quotes and scientific facts as a way of communicating likely because they're fully constructed and Burton's memories quotation is easy speech is not this is unlike language which requires more than just mimicry to piece words together self for tribo electric sulur is tribo electric what does tribo electric mean it's the process that generates static electricity I was trying to say that the sulfur dioxide and metal sled sliding across the ground are creating an electrical charge that charge is enough to allow IO to access Burton's memories and communicate through her radio after they continue their Journey for a while Martha starts singing climbing songs to pass the time though she's been walking for hours a bit later IO tells her to wake up out of her stoer wake up wake up wait and in a roundabout way tells you to pay attention to the sulfur flowers Crystal sulfur is oric this is one of the seven classes of Crystal systems the sulfur flowers were Martha and Burton's first major Discovery when they were exploring IO see Martha keelon Juliet Barton and Jacob Halls were all part part of the exploration mission on Jupiter's moons with IO as the first stop then ganade and Europa the two of them found these sulfur flowers early in the mission Martha and Burton were both ecstatic at their Discovery but Jacob wasn't impressed and didn't really think it was any indication of a new life form now Martha was walking and dragging Burton along through this field and the new flowers were slowly growing back in place of the old one she walked over at this point she realized that she's been awake for 20 hours and exhausted she must been traveling on foot for 5 hours at this point oh sleep it is a gentle thing beloved from po the pole cor so she takes a hit of methampetamine from her suit and continues onward in the episode she trips and experiences a sharp pain from her injured arm she then takes some morphine to dull the pain yes yes yes warning use may cause side effects including loss of motor function hallucination eor better to die High although a sleepy drug like morphine isn't exactly the best thing to take when you plan on walking for many many miles it does serve as a plot device for her hallucinations later on a while later she starts to hear IO but like in the short story she shrugs it off as some psychological conflict in the episode there's more of a direct connection between the drugs she's taking and the conversations from IO as Martha continues to walk IO starts to recite poetry these Stars across the sky like sparkling dust like clouds of light they bore their milky shine into the deep black bow did you see I'm busy not dying here Martha hallucinates visions of pillars of women and a giant version of Burton stands up and walks I was the world in which I I walked and what I saw or heard or felt came not but from myself wall Stevens chice it's at this point where the episode largely departs and Skips a major chunk of the short story so let's get into that section now in the short story Martha had passed a field of flowers long ago and is now entering a shadowy sculpture garden of volcanic pillars the second Discovery they found on their mission Martha suddenly remembers that Burton was dead and cries for a few minutes with both the chemicals in her system and her sad Sadness the volcanic pillars look like women to her tragic figures IO is still occasionally talking IO has a metallic core predominantly of iron and iron sulfide overlay by a mantle of partially molten rock and crust she's now directly telling her that she's trying to communicate and Martha would still dismiss her and trying to communicate the two of them have been traveling for 7 hours now about 9 hours later the time was nearing io's version of noon and she had 35 miles to go here we find out that Martha was actually an experienced Olympic marathoner which explains how she could even contemplate a 45 milei Journey but she was always jealous of not making first place clicking back on the radio IO is still trying to communicate the marel index of a mind forever voyaging through strange Seas of thought alone Wordsworth reciting poetry and some factoid about Jupiter's magnetosphere Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest thing in the solar system if the human I could see it it would appear two and a half times wider in the sky than the sun does Martha finally entertains her challenge to communicate and IO struggles to find the word she's looking for to convey who she is which is where we get the story's version of the what does this sound like speech I is a sulfur Ridge iron cord moon in a circular orbit around Jupiter what does this sound like tidal forces from Jupiter and ganam Pull and squeeze iio efficiently to melt tardus its subsurface sulfur ocean Tartarus vents its excess energy with sulfur and sulfur dioxide volcanoes what does this sounds like like highest metallic core generates a magnetic field which punches a hole in Jupiter's magnetosphere and also creates a high energy ion flux tube connecting its own poles with the North and sound poles of Jupiter what does this sound like IO sweeps up and absorbs all the electrons in the million Volt range its volcanoes pump out sulfur dioxide its magnetic field breaks down a percentage of that into sulfur and oxygen ions and these ions are pumped into the whole punch to the maget magnetosphere creating a rotating field commonly called the eye of Taurus what does this sound like Taurus flux 2 magnetosphere volcanoes sulfur ions mol ocean tidle heating circular orbit what does this sound like iio finally conveys who she is it sounds like like a machine yes yes yes machine yes M machine yes yes machine yes sulfur is tribo electric Sledge picks up charges Burton's brain is intact language is data radio is medium am machine but Martha doesn't believe her at this point they continue onward hours later Martha quizzes IO about her purpose to know you to love you and to serve you I starts to explain how long ago she was created so many a million of Ages have gone to the making of man Alfred Lord tennis but mistakes all mobile intelligent organic life as her Creator and identifies Martha as such it was mobile intelligent organic life you are mobile and ENT organic life IO can't tell the difference it's at this point when Martha hallucinates a horse in the distance the drugs are really getting to her she tries to rationalize this whole conversation with IO as being some projection of her jealousy of Burton and then as she walks she stops right at the edge of a molten Lake of sulfur they discovered this Lake in their mission a lot earlier back when Burton was still alive they called it Lake sticks a Sho shaped Lake that expanded for 12 Mi and now they were right at the inner toe of it and hey sticks also happens to be the name of the river sticks the river where Kon the Greek fairy men of the Dead would take their dead Souls on the way to Hades obviously this is for shadowing so Martha despairs because she can't cross the lake without drowning in a molten sulfur molasses and she can't retrace her steps in time with the oxygen she has left because it would be 12 mil of backtracking at this point she was contemplating draining her suit of oxygen and ending things but before she could build up the nerve to do so I remarks that she can build a bridge we build Bridge have enough find control of physical processes to build Bridge Martha just dismisses her and after a bit of self-reflection Martha accidentally falls asleep IO wakes her up and Martha is astounded at the new formed Bridge you must wait 10 minutes and you can walk across it's Martha realizes she's not insane and IO as a life form is real after crossing the bridge Martha takes another speed hit and switches oxygen packs she's down to 8 hours of oxygen and 12 mil left to go she's been walking for 32 hours and 33 mil but her Marathon skills hopefully can carry them to their Des destination now she was determined to get back to the Lander to communicate this amazing Discovery but she wasn't sure how to make sure people would believe her knowing that sulfur is tribo electric she looked for electrical Phenomenon with her visor this is where the two stories cross paths again going back to the episode she has a brief moment where she realizes that her exhaustion is too great for the journey so she takes a hit of amphetamine with the computer warning her of the side effects right after this Martha discovers all the previous information at once with io's what does this sound like speech I has a call of an iron sulfide what does this sound like a mantle of partially molten rock I is a s Rich moon what does this sound like I don't have time for this I's metallic cor generates a magnetic field connecting his own poles of what does this sound like I vol suf dioxide and oxygen what does this sound like rotating field magnetosphere sulfur ion circular orbit what does this sound like it sounds it sounds like like a [Music] machine yes yes machine yes machine I am machine and after that Discovery Martha immediately finds the electrical lines with her visor look at [Music] me jumping back back to the short story Martha discovers that IO cannot physically interact with most things on the surface and can only help in a limited capacity dead egg I Lie co on a whole world I cannot touch after many many hours of walking she could see the Land Air about 3 miles in the distance and with enough oxygen to get there she was going to make it but I warns her to brace herself a volcanic Earth Quake shakes all the land around her apart and in the distance the Lander doesn't survive Martha gets angry at IO and IO can only remark about how volcanically active it is it's at this point where iow proposes that Martha and Burton can live forever after the first death there is no other Dylan Thomas she tells Martha about a black pool of Molton sulfur switching back to the episode after the discovery of io's Tru true nature Martha faints from exhaustion Burton stands up and carries her eventually arriving at the molten pool in this version I is actually capable of moving Burton and being able to interact enough with her to carry her the rest of the way it's a rather large plot hole considering IO could have just done that earlier but eh I guess they need to shortcut the story to its conclusion somehow by the time Martha wakes up Burton has already been cast into the pool and IO tells her to jump in throw self in physical configuration will be destroyed neural configuration may be preserved maybe death maybe life join with me Martha doesn't really have the oxygen available to do much else when she jumps she's able to communicate a message back to Earth in the short story Martha arrives at the black pool IO explains that she might be able to preserve her neural pattering Bur throw yourself in physical configuration will be destroyed neural configuration will be preserved maybe they talk about it for a while since Martha still has a few hours of oxygen left Martha eventually asks if IO can use moris code whatever Burton understood is understood Martha makes a deal with IO to overwhelm every Broad cast on the solar system with megawatts of power in mors code so the message in the short story happens first after that's done she pushes Burton into the black pool like in the episode she has a fleeting thought that this could all be a hallucination but with the Lander gone and with limited oxygen she didn't really have much of a choice there was only one way to find out maybe I'm going to live forever or maybe this is just one last stream before [Music] dying my first impressions of the episode were very positive but I knew there had to be something missing with the pacing of the reveal it wasn't as abrupt or discordant as beyond the Aquilla Rift but I knew I was going to be hungry for more details in the short story after I read the short story I was kind of surprised that 15 minutes wasn't enough to cover the mere 20 pages of story the story beats were less dense than Aquilla Rift there were many quotes from the books but like a lot of adaptations the quotes were found in different places sometimes I do think this is another argument for ldr to throw in 20 or 30 minute episodes for the more philosophically provoking short stories I don't even think this would be double the budget for the episode considering much of the budget is in the ground workor the design and setup of the episode rather than some flat dollars per minute multiplier I don't think it would kill the pacing either giving the two of them more character development and the proper time to explain things would have been an improvement but to their credit a lot of the setup and payoff in the episode was to show their admittedly fantastic set pieces of hallucinogenic visions and planetary processes polygon pictures really put in the work to show off their skills and certain plot points were altered to give them more emotional weight the ldr episode what it lacked in a complete retelling of the short story it made up in a gorgeous and haunting presentation overall after reading and retelling the short story there's not a lot of ambiguity or what ifs that are worth asking it's not like I was trying to justify the motivations of a character like I was doing with beyond the Aquilla Rift a million years old machine built by aliens long past just wanted to communicate with the first mobile intelligent organic life form that had seen in such a very long time but there's a lot of poetry to analyze with both Stories the symbolism of the Poetry ends up being the most interesting aspect worth analizing let's start with the title of the series and now I see with eyes Serene the very pulse of the machine this is a quote from she was a phantom of delight by William wardsworth a 19 century poet that was a prominent figure in the romance movement and yet the phrase the very pulse of the machine strikes me as such an oddly modern phrase in a 220 year old poem the first part and now I see with I Serene in the story this could be a reference to Burton's blasted eye socket filled with sulfur dioxide electrons and used as a conduit for io's communication IO can effectively see and speak because of this eye the poem itself despite all of its associations with fandoms apparitions and Spirits is actually describing William's relationship to his wife IO describes her purpose as to know you to love you and to serve you she serves the ones who created her and now desires to know and understand Martha it's hard to say if a machine like IO has complex enough emotions to understand love but IO can integrate very well into Burton's mind whatever Burton understood is understood and recite poetry with a decent amount of accuracy to its context that and well iio is an AI with a supercomputer the size of an entire moon with a self-described unlimited processing power so perhaps it is possible but there's also more literal references to spirits and phrases like a traveler between life and death within the poem that could allude to Burton's death Martha's precarious situation and io's own position as a traveler between life and death IO is like a psychopomp that escorts New Souls into the Afterlife she gives Burton another chance at life and when all of Martha's options have failed provides her the same choice to escort her Consciousness to a new form of life and of course we already mentioned Lake sticks and its connection to Kon another psycho pump IO is literally allowing Martha to cross the river to the other side where she will meet her fate in the afterlife next a seemly benign line from Samuel Taylor Cid's most famous poem Oh sleep it is a gentle thing beloved from pole to pole C this is from the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner an epic poem spanning over 600 lines it describes the tale of a mariner who during his travels on board a ship kills an albatra that the sailors thought helped guide the ship bad luck to kill a sea he was forced to wear the dead Albatros as punishment and eventually gets visited by Spirits death and a nightmare life and death the rest of his crew are one by one cursed to die by death and he's forced to spend seven days on the ship with the memories of each cursed Mariner unable to sleep when the dead Albatross falls off his curse is lifted and he's finally able to sleep so perhaps Martha wasn't spending s days awake in her story but in some respects she was carrying around her own dead Albatros as a form of penance she could have just left the body at the side of the crash but she felt a sense of responsibility and duty to drag her Fallen Friend back to the Lander it may have slowed her down but without her actions I would have never been able to contact her and ultimately save her well at least save her in some imoral form while the episode didn't capture all of the poetic verses from the short story it did have some unique verses of its own these Stars across the sky like sparkling dust like clouds of light they bore their milky shine into the deep black bow this is a majority of the entire poem the Milky Way by Barbara Jester espenson a more modern poet and school teacher and while the poem is basically just a description of the stars above it is cool that the episode added this little bit of context to show how much Burton loved poetry here's another one not in the short story I was the world in which I walked and what I saw or heard or felt came not but from myself this is part of the last stanza in another short poem called tea at the palace of Hoon by Wallace Stevens while the poem itself was a postwar war I commentary the more literal meaning here is fairly obvious Martha is starting to experience visions and hallucinations as IO is reciting the poem also in both episode and short story is this line the marble index of a mind forever the short story extends this with poing through strange Seas of thought alone Wordsworth this is another Wordsworth poem simply called Cambridge describing his experiences over there when he was studying as an undergrad in St John's College in this stanza he was characterizing the Statue of Isaac Newton which still stands today at St John's College in the context of the short story I is relating to her struggles trying to parse through the alien mind of Burton well at least alien to IO and finding the right way to communicate back to Martha there are a few other quotes only found in the short story so many a million of Ages have gone to the making of man Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson is another 19 century poet who wrote this poem called mod a tale of bankruptcy suicide infatuation Madness and finally a form of reconciliation in the service of War IO uses this phrase to describe the period of time since she was created she is perhaps also using the context of the poem to signify sadness and loneliness at how long it's been since she's been able to talk to anybody next IO recites this line when Martha asks a simple question come on the listening ear of night come Heaven's melodious strains Edmond Hamilton Sears Edmund was a 19th century Minister and author though this line is actually from a church hymn in the short story Burton did have some religious background as a Catholic school girl which is where IO got the phrase to know you to love you and to serve you that phrase was in reference to the Baltimore catechism a publication of Christian doctrine which is kind of a religious frequently asked questions fun fact the Baltimore catechism was actually replaced in 2004 with a more modern version but the short story was written before that in 1995 so I is probably pulling a verse from Burton's childhood A Hymn she may have commonly sung at church when Martha questions IO about how she can interact with her surface she replies with eg I lie on a whole world I cannot touch pla this is from a poem called paralytic by Sylvia Plath the poem itself is a rather romanticized tale of her own death and details her struggle with depression tragically the depression finally claimed her in 1963 the same year she penned this poem in the context of the short story I is channeling her inabilities through this poem as well a paralytic is something which causes paralysis IO has the ability to communicate and change around the sulfur surface to some extent but she can't really help Martha the way she wants to I was paralyzed by her own abilities and felt useless shortly after the earthquake IO tells Martha that she can give her eternal life and recites the following after the first death there is no other Dylan Thomas this is the last line from a poem by Dylan Thomas describing a rather horrific event during World War II this line specifically is rather ambiguous and has been analyzed by countless poets and Scholars alike it could indicate the finale of death death as a new beginning into mortality or many other interpretations in between IO is in this case suggesting that Martha and Burton could indeed live forever and did she succeed perhaps the episode tried to answer her fate more definitively than the short story by putting her message to Earth At the end after she cast herself in the black pool but both stories gave us plenty to ponder about so from the poetic fate of a woman and an alien Moon machine to the potentially doomed fate of the entire human race the ldr episode swarm certainly left us with a lot of unanswered questions the episode is based on a 20ish page short story of the same name written by Bruce Sterling in 1982 one thing the episode didn't mention at all were the separate ideologies that split Humanity into factions with the largest two called the Shapers and the mechanists our main protagonists were part of the shaper faction ones who believe that genetic shaping and accelerated Evolution would push Humanity forward the mechanists on the other hand embraced Advanced software cybernetic augmentation and even entire mines contained in computer simulations swarm was the first tale written about this universe but Bruce created four other short stories in a full book in the shap OR mechanist Cannon if you're interested in reading all the stories in one volume you can pick up the schizm Matrix plus collection on Kindle for just n bucks ldr front rer blur Studios animated this one with their usual fantastic 3D animation quality s afel was voiced by Jason Winston George who has played both bit parts and large roles in all kinds of TV series including jeremi Stargate sg1 house Sunset Beach Graz and Anime a few CSI episodes and a bunch of movies as well Galina mey the other human in the story was voiced by none other than Rosario Dawson AKA CLA Temple from all those Netflix Marvel series actually she's appeared in countless movies and TV series rang ing from Sin City to a tog gruda Jedi in the Mandalorian which turned into a bigger role this year in her own series Ahsoka we start both stories in much the same way afriel is traveling with some aliens called the investors to his destination the investors are as the name implies a capitalistic and very trade heavy race finding any opportunity to further their profits in fact in the short story it's implied that they may have been the first alien race to contact humans humans still haven't figured out starflight yet so they use investor spaceships to travel and learn from other races within the short story you get some hints about the differences between the Shapers and the mechanists and get a good description of the genetic engineering that went into making Apel like in the episode the investor Commander just doesn't understand the purpose of wasting time studying the Swarm when thing subtracted out of the episode was that a symbiot of the Swarm a springtail meets the investors in afriel on the deck of the ship it talks with the investor commander in its own springtail language about how it was displeased with a certain other event with humans in the past more on this later but the commander convinces them to let Apel on board and then it suddenly lunges at Apel and takes a rather nasty bite out of his leg grabbing a bit of his pants leg with it afriel has to hide his natural combat instincts as he's trying to portray himself as a harmless researcher the commander then lets him know that it's to convey his scent and to prevent the from classifying him as an invader then the commander tells him that they'll be back in 612 days and allows him out of the airlock in the episode a lot of this was skipped and he arrives in some sort of Transport pod the springtail ends up biting him in the leg later on when they meet with mey another Minor Detail missing from the episode is the fact that he had some sunglasses to protect him from the harsh blue ultraviolet light of the investor ship in the short story he takes off his sunglasses and and Dawn some infrared goggles the cave system where the Swarm live is much darker than it looks in the episode he wouldn't be able to see much without his goggles in both stories they do meet up with Miry shortly after the airlock Dr afel welcome Dr Miry an honor to meet you in the short story he's also still wearing his expensive gold rim suit she's curious about his style of dress and afriel informs her that he's just trying to Keep Up Appearances with the investors the investors respect A well-dressed and prosperous customer the short story also has a few hints about how Shapers breed for intelligence but they did seem to encounter an upper limit with what they called the super brights Shapers with very high intelligence many of whom defected from their ranks so some intelligence was good for the survival of their faction but too much was detrimental sounds like a bit of foreshadowing to me intelligence is not a winning survival tra mie comments on her own Meer clothes and says she would have showed up nude but she didn't want to offend him by quote too great a show of intimacy afriel was hoping he could stash his clothes away somewhere but she informs him you cannot just store things away for yourself in this place she tells them about how mechanists tried to hide away a computer lab in an empty chamber and the warrior class broke in and devoured them she talks more about the other symbient and the spring Tales the only species in the Swarm that can talk verbally Savages but still mildly intelligent in the episode mie talks briefly about the spring tales and then dives into the cave system in both stories she shows off the other species and goes to a chamber where the only food source a type of fungus is grown she describes how internal fermentation from the worker makes the normally inedible fungus into something more nutritious that they can eat in the episode Apel turns his nose against a blob of digested food in the usual cliche Trope wonderful but the short story described it more like a leathery fungus or tough smoked meat almost like a beef jerky the short story described a bit about the shaper's mission to investigate each of the 19 races that the investors told them about when they first made contact they were afraid that some other faction might discover a new technology or secret that would give them an edge and given the expense of the trip they only sent one or two people per region mie was the researcher to investigate the Swarm just relying on her wits to survive and gather Intel after some time in the Swarm she managed to send back pheromonal samples to the Shapers afriel is part of the team that researched them and synthesize the compounds for further study this part of the conversation made Miry rather suspicious so he starts to talk about his goals here afriel reveals that he's not only a researcher with doctorates in both biochemistry and alien Linguistics but also held a rank of Captain in the Shapers ring council security organization kind of like the Central Intelligence Agency for the Shapers this of course bothers Bey and she goes off on a rant about how the nest shouldn't be part of this power struggle afriel counters with the reality of the enemies that they're facing they are all in a race to gain an advantage over the other factions especially with the unnatural challenges of space travel she responds that perhaps it's better to just leave society and find new goals but afriel is committed to the goals of his fa to better the human race and Triumph even if it means he never lives long enough to see it the episode has an abbreviated version of this conversation without the added context to where afriel and myy are from remember that the episode doesn't even mention the political factions after all this also gets combined with revealing how he has a cache of synthesized pheromones hidden in his leg in the short story this conversation and others about the mission gets paced out a bit as they're exploring the various facilities in the nest y also get a bit more insight into how mie is able to get around even in the more protected parts of the nest earlier she had to bribe the two springtails that follow them around with food in order to get them to bite Apel and spread his scent and she repays him again with more food as an added incentive to stay with them these two springtails end up hanging with him for a while in the nest until the turn of the story's climax but I'm getting ahead of myself so the warrior cast guards also need to be bribed with food to out passage and from there they're able to see the queen and her Factory of egg production afriel is in awe of the genetic technology at play here comparing it to the mechanist cybernetic mining but more in line with her philosophies of genetic engineering and this is what prompts mey to ask about his mission essentially the second half of the conversation shown in the episode the short story goes into a bit more detail about how he was able to smuggle the pheromones in a varicose vein on his right leg but it's mostly minutia mie argues that this is about breeding a slave race but afriel counters in much the same way he does in the episode you are planning to breed a slave race you said yourself they aren't sentient they're organic machines it's not as if they'd be staring up at the stars pining for their freedom it's true whether they work for us or the Swarm will make no difference to them she quickly cut comes to his side and they joke about the kind of retirement they could have if they pull this off although she concedes that she doesn't have much of a choice considering they're going to be living together for two long years and so they start their experiments with the pheromones in the coming months first they test a grouping stimulus and they noticed that they can combine pheromones to say gather and then transfer the contents of a chamber to another area the short story detailed the function of many of the pheromones while the short story was not quite as as explicit as the episode it was natural that they bonded during this time being the only human couple in this whole swarm living together in this nest for a long time they took full advantage of the pheromones securing their own Chambers dug by workers and defended by an airlock Guardian complete with her own fungal food source the two juvenile spring towels were still around and now held their own with the humans able to feed them even to the point of bullying their own Elders they of course obeyed the humans when they needed them since afriel and mie now had at least partial control of the Warriors many months had passed maybe even a year and a half close to when the investors were due to pick him back up Miry is excited about a new growth in one of the chambers thinking it might even be the development of a new cast of worker she leaves to investigate afriel who is having trouble with his body rhythms lately decided to stay and ended up falling asleep when he woke up she wasn't back yet he looks in the the original airlock tunnel just in case the investors arrived early he eats at one of the chambers and the two springtails find him they speak to afriel and seem to imply that mie was found dead the three of them go to the elates chamber that they found her in but she was already gone afriel ordered the springtails to follow her smell one of them finds the scent into a mouth of a tunnel but then things turn hostile as a springtail immediately dies at the claw of warrior the other springtail flees and Apel manages to escape he retreats to his Chambers and hoped that mie returned but she did not he slept and then he checked the elates chamber again this time it was heavily guarded and aggressive pheromones W in the area the whole place turned into a hostile Zone that not even their own synthetic pheromones could solve he was in his Chambers still figuring out what to do when three Warriors invaded his living airlock afriel knowing that he couldn't stand a chance in a fight did not resist when they took him back to to the El chamber the episode included some of this though skipped much of the backstory around Miry investigating the new species and just jump straight into the moment where the two spring Tales found him they go immediately to the tunnel and get attacked by the warrior cast he fights for his life in an action-packed chase scene and is captured by the Warriors in the episode afriel looks all bloodied and battered because he resisted before he was [Music] captured Gina I have no name but you may address me as swarm in the short story swarm's way of communicating was a bit more gruesome and alien with my's body still connected to the Swarm but a mutated worker was created with a mouth for the Swarm to use to talk to Apel rather than directly using M's body but other than those details the actual encounter and conversation with swarm was mostly the same in both stories afriel vomits at the sight of this horrific display using M's body as a conduit there is of course a bit more dialogue in the short story and swarm wasn't quite as hostile but all the major beats were there in the episode swarm and Fel discuss how intelligence is a detriment to the species not a survival trait the urge to expand indefinitely is what causes these intelligent species to disappear Vanishing in a mere Thousand Years comparatively short to the millions of years the Swarm has lasted through her memories I understand your race an especially vigorous one I expect they could be here competing with us within a few hundred years it will be sooner afriel of course completely confident in the ability of humans does not believe her and replies that humans are different she tells Apel about the very scavenger that is feeding on his vomit who are once a powerful race that dominated the Galaxy 5 million years ago consider the scavenger feeding on your vomit 2 million years ago its ancestors made the Galaxy tremble when they attacked the SW War we bred smarter tougher versions of their own race to fight them our nests were the only world they'd known and they fought with a fury and inventiveness we never could have matched swarm gives him a choice agree to cooperate as an intelligent living being and create a new human Colony under the swarm's control or become a Mindless puppet like mie she will allow him to teach him whatever they want because she's confident that in a few Generations the humans living within the nest won't care about anything except protecting their own home one that they have lived in all of their lives Apel accepts this proposal as a challenge one that will determine the fate of the human race I'm glad I won't have to absorb you I would have missed your [Music] conversation overall the episode did a good job matching the content of the short story of course there were some minor changes and it would have been nice to see some additional contexts with the Shapers and mechanist factions but the short story did end just as Ambiguously as the episode not showing who actually won this long-term Battle of the human race but leaving it up to the reader and buer the rest of Bruce Sterling's material in the schismatrix universe doesn't definitively answer our questions either however we're talking about what would be a battle that would happen a century from now and postulating the fate of the human race A Thousand Years years later perhaps it's not narratively sound to have definitive answers like that but it doesn't mean we can't speculate though however let's look at the smaller details in the story in episode first in the context of the short story the race of both characters wasn't really described at all it did say Apel had reddish blonde hair implying he wasn't black but who knows what Shapers could have done with hair jeans at that point even if it was racial swapping within the episode I'm not really bothered by that sort of thing since more diversity in Hollywood is almost always a good thing I do think the gender of each was logical within the story The Shapers would have known that they sent Miry a female to the Swarm and they would have expected that whoever they sent would have had to spend years with the only other human in the area so it's only natural that they would send somebody that would probably end up as a compatible love interest also a major part of the ending is that the Swarm wants to use the pair for breeding so that kind of has to be written into the story moving on to the episode's plan plan to smuggle an egg well it really didn't have much of one in one scene they were experimenting with pheromones and in the next boom they have an insect hand deliver an egg and I guess they expected that the warrior cast or the rest of the Swarm wouldn't know that it's missing in the short story apel's real goal was to refill his varicose vein with the Yoke of a fertilized egg which they would acquire just a short time before the investor ship would arrive it's a minor detail but it seemed a little silly that in the episode they would try to just sneak an entire fertilized egg back onto the investor ship but despite all the Care that came with their plans overconfidence is a slow and Insidious killer the short story especially talks about how they built up their little corner of the nest right down to living organisms acting as biological Furniture this overconfidence came despite the initial forewarning that mie told afriel of the mechanists who tried to set up a computer lab but Warriors had broken down their door and devoured them they thought they were are going to be better than them and were able to use the pheromones to completely serve their needs but as we find out just a few pages later they were completely outclassed by a new threat the Swarm created and even after meeting the face of that new threat afriel has this almost unusual commitment to the longevity of the human race order is what you want look around it's always warm it smells good and there's plenty of food this Nest has been here for millions of years who will remember Humanity in even a thousand even though I won't live to see our race Triumph it's enough that I can foresee that day arrogance I expect they could be here competing with us within a few hundred years it will be sooner I would never betray my race I'll kill myself I suppose it's an expected trait for somebody high up in the shaper faction a faction that is constantly trying to evolve the human race to be something better but afriel doesn't even take the swarm's threats of invading the human race that seriously it's just another challenge to him do you accept my offer doctor I accept your challenge we won't become parasites humans are different and what she right is intell a burden for the human race intelligence is not a winning survival tra she very well could be for one she's right about how humans born from the Swarm who only know the Swarm would fight for their lives to defend their home against other humans our need to protect a home is very strong people have a strong sense of nationalism sometimes no matter the quality of that Nation even if that nation is a large swarm of different worker classes processing materials for his existence humans aren't usually nomadic especially when that group is forever bound to the same sense of location no matter what Apel will teach them he would only be around for so long to pass myths of civilization that nobody believes and an organism that has way more Mastery into pheromonal response and chemical hijacking than even the Shapers will have no problem extorting even more control if she has to furthermore humans always have this self-destructive Lust For exponential growth even in the schismatrix Universe humans are spending as much resources as they can afford to find new technologies and spread out to the outer reaches of known space to gain an advantage over both themselves and other alien races we are intensely fueled by our curiosity and that drive could kill us all either by our own hand or by whatever aggressive race we anger in the process just look at the time scales the Swarm is dealing with hundreds of millions of years us humans are just a tiny layer of dust on the skyscraper that is the history of life on Earth itself we have only lived 750,000 years as Homo sapiens and only 50,000 years as modern humans capable of writing and communication and yet there are so many other species much less intelligent than us who have thrived as long as the last mass extinction event and even microbiological forms who have lasted much longer than that less intelligent species only care for their own Survival and aren't overly ambitious about expanding Their Own Zone since there are various checks and balances with than Natural Evolution that means that the growth of the species is slow but steady enough to not be self-destructive to its own ecosystem it's true that a highly intelligent species can dominate to become the apex predator humans are the apex predator when it comes to our ecosystem here on Earth but it also means we're now fighting our own inclination for exponential growth just to maintain the ecosystem that will support us we have the power to wipe out any species on Earth including our own but we actively try to keep any species away from Extinction as much as we can however we don't know exactly how that'll play out over the course of millions of years because humans are the only highly intelligent species we're aware of and we haven't had nearly enough history on Earth to point to in fact back when we were early Homo sapiens we had a much longer period of time hundreds of thousands of years before we got to the point of communication proper civilizations and growth patterns that jeopardize their own ecosystems even the Industrial Revolution was only 150 years ago and that was a major turning point towards long-term climate change and what does that mean for an ecosystem like the Swarm it may exist as a slow growth less intelligent set of life forms in the long term but with the capability of detecting intelligence it can quickly evolve its ecosystem to respond to threats as a short-term problem and absorb those threatening species into its ecosystem it's a controlled Evolution that doesn't suffer from the downsides of a typical intelligent species on the positive side humans are still a very resilient species while we tend to fight each other practice nationalistic politics that segregate each other and greedily gobble up ecological resources when we're brought to the brink of Extinction or some other existential threat we band together and survive so it was only when your world was threatened with destruction that you became what you are now yes well that's where we are you say we're on the brink of Destruction and you're right but it's only on the brink that people find the will to change only at the precipice do we evolve even going as far back as when the meteor fell that caused Earth's last Extinction event the dominant species the dinosaurs fell and these little squirrel creatures that eventually evolved into humans remained is that to say that humans as a species could even survive another meteor that's really hard to predict but our ear ancestors have at least a history of surviving such things and we now possess enough intelligence to build civil izations that could survive such a harsh post-apocalyptical future or just prevent it in the first place also we're not nearly as monolithic as the Swarm I don't mean to say that the Swarm functions as one organism but it does function with a singular Purpose with almost a hive mind mentality humans are driven by different means and goals we are a collection of independent thinkers even the Swarm admits this our nests were the only world they'd known and they fought with a fury and inventiveness we never could have matched some of us have a natural inclination to Rebel some of the biggest turning points in our history were from people who bucked the status quo or rebelled against their societal ideals despite the swarm's confidence that they could create more powerful humans that are completely loyal to them their overconfidence could come Crashing Down by a single spark of descent That Grew among their tribe and hid itself until a pivotal moment in battle so who would actually survive in this conflict that's still really hard to tell but I think the biggest determining factor is whether we can temper our own self-destructiveness enough to survive as a species in the time scales that govern the lifespans of entire species we are Our Own Worst [Music] Enemy well I may have been a little late but that finishes up my analysis of in my opinion the two best episodes of Love death and robots season 3 or at least the episodes that had the most science fictional curiosity the very pul of the machine tackled the discovery of an alien construct the size of a moon hidden in plain sight and how death may not be the final state of existence while swarm tackled the discovery of an alien ecosystem and how this human species has such a short existence in comparison to other life in the universe both episodes had very different narrative tones and outcomes but still had a lot of details worth discussion regardless I think season 3 is definitely on par or even exceeds season 1 and I hope you enjoyed this break down I still plan on tackling season 2 at some point I have a few other video game analysis projects I want to tackle first sorry these videos are pretty long and involved and I'd like to space them out with smaller projects in between this is still a part-time hobby for me so I work on these when I can and when other Hobbies don't get in the way even though season 4 was announced way back in August 2022 it's still expected to get a release eventually hopefully sometime in 2024 and maybe just maybe I'll manage to release another analysis video for season 4 in a timely manner anyway bye for now and I hope to see you in the next [Music] one

Channel: MetaStatistical

Views: 1,005

Keywords: LoveDeathAndRobots, TheVeryPulseOfTheMachine, Swarm, Love Death and Robots, The Very Pulse Of The Machine, LD+R, LD+R Season 3

Id: vZZ1WKvaJVk

Length: 58min 52sec (3532 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023