Today I read Come to Venus Melancholy by Thomas M. Disch. The very "Melancholy" idea of the cyborg trapped alone for eternity with only a few books to read caused me to sympathize with the main character. This story acts as a cautionary tale, if mankind ever created immortality through cybernetics, they should know of the consequences. Considering a lot of test subjects who gave their lives to live forever cybernetically went psycho or died in the transformation process, it should be avoided. Although one last problem which this story focuses on, shows what would happen if the science of cybernetics was too successful.
The idea of putting a human mind full of emotions and personality into a machine room with another human and have the two depend on each other fascinates me as a future possibility. The tension between the two would have to be high when topics arose. The example of sex being one of those topics makes sense the cybernetic being would be uncomfortable conversing about. One other topic of sensitivity for the cybernetic being was the sacredness of poetry, specifically works by John Milton. She loved John George Clay, the man who was stationed with her, and believe he loved her back. There was a sense of anger when Clay attacked one of the only things she held dear: Poetry. His parody of a simple phrase by her favorite poet caused her to lash out and leave him alone for five full days. This abandonment would be a foreshadowing for her own destiny. For who knows what a human would go through being alone, locked in a room with no food.
So was there someone in the room with her this whole time? If they were, did they stay the entire time? Were her speakers even in tact? There's a lot of reasons why she shouldn't even bother trying, but given she had simply nothing else to do but hope for rescue, it made sense for her to give it a shot. The sadness and melancholy comes from these questions, and leaving it to the reader to imagine a figure coming back and interacting with the cyborg. Did the figure experience pity? sympathy? vengeance? interest? disgust? I'd like to picture perhaps there was a figure, who sat and listened to the poor cyborg. Who maybe tried to fix her microphone or visuals, but when they couldn't they gave up. Finally when the cyborg let them out, they couldn't bring themselves to destroy her. They left. It's a possible scenario, but an even more possible one would be no one was ever there. That seems to be the most fitting for the theme of the story.
I like that you examined the relationship between the cyborg and the human, and explored what sort of tension existed between them. It is interesting to me that the cyborg was originally a human, and I wonder if thats what allowed her to connect so personally with John. Ultimately, I had viewed John a villain for what he did to the cyborg, but your analysis reminded me of the fact that she did essentially try to kill him over poetry. I would say she brought this upon herself, both by choosing to become a cyborg and her action against her human dependent. So I think your description of this as a cautionary tale is accurate.
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