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| Sta-Hi's Grit Exudes Charisma | |
Cobb was snoring now. For a terrible instant, Sta-Hi thought he saw wires running out of the pillow and into the old man's scalp. He leaned closer and realized they were just black hairs among the gray. He decided to go down to the lounge. Maybe that stewardess would be there (Rucker 62-3).
Sta-Hi's "hallucination" is important both because it presages Cobb's future and because it is quickly shown to be accurate, in spirit, for Sta-Hi as well. The imaginary wires he sees connecting to Cobb's scalp portend Cobb's eventual linking with the big boppers and his coexistence with the big bopper, Mr. Frostee. Sta-Hi's instinctual objections are also validated when it quickly begins to appear like DEX had been reading his mind as he sat in the room. When Sta-Hi arrives in the lounge, the stewardess from his lunar flight is waiting for him and it rapidly becomes evident that she is a robot remote that is a part of DEX (Rucker 63). In the same way that Sta-Hi can order a plate of food from any location in the hotel, he can apparently also order companionship. While Sta-Hi does not exactly object to the stewardess's company, his proximity to DEX has already impinged on his independence.
Sta-Hi is also a strong believer that the human soul cannot be copied onto any computer or exist as computerized information. As Sta-Hi tells Cobb, "Each person has a soul, a consciousness, whatever you call it. There's some special thing that makes a person be alive, and there is no way that can go into a computer program. No way!" (Rucker 160). The fact that Cobb's cult-leader hardware is destroyed shortly after Sta-Hi speaks these words, forcing him to inhabit the Mr. Frostee truck, corroborates Sta-Hi's conviction. With his transfer into Mr. Frostee, it becomes evident that Cobb has been made increasingly soulless with each transfer of his software. These transfers have carried his software from a Cobb2 scion, to a "grease monkey" mechanic, and finally into an inanimate truck. What this suggests is that there is a human soul which cannot be captured in computer data. It also suggests that this soul is constituted, at least in part, by the connection between original software and original hardware.
Finally, what is most clearly lost when the connection between original software and original hardware is broken, are the flaws and limitations a person learns to live with as a human being. Stan Mooney, Sta-Hi's father, welcomes his son's return to earth because the robot-copy that replaced him was too well-behaved and too artificial. In Mooney's words, "It always said yes. It was nice, but it wasn't you" (Rucker 118). Mooney's words point to an appreciation of human frailty that runs through the entire novel. The grittiness of the connection between mind and body, between original software and original hardware (no matter how flawed either component is), is seen as fundamentally human. The shortcomings of this original connection are even made to seem enticing with Rucker's use of a writing style that meshes gritty language with witty humor.
Even as the idea of a human-bopper fusion is made to seem beautiful and enticing, those with more conservative dispositions will see hidden traps and certain downfalls. Individuality and independence are made to seem like important rights that will have to be sacrificed for immortality. More importantly, what will necessarily have to be sacrificed are the imperfections that fundamental to human existence.