Re: Bad Machine

["Avrom Faderman" <Avrom_Faderman@email.msn.com>]

Kory Heath wrote in message <36A4DE20.B849EBCE@best.com>...
>[endgame spoilers for Bad Machine...]
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>still have lots to explore.  For all I know, there *is* a conventional
>"kill the queen" story in there; if so, I'd like to see it (even if I
>end up liking *this* ending better!)


I actually think there's another reason why the story isn't "kill the
queen"--the queen isn't, really, the *villain* in any sense.

The villain of the game is the warehouse, the whole huge collective hive of
which the queen is simply the biggest and highest-authority member.  The
queen, after all, is a good machine, which seems to mean no free will.  The
queen has extensive decision-making abilities, certainly, but there are
limits--could the queen decide that Product was worthless, for example?  One
assumes not.

I'm inclined to think that the queen doesn't have any more free will than a
really, really big Thinker.  Destroying the warehouse might make sense, but
specifically destroying the Queen is misdirected aggression.  It's the hive
you want, not the queen bee.

(If the queen went bad, wouldn't a drone report it to the nearest fixer?  It
doesn't seem that unlikely.  Lowly proteins patrol a cell's very DNA for
copy errors.)

(Of course, I suppose destroying the queen would be a good way to destroy
the warehouse.  But from the point of view of the story, it would be a
distraction;  it would turn attention away from the vast villain of the
*setting* towards a far more mundane "bad guy".)

Avrom