Hugh Howey - Machine Learning

I’m often asked if I have a favorite piece of writing, and I usually deflect the question, but there are definitely a few that mean more to me than others. “Select Character” is one of those. There are so many themes packed into this story, themes that show up time and time again in my plots, and they all came together here like a jigsaw puzzle.

There’s the concept of free will, as the protagonist attempts to have her character do the opposite of what is intended. And again the pacifism theme, as a world made for violence is turned to nurturance. There are gender identity questions, and a female protagonist who does not find her strength by emulating what we think of as “maleness.” All of these themes pop up over and over again in my works, as I try to work through them for myself.

What I really enjoy about this story is my own personal development. When I was a kid, I used to play video games hoping to unlock some secret or some high score so that I was contacted by the programmer. I remember having this feeling before I saw the film The Last Starfighter , which means it was an experience I shared with others.

But as an adult, I now dream of a world where nonviolent solutions are applauded. There’s a line in my story “Peace in Amber” that goes something like: I dream of a world in which pacifists board planes first. And the climax of my novel Beacon 23 is the strongest declaration of this. Maybe it all changed for me on 9/11 and our response to that attack. Or at least, that’s where my conversion began.

Hands, gentle and rough. The last time I stood on this bridge, it was a fairer hand on my arm, light as a sparrow, young and full of love and warmth. Full of promises. But that was a long time ago. This more recent hand lands like a hawk, talon fingers squeezing, a British bark unintelligible, but I can guess the meaning. The officer wants to know what I’m doing there.

It’s the bolt cutters, I’m sure. The business end pokes out the top of my backpack, the zippers hugging the jaws on either side. There are a scattering of tourists on the bridge. It’s just after dark and warm in London, much like it had been on our honeymoon. The officer in the bobby hat with the baton at his side isn’t harassing anyone else. Just me. With my bolt cutters and my scraggly beard. With my slept-in clothes. With the smell of a hostel on me, the wild red eyes that might be from bawling, might be from drugs. That senseless stagger of a drunk, of a man lost, of a man without that light sparrow on his arm, guiding him through the world.

I watch as the backpack is searched. The cop procures a flashlight. The dark bowel of the bag swallows every ounce of light. Nothing to see here. A great void. A hollow. Keep looking.

“And what’re these, then?”

He knows what they are. But I tell him. “Bolt cutters,” I say. The numb put up no resistance.

“This looks a fair bit suspicious,” he says. And now people are watching. A young couple train their phones on me in case this is worth sharing. “Empty bag,” he says. “Bolt cutters.”

“Just taking back what’s mine,” I tell him. My eyes drift to the ornate rail. Both sides of the bridge are studded with locks, like some paranoid chain mail. Links in gold and silver. Tarnished and new. Etched and anonymous. The officer moves his beam of light to my chest, the cone spilling across my face. He is reading me. Proper now. The stagger and the absence of fear. The red eyes. All those locks. And the cutters in my bag.

The light clicks off. He hands me my things. “I’ll be right over here,” he says, pointing to a spot along the rail. Even the police in England are achingly polite. Disappointment flashes across the faces of the young couple, illuminated by the pale glow of their phones. Nothing to see here. Keep looking. I wonder if one of these locks is theirs. I wonder how long it’ll last.

My hand coasts down the rail as I move to the center of the bridge. The Thames glides silently below. A glass dinner boat trudges away, pushing against the ebbing tide. The buildings along the bank glow, the glass new ones and the crumbling monuments alike. The London Eye spins lazily. It and the river are unceasing. Some things are.

All the worries about finding the lock have been misplaced. My hand falls straight to it. Part of me had worried the entire rail might be gone. In Paris, the Pont de l’Archevêché across the Seine gets so overburdened with padlocks—locks looped upon locks—that the entire rail is chopped away and replaced every few months. Rail and locks go to a scrapyard. The permanence is illusory. The nearby lock vendors know this, but they don’t warn anyone. The greeting card people and the florists and the jewelers and the writers of fiction are all in on the ruse. Forever holding their peace. Nobody says to watch out, that rail can go, and you’ll be swept away. They just keep selling little promises with their twin keys. And the locks get melted down at the scrapyard, and the keys tumble in the swift current and are pulled out to sea.

We didn’t leave a lock on any of the rails that are known to get replaced. We asked around. Avoided the tourist traps. Planned ahead.

The bolt-cutter teeth clamp down on that little bent finger of stainless steel. I have to move the handles so far to get the jaws to travel so little. It’s the leverage. This is how people move, like these handles. So much to get so little. But the violence when it does happen—the violence.

And now after the long flight, after the weeks before of feeling lost, of not being able to sleep at night because of this damn lock, this pebble in the shoe of my dark thoughts, the nagging hypocrisy on the other side of the world, that lock cinched tight around my throat, bobbing heavy with every swallow, obstructing every breath, the lack of closure from unanswered texts and calls and emails, and the plan to set myself free—after all of that, I hesitate. And by the light of half a moon, I see our initials, the little scratches turned to rust, a crude heart between us.

My pulse pounds. I can hear it, can feel the throb in my temples as I squeeze the handles. A soft give. More. The expectation of nothing. A quiet eternity. And then what went together with a gentle click pops with a metallic bang, and the unbreakable shatters. The cutters nearly slip from my sweaty palms, but the lock still dangles on that crowded rail. I caress it with my fingers for a brief moment, remembering. And then a twist sets it free.

A couple somewhere hurls a pair of small keys out into the void. They laugh and hug while a lock lands with a splash.

I feel lighter when I stand. But only a little. There is a notebook in my back pocket, the stiff covers of which are bent from riding there so long, so many years ago. It is an old notebook. One I took on our travels. Like a partner in life, it has taken some of its shape from its proximity to me. And I walk with a hitch because of my time with it. I fish the notebook out and turn the pages, though I already know. By the light of half a moon, I find my next stop. Amsterdam. Images from that vacation strobe unbidden. And bolt cutters slip into an otherwise empty bag.

This is a very different sort of piece for me, a work that doesn’t really fit a genre, more like something I might’ve written in a creative writing class (had I ever taken one). The inspiration came from my travels while promoting translated works in various countries. I saw these lock bridges everywhere. I think they started in Paris, then spread to London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Budapest, and so on.