Justin Yaquinto

Frinq. Life-Unlimited


(The same, but different)

In Thailand and SE Asia there is a saying that goes, same same but different. Street
vendors will wave something in your face and exclaim, SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT! in an
effort to try and sell you something when you say you want something else. This saying is an
innocent yet false virtue that exists in the culture of the Thai. The earnestness of the saying
masks a subtle hypocrisy. With that irony in mind, I will embark on a brief investigation of the
similarities and the differences between what is described as natural life; and what is described
as artificial life in Paolo Bacigalupis novel, The Windup girl. Bacigalupi richly incorporates the
differences between organic and artificial life in his tale of morality and struggle in a dystopian,
gene-punk Bangkok. An in depth interpretation of his passages and characters will show that
he does not draw a hard line between these two distinctions. Initially in the novel, Bacigalupi
uses engineered, gene-ripped organisms and his character Emiko as examples of artificial life.
He cleaves humanity and organic organisms as separate bodies pertaining to natural life.
Conversely, his proclivity to define Emiko as self aware and thusly a free-willed sentient being
fogs this notion of artificiality. He also describes a species of animals referred to as megodonts-
genetically engineered elephantine monsters used as mechanical pawns in his worlds industry.
In response to their Draconian environment, these beasts resist their masters and exhibit
animal-like instinct in early chapters. In addition to multi-cellular synthetic organisms,
Bacigalupi must have knowledge on severe plagues as he describes a host of ravaging,
genetically engineered diseases that flourish in this changed world. In regard to mutation and
scope, his examples of bioengineered infections behave in a similar fashion to known
pathogenic equivalents. In this brief investigation, I will expound on the distinctions between
organic and artificial life in Bacigalupis world by examination of certain passages. Untwining
these descriptive verses will shed some light on the biological and ethical limits of his fabricated
and natural organisms.
In the very first chapter of The Windup Girl, Bacigalupi introduces genetically
engineered mammoths wryly referred to as megodonts. He writes in regard to their work
description, Megodonts groan against spindle cranks, their enormous heads hanging low,
prehensile trunks scraping the ground as they tread slow circles around power spindles.
(Bacigalupi, 8), and thusly their masters. Union workers in red and gold walk beside their
charges, calling out to the beasts, switching them occasionally, encouraging the elephant-
derived animals to great labor. (8) These passages present an enormous, biologically synthetic
work animal that is yoked into the mechanical spindles that power industry. He proceeds to fog
a line between that distinction and their intrinsic instinct. Behind him one of the megodonts
shrieks again, the sound of a mistreated animal. (12) Bacigalupi furthers this with, The
maddened megodont launches another attack on its winding spindle. Spokes shatter. The
mahout who should have controlled the beast is a mash of blood and bone on the floor. (8)
These are two examples of a maltreated animal cognitively pushing back on its master in
response to its toil and cruel subjugation. The author then describes an altercation between a
recently introduced protagonist-like character and one of the chained beasts, The megodont
wheels and fixes its attention on Anderson, eyes flickering with Pleistocene rage. (19), and Its
almost as if the animal knows what its done. (19) These passages serve to enlighten the
readers understanding of its true nature and conceivably, its intelligence. After the brutal
conflict he wraps up the chapter with, Close up and dying, with its muscles paralyzed and its
ribs heaving in and out, it is just an ill-used creature. The monster was never destined for
fighting. (20) With these sentences, not only does he foreshadow what lies in store for the
megodont, the quote close up and dying illustrates its inevitable mortality. Further into this
investigation, Bacigalupis obfuscation deepens with artificially engineered humans, specifically,
Emiko.
In chapter 3 Bacigalupi introduces his windup girl Emiko, Raleigh- her papa san, and
some deplorably sinful creatures who share Emikos trade. Raleigh slaps his girls on their bare
bottoms and laughs at the jokes of the new wave gaijin and tells Emiko that whatever they
want to do with her, money is money, and nothing is new under the sun. (34) This fragmented
prose elaborates on her lifestyle as a Thai or call girl. For reference, is the
bastardized slang of rick shaw i.e. everyone gets a ride as long as they pay for it. This further
spirals into a graphic rape scene in which Emiko is dehumanized in front of a group of gaijin
culminating with, The audience roars approval, laughing at the bizarre convulsions that
orgasm wrings from her DNA. Kannika gestures at her movements as if to say, you see? Look
at this animal! and then she is kneeling above Emikos face and hissing to Emiko that she is
nothing, and will always be nothing and for once the dirty Japanese get what is coming to
them. (38) In order to untangle what the writer means by dirty Japanese, he recounts, The
Japanese were practical. An old population needed young workers in all their varieties, and if
they came from test tubes and grew in crches, this was no sin. (35) These passages are an
important method he utilizes to exemplify her synthetic nature, and to epitomize her unfailing
loyalty. After her degradation, Raleigh introduces Emiko to the calorie man, Anderson Lake.
Even though Emiko is ashamed by the gaijin prying into her history and by her own loss of
control, Mizumi-sensei would say this is no excuse to prod and bait the man. It hardly matters.
It is done, and Emiko feels dead enough in her soul that she will happily pay whatever price he
chooses to extract. (45) Bacigalupis words, Emiko feels dead enough in her soul creates a
couple of not easily answered questions. Can a synthetic organism have sentience? Can she also
have a soul? Maybe she doesnt have a soul like a human, but one sure enough to feel dead in
it. Here he attempts to lend insight into existentialist trappings by discerning that she has a soul
or semantically, an essence that is dead and precursory to her current state. With this,
Bacigalupi is further befogging the line he draws between artificial and organic life.
Amongst the unreal there does exist a variety of humanity in Bacigalupis world. He
initially writes of partiality and prejudice when it comes to human affection by his artificial
organisms. A man with dragon tattoos on his stomach and a takraw ball tattooed on his
shoulder gawks at her as she walks past. Heechy-ch he murmurs. Emiko doesnt slow,
doesnt turn at the words, but her skin prickles. The man follows her. Heechy-keechy, he says
again. (105) His use of inflammatory racist remarks here provide some insight into
human/synthetic organism relations within The Windup Girl. Emiko is obviously terrified at this
mans posturing. He proceeds with the gross passages: I fought your kind. In the jungles of the
north. (106), and He shows her the stump where his hand is missing, pushes it against her
cheek. His breath gusts hot on her nape as he wraps his arms around her neck, pressing the
knife to her jugular. Indenting the skin. (106, 107). Here Bacigalupi shows the mans uneasy
and discriminatory reproach towards Emiko and her ilk by alluding to a war between the two
races that obviously ended poorly for him. In contrast, he creates moments of chaos inspired
bliss with brilliant imagery. Mounds of durians fill the alley in reeking piles and water tubs
splash with the snakehead fish and red fin plaa. Overhead, palm-oil polymer tarps sag under
the blast furnace heat of the tropic sun, shading the marker with hand-painted images of
clipper ship trading companies and the face of the revered Child Queen. A man jostles past,
holding vermillion-combed chickens high as they flap and squawk outrage on their way to
slaughter, and women in brightly colored pha sin bargain and smile with the vendors, driving
down the price of pirated U-Tex rice and new variant tomatoes. None of it touches
Anderson. (1) Bacigalupis dazzling approach toward describing the bustling street market
foreshadows the entire tale. He writes his disinterested factory foreigner as being totally
complacent; as he does this, he is posing an important question: Why does he care less about
these gene-hacked chickens or test tube tomatoes? It is a place where synthetic organismal
wonders exist on a grandiose scale. Nothing like this has ever been seen before. This world is
seemingly intense for the reader, but it is a transparent normalcy for our recently introduced
farang. This indifference Anderson has with regard to his surroundings begs the question: Is
there really a difference between different forms of life within the novel if they can be shown
to become commonplace?
Bacigalupis gene-punk world is full of biological wonders, but also contains horrific
diseases. Anderson turns the strange hairy fruit in his hand. It carries no stink of cibiscosis. No
scab of blister rust. No graffiti of genehack weevil engraves its skin. (2) The authors
incongruous, nightmarish future plagues reek of Lovecraftian terror. Eventually, the demon
wheels out to the pool edge. He is much worse than when she last saw him. Fa gan scars mark
his throat and curl to his ear. An opportunistic infection that he fought off despite the doctors
prognosis. He is in a wheelchair, pushed by an attendant. A thin blanket covers his stick legs.
(241) Two thirds into the novel, Bacigalupi appropriately introduces the grotesque Gibbons, a
gene-hack master with a penchant for lady-boys. In these sentences, he shows that Gibbons
body and legs are ravaged, completely crippled from disease. He uses the element of disease
for two reasons: He is telling a story of a world changed in the past by synthetic diseases, and
he is postulating how a bad day for science could lead to further disaster. Smoke billows
around Kanya. Four more bodies discovered, in addition to the ones theyd already found in the
hospitals. The plague is mutating more quickly than she expected. (274) Here Bacigalupi
compares his new plague to a modern bug. Perhaps his plagues mutation reacts akin to that of
an avian flu virus; or possibly how HIV mutates when put under the selective pressure of a
foreign environment, and/or administered treatment. A study by McMichael and colleagues
describes the earliest CD8+ T cell responses to transmitted HIV-1 and shows that these
responses effectively control viraemia during the acute phase of infection and, by applying
selective pressure, induce escape mutations in the viral genome. David, Rachel. "Hiv: Selective
Pressure." Nature Reviews Immunology. 9.7 (2009). This study found that viruses in our known
world do act in fact perform a lot like Bacigalupis creations.
With these brief passages, it is clear that the world articulated in The Windup Girl does
not depict a rosy future. Technology meant to solve problems has only created new and
stranger ones. Smug humans and sexually servile windups compete simply for existence.
Monolithic perversions of nature keep the gears of industry grinding, and skin-altering diseases
and crushing plagues abound in every sordid recess. Gene-punk Bangkok is a pretty dark and
sinister place in Bacigalupis novel. That being said, his reticence to reveal what is truly going on
between the gene hacked organisms and humanity is a critical component to building a
lighthearted simulacrum amid them. Beneath the muck of his convoluted dissimilar characters,
and their unfortunate positions, he clearly unpacks the structural similarities between
organisms grown in a petri dish and humans. He describes competing organisms with biological
dichotomy, and by interlinking their lives, he eventually delivers a kind of mutual convalescence
for the malady between the two species. This is one of the most important limits described
within the novel. Even though he chooses to separate these distinctions on natural and artificial
life, I dont believe he intends for there to be a difference at all. In an equivocal twist that may
or may not be Thai influenced, Paolo Bacigalupis novel is like his way of saying to the reader,
different different, but the same.