#the very pulse of the machine

[walterkov]

LOVE + DEATH + ROBOTS S3EP3 "The Very Pulse of The Machine" @giftober 2024 | Day 19: Purple ►

[machinegrl]

[transcript]

"if you're a machine, what is your function?"

"to know you."

[itsmelissadj]

Love Death + Robots: The Very Pulse of the Machine

[pedroam-bang]

Love, Death & Robots: The Very Pulse Of The Machine (2022)

[starry-kattz]

The homoerotic tension between a moon and an astronaut.

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[calvinbeemanart]

I don't know why I never posted this. Love, Death and Robots fanart I made right when season three came out. Specifically, this si based on the episode The Very Pulse of the Machine.

[starrdio]

Man a lot of Love Death and Robots is gratuitous violence and unfunny humor but sometimes. SOMETIMES they make the most beautiful heartwrenching works of art. Several of my favorite art pieces ever are LDR episodes and I couldnt care less for 80% of the series.

[suppuration]

Click.

"The marble index of a mind forever. Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone. Wordsworth."

"What?"

"Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest thing in the solar system. If the human eye could see it, it would appear two and a half times wider in the sky than the sun does."

"I knew that," she said, irrationally annoyed.

"Quotation is. Easy. Speech is. Not."

"Don't speak, then."

"Trying. To communicate!"

She shrugged. "So go ahead—communicate."

Silence. Then, "What does. This. Sound like?"

"What does what sound like?"

"Io is a sulfur-rich, iron-cored moon in a circular orbit around Jupiter. What does this. Sound like? Tidal forces from Jupiter and Ganymede pull and squeeze Io sufficiently to melt Tartarus, its sub-surface sulfur ocean. Tartarus vents its excess energy with sulfur and sulfur dioxide volcanoes. What does. This sound like? Io's metallic core generates a magnetic field which punches a hole in Jupiter's magnetosphere, and also creates a high-energy ion flux tube connecting its own poles with the north and south poles of Jupiter. What. Does this sound like? Io sweeps up and absorbs all the electrons in the million-volt range. Its volcanoes pump out sulfur dioxide; its magnetic field breaks down a percentage of that into sulfur and oxygen ions; and these ions are pumped into the hole punched in the magnetosphere, creating a rotating field commonly called the Io torus. What does this sound like? Torus. Flux tube. Magnetosphere. Volcanoes. Sulfur ions. Molten ocean. Tidal heating. Circular orbit. What does this sound like?"

Against her will, Martha had found herself first listening, then intrigued, and finally involved. It was like a riddle or a word puzzle. There was a right answer to the question. Burton or Hols would have gotten it immediately. Martha had to think it through.

There was a faint hum of the radio's carrier beam. A patient, waiting noise.

At last, she cautiously said, "It sounds like a machine."

"Yes. Yes. Yes. Machine. Yes. Am machine. Am machine. Am machine. Yes. Yes. Machine. Yes."

"Wait. You're saying that Io is a machine? That you're a machine? That you're Io?"

"Sulfur is triboelectric. Sledge picks up charges. Burton's brain is intact. Language is data. Radio is medium. Am machine."

"I don't believe you."

— Michael Swanwick's "The Very Pulse of the Machine" [X]

[cherrydott]

"WAKE UP"

Randomass stylized realism pulled out the ass of your local cartoonist

[yuriskies]

I would like to float Michael Swanwick's 1999 Hugo Award winning short story "The Very Pulse of the Machine" as an ur-example of Miyazawan yuri. For me it has a very similar vibe to the sci-fi/landscape elements of Otherside Picnic, and I think fans of that might be interested in reading it. More below the break in case you want to go in without spoilers. Read it! It's good!

So like, brief summary in case you didn't read it, Martha and Juliet are the first humans to land on Io, and the story picks up immediately after a catastrophic rover crash that has killed Juliet and left Martha in an extreme survival situation. With a limited amount of air, Martha has to trudge across the hostile landscape of Io's surface. As she uses on methamphetamine to make the trip, Martha begins seeing ethereal visions and Juliet's corpse quotes poetry and hints at a vast machine-like intelligence inhabiting the moon's sulfur deposits.

The Very Pulse of the Machine is strange and defies any easy story categorization. I definitely wouldn't call it a "true" yuri SF, but there are aspects that I twigged on that resonate with Iori Miyazawa's aesthetic. There isn't a romantic relationship between Martha and Juliet, but little aspects of the narration hint at something complex and ill-defined between them.

The story plays around with a sense of finality between the two - how much of Juliet's speech is Martha's drug-addled memories of Juliet quoting poetry verses, the reanimated thoughts of the dead, or the machine-like intelligence attempting to communicate through Juliet's knowledge is kept intentionally vague. It becomes the springboard for Swanwick to explore Martha's sense of loss, feelings of social inadequacy, and her desperate struggle to keep self-serving dreams and reality separate really resonate with what Miyazawa was calling "yuri of absence".

I think there are also aspects to this story that also illustrate what Miyazawa meant when he said landscapes are inherently yuri. The version of Io in The Very Pulse of the Machine is ethereal as hell - volcanic plumes and twisting magnetic fields illuminate its sky, while sulfur dioxide flowers bloom from its surface in between stygian lakes of molten sulfur and sulfur dioxide vent blizzards. There's this wonderful moment where Martha sees triboelectric discharges illuminating Juliet's body and tapping at her feet, and for a moment the text leaves you to wonder if it's an ancient, lonely machine yearning for contact reaching out to connect with them both.

Also just gotta say that until I go to the grave I will consider the end high-class yuri, no matter what anyone tells me.

[gorrus]

[yourbelgianthings]

In the same way your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings, are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don't, then it doesn't.

(quote from fantasy high prompocalypse pt. 2, text fill image from the love death and robots episode the very pulse of the machine)

[schwarzfee]

[cicada-circuitry]

You wrote a Very Pulse of the Machine fic?

And yes the story and short are so different they do not belong together!

ha, yeah, shortest and probably strangest fic I've ever posted - it's here. much more directly inspired by the netflix short but i read the story too and there were a couple specifics from it I really latched on to!

definitely felt odd that that AO3 made 'The Very Pulse of the Machine' a tag with the same meaning as 'LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS' as a whole, but I can't imagine how complicated tag wrangling an anthology series must be, let alone figuring out how to handle the infinite world of miscellaneous published short stories.

[five-one-two-station]

Anyway why don't you all go watch a beautifully animated love story between astronaut Mackenzie Davis and her girlfriend the Jovian moon Io and maybe you'll calm down.

And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine A being breathing thoughtful breath A traveler betwixt life and death The reason firm the temperate will Endurance Foresight Strength and skill

LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS | 3.03 The Very Pulse of the Machine