Grand Theft automatons

STREAM OF STORIES

- RAJA SEN

There can be no sentence that self-evident and yet—after watching Pluribus—it bears mentioning.

Pluribus, the sensational new Apple TV drama created by Breaking Bad maker Vince Gilligan, is about an earth where aliens have bound (nearly) the entire human population into a hivemind, where they efficiently live and share the world's resources with each knowing everything the other knows. This is a compelling what-if, with no war and no crime, and a world living and working as one, in perfect harmony.

However, within this hivemind, romance novelist Carol Sturka is just as good as William Shakespeare. She creates plots, characters, arcs. Her books affect and move readers. She tells stories. Therefore, in the megabrain, she performs the same function. I was already appalled by the premise of forking over my freewill—not to mention the very idea of everybody on the planet knowing my murkiest secrets—but this frightened the hell out of me. Imagine a world where our taste was the same. Imagine a world where everything was exactly as good as everything else.

Give me war instead.

Not like we have that choice. The protagonist Carol—played by a brilliant Rhea Seehorn—is facing a genuinely impossible quandary. One of less than a dozen humans who are not locked into the collective consciousness, Carol resists the peace and tranquility of the hivemind. She distrusts it. This is an open world where she can drive any car she chooses and go anywhere she wants. Carol is basically living inside Grand Theft Auto, and she doesn't want to play. (Even though she does drive a police car.)