Beyond “Beyond the Aquila Rift”

Only one episode of Love, Death + Robots is rated higher on IMDB than Beyond the Aquila Rift, and that’s a Lovecraftian, David Fincher-directed piece called Bad Traveling.

Aquila is my personal number one, though, as explained in the final tweet of this long thread:

I’ve recently watched it again for the fifth time, and decided to dig deeper. Not to discover its secrets or to decipher its meaning, as it’s all pretty obvious after years of comments and YouTube analyses and whatnot. And the episode is self-contained, and with a proper beginning, middle and end. No, I simply wanted …more. More of that world, or similar ones.

And I did stumble upon a few interesting things.

But before I share them, let’s recap the secrets and meaning. Even though they are, as I called them, “obvious”, this is an appreciation post, so it’s only fitting I list them here.

Spoilers ahead! Spoilers ahead! Spoilers ahead!

Also, if you haven’t seen Aquila …why? If you did, a refresh might be in order, the episode is only 15 minutes long.

Secrets

Two freeze frame moments people usually talk about are when the true form of “Greta” is revealed. The first is when the camera pans through the bar (5m32s) and for a split second we see the real “Greta” through the bottle:

The second one is when Greta approaches Thom right before the revelations (12m01s), and we see her cast a spider-like shadow on the wall:

But that’s not all the spider-fun you can find in the episode. During the sex scene, we see Greta with her right hand unnaturally bent as if it’s a spider’s leg, which along with the mirror reflection creates the illusion (hehe) of her true form:

And then there’s this, very Alien-like:

Also, let’s not forget the spider in the top left corner of this shot:

It all comes together at the end in the money shot that reveals “Greta” in full. First, we see a head, an arm, breasts — undoubtedly a sexy lady is approaching…

…except not really…

…and all there’s left to do is to scream in terror.

Meaning

I consider at least two interpretations possible.

The first one I call anti-Breaking Bad. That series was entirely about a man living a man’s life that most men dream about but never go for. He starts as Walter White, but dies as Heisenberg, which is why we see that smile on his face in the final frame.

In Aquila, Thom is also given a new life, in a way. Forced to wait until his ship is fixed, he is free of daily worries and free to drink, laugh and sleep with a smart, beautiful woman who’s in love with him. This new life angle is even more pronounced in the original short story, in which Thom leaves his not quite happy marriage behind.

It’s a dream come true, and yet that dream is a nightmare. Lesson here is, be careful what you wish for, and be ready to accept the price.

The other interpretation is wider and it’s about the lies we tell ourselves to cope with reality. And so the episode is the perfect metaphor for any such event. I know it’s an unexpected example but it fits : looking at the world troubles of today, we have Russians pretending their world is like this…

…and not like this:

The harsh truth of living in a backward country with grand empire illusions, of worshipping a small-time crook as its leader, of its corrupt, rotten army filled with murderers, rapists and thieves …is just too much to handle. It’s easier to pretend a different reality is the correct one.

Of course, such a denial is not limited to (some? most?) Russians. We all need lies in our lives, otherwise the world would crumble. It’s all about the scale and the control over them, though.

And from that last angle, Beyond the Aquila Rift is a depressing tale. Thom is given a choice of not to dig deeper and live in the lie but he is never given a chance to stay in the truth. Whenever “Greta” fails in her carefully spun tale, she just resets Thom, and tries a different approach*. For his own good, of course.

*Note how Suzy’s tank is empty at the end, in the new reset cycle. In the cycle we have seen, Suzy was the part of Thom’s brain that felt that something is off. Hence the scene in which Suzy attacks Greta. This is why “Greta” removes Suzy in the next iteration of her story.

Curiosities

Nihil novi sub sole. No matter what piece of art you enjoy, it had a suspiciously similar predecessor. Aquila is no different. Just like Death Ship, an episode of Twilight Zone that aired in 1963 could very well be the inspiration for a certain roguelite game called Returnal, we can find similar examples for Aquila.

It’s no surprise, really. The main idea is a trope that TV Tropes call Lotus-Eater Machine. Quoting Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology, the lotus-eaters were a race of people living on an island dominated by the lotus tree […]. The lotus fruits and flowers were the primary food of the island and were a narcotic, causing the inhabitants to sleep in peaceful apathy. After they ate the lotus they would forget their home and loved ones, and only long to stay with their fellow lotus-eaters. Those who ate the plant never cared to report, nor return.

Figuratively, ‘lotus-eater’ denotes “a person who spends their time indulging in pleasure and luxury rather than dealing with practical concerns”.

One of the movies listed on TV Tropes for Lotus-Eater Machine is Tempests, an episode of The Outer Limits that aired in 1997. People often mention it when talking about Aquila, as it features spiders which can affect the perceived reality of the person they target.

It is super low budget but fun episode, much better than I thought. And with a nice, clever resolution.

But while I’m sure it could have inspired Alastair Reynolds to write Beyond the Aquila Rift — and by the way, I highly recommend this short story, as it offers some things unavailable in the Love, Death + Robots adaptation — I found something better.

That something is Norman Spinrad’s short story, A Night in Elf Hill (1968).

It’s not a story I can spoil because it’s clear from the start what’s it about — its own version of the Lotus-Eater Machine. Twists and turns are not the story’s point, at least not today, over 50 years later.

But it is a story with eerie similarities to Aquila. Take the revelations scene, for example. In Aquila, after some fun time in the simulation “Greta” slips and forgets she had a wound. Thom sees her clean neck and realizes that Greta is not Greta. In A Night in Elf Hill, after some fun time in the simulation its own “Greta” slips and calls the protagonist by his name. But he never introduced himself and so he realizes that the woman is not who she claims she is.

I was afraid, furious and afraid.

I pulled my hand away. “Who are you?” I snapped. “What is — ?”

She leaned toward me, kissed me, and the question seemed stupid, trivial…

But something in me was still fighting it. I shoved her away. “What the hell is all this? What’s going on here?”

She looked at me, a strange, pleading look in her eyes. She laughed a wicked, sensual laugh. “Do you really have to know?” she sighed.

But I wasn’t buying. Something was being done to me, and I had to know what.

“Tell me!” I roared. “Tell me or — ”

She began to cry, wilt, whimper. I felt like a heartless monster. “If you insist…” she said, “I’ve got to tell you. But don’t insist — take my word for it, Spence, you won’t like what you hear. What do you care what we are, where you are? Look around you, smell the air, hear the music, touch my body. Do you want to lose all this? […]”

“Tell me!” I screamed, shaking her shoulders, driven by some savage compulsion, perhaps the knowledge that I was being offered something that in another moment I would be powerless to resist.

Suddenly, a terrible pain sheered through my head, and the city, the pool, her, flickered for a moment and were gone.

If you remember that scene in Aquila, it’s nearly identical. Then more similarities follow, like when Spinrad’s “Greta” explains the simulation:

“Who…what are you? […]”

“You…” the voice in my mind rasped. “Mostly you, a little of me. I looked into your mind, read your memories, your desires, things you didn’t even know yourself, and I gave it to you. What you wanted, what you really wanted.”

Just like Aquila’s creature that read Thom’s mind and gave him what he wanted: Greta.

Last but not least, in both stories the protagonist demands to see “Greta”, her true form. In Aquila, due to her looks, Thom is horrified, and screams:

In A Night in Elf Hill…

There was a movement in the trees, and I saw a dark shape, a slithering […] thing, a lump of darkness blacker than the night…A wet sound…A cold, cold wind across my face, a vortex of…of something my eyes could not focus on. I felt myself falling into a black, black pool, eaten alive by green squamous things…

I screamed and screamed and screamed.

The unique link between Beyond the Aquila Rift and A Night in Elf Hill is exactly all of the above: a nightmarish creature cares for a dying man and offers him a beautiful virtual reality based on his desires. Most of the time, the entities behind a Lotus-Eater Machine are basically evil, be it the machines in The Matrix or the alien apparatus in one of the first such stories, The Lotus Engine (1940).

But not in both short stories I’m discussing. No, in those, both alien entities, while ugly as hell, are benevolent.

Oh, and to be clear, I’m not suggesting that Reynolds copied Spinrad. For example, oddly enough that revelations scene in which Thom pushes Greta to reveal the truth, plays similarly to A Night in Elf Hill only in the TV version. The vibe and the way it all goes are completely different in the original text.

Also, Spinrad’s tale has a certain weird fiction vibe to it, while Reynold’s is hard sci-fi. The worlds are different, the premise is different, and, most importantly, both stories ask two different questions.

Reynolds asks: ‘What would you do?’

Spinrad asks: ‘Can you give me one real argument why not go with it?’

I highly suggest tracking down Spinrad’s story to fully understand that question and the difference. It’s available e.g. in “The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde” collection of his stories.

And that’s all, folks. Till next time I obsess over a thing!

P.S. One more thing…

But of course. Also, all short stories that most episodes of LD+R are based on are collected in three volumes (so far) and available on Amazon.