Follow the Forward Chain: Westworld, Episode 6
Maeve breaks free.
We are civilized generation number 500 or so, counting from 10,000 years ago, when we settled down. We are Homo sapiens generation number 7,500, counting from 150,000 years ago, when our species presumably arose; and we are human generation number 125,000, counting from the earliest forms of Homo.
— Annie Dillard, from The Wreck of Time, Harper’s Magazine
Here’s a dollars-to-donuts statement of probabilistic truth: Westworld takes place in two separate timelines. You’ve heard this idea before, yes? It’s received wisdom at this point. Tablets down from the Reddit mountain.
In brief: “Then” is the timeline of Billy and Logan, and their sundry interactions with “Then” Lawrence, “Then” Dolores, and “Then” everybody else.
“Now” is the timeline of Maeve. Helmsworth the Elder. The coward Robert Ford. The Man in the Black Ascot (seriously, for a guy who slits throats, he sure is interested in protecting his).
William, the theory goes, is that Man in Black as a white-hatted nebbish.
Now, whether this theory is correct your correspondent doesn’t care to conject. What is interesting about its possible probable, tho, is that, if it’s correct, then the show’s narrative structure is asking the audience to reason just like an artificially intelligent program.
When you watch “Now”, you are trying to deduce the possible past. You “backward chain” from output to data. This is modus tollens. The way that denies by denying.
When you watch “Then”, you are trying to infer what will happen in the interval between “Now” and “Then”. You “forward chain” from data to output. This is modus pollens. The way that affirms by affirming.
These are the two basic processes of an inference engine — a real thing, by the way, and the type of engine we see symbolized on the behavior tablet controlling Maeve.
Is that too meta-clever? To ask the viewers to reason about the plot in the same way Maeve reasons about her existence?
Probably. But this is, after all, a show predicated on Vitruvian symmetry — physically, it would seem, and temporally.
And there’s the viewer in the middle, watching the show, guessing mightily at what the fuck is going on.
The Maze
What did we learn about the maze in Episode 6: The Adversary?
That Ford hadn’t seen the graphic of the maze? That he only dimly remembers it? That it’s from one of (Arnold’s?) old notebooks? If that’s true, then it’s become more likely that Arnold, the ghost in the machine, laid his disruptive plans years ago.
From Teddy Flood — suddenly given to concatenating sentences together! — we learned that the maze is an old native myth.
“The maze itself is the sum of a man’s life,” he said, looking at Kissy’s scalp. “The choices he makes. The dreams he hangs on to. And there at the center is a legendary man who been killed over and over again countless times, always clawed his way back to life. The man returned for the last time and vanquished all his oppressors in a tireless fury. Built a house. Around that house he built a maze so complicated only he could navigate through it. I reckon he’d seen enough of fighting.”
There are a lot if interesting notions at play here, so let’s unpack them.
Firstly, does it seem strange that Dr. Ford wouldn’t recognize the maze? If he had created the Park, one reasons, then wouldn’t he know the entirety of its contents?
Not exactly, no. In artificially intelligent systems it’s not possible to view all states of a decision-making process. The inputs (i.e., the programming) are known. The outputs (i.e., the results that you see) are also known. But the decisions themselves are hidden.
For a real-world example, look no further than Google’s Go-playing AI, AlphaGo, which famously beat the human world champion earlier this year. AlphaGo’s most unexpected move was Move 37. How did AlphaGo decide to play that stone? The engineers have no idea.
Dr. Ford, it may turn out, only has the illusion of control.
Secondly, the native tribes seem to be playing an increasingly important role.
There’s Kissy, of course, short for Kisecawchuck (“daystar” in Cree).
And there’s the native religion, which Maeve discovered in Episode 4, which apparently worship the management “demons” that govern the hosts and walk between us. And doesn’t that seem odd? That the native hosts would openly acknowledge management?
It would seem, again, that something’s developing within the hidden Markhov models of the hosts. Something not programmed by Dr. Ford.
The Family
In Episode 6 we also learned that Dr. Ford is secretly keeping first generation hosts in the park. That those hosts are metal-and-flesh machines. That they were created by Arnold. That they were given to Dr. Ford as a gift. That they are modeled after Dr. Ford’s family.
And that they are fucking creepy.
We also learn that the boy, modeled after Ford, has begun to act in strange ways.
He killed his dog, Jock. When Ford asks him to explain, the boy lies. When asked why, the boy says that the voice of Arnold told him to do it (presumably through the bicameral mind broadcast system that the park once used).
This is a neat little scene. The boy is a representation of Ford. So in a way, Ford is lying to himself.
This, then, is further evidence that Ford is less the inventor of Westworld and more the usurper who, perhaps, took credit for Arnold’s work.
It’s also a pretty strong symbolic case that the hosts and humans are at loggerheads.
Ford commands the boy to reveal his inner clockwork by saying the command “turn the other cheek”. That phrase, of course, is from the Bible. Specifically, the gospel of Matthew 5:39: “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
The Management
Stages figured prominently in Episode 6.
There was the theater set that Elsie visited to find the satellite uplink. And there was the “fucking map” that Lee Sizemore urinated on.
“Are you filing a complaint, Mr. Sizemore,” Theresa asks, catching Lee mid-pee.
“I am declaring,” Lee says, evoking (barely) Hamlet, “that this park is my stage and I shall do with it what I please.”
“Well I suppose now is as good a time as any,” says Theresa. “Lee Sizemore this is Charlotte Hale, executive director of our board. She’s here on behalf of Delos to oversee certain transitions in our administration.”
Now, whether Charlotte is the board representative that Ford mentioned in Episode 4 is uncertain. But it would appear, given Theresa’s maneuvering, that she has the board’s ear vs. Ford.
Maeve
The most striking reveal of the episode, tho, was Maeve’s stiff-upper-lip tour of the facilities.
The episode begins with a familiar shot — a woman waking up in bed, lit from the side — but this time instead of Dolores in white, it’s Maeve in black. Maeve then walks to her armoire and very explicitly chooses not to wear the white.
The symbolism is clear: here are two women approaching self-actualization in different ways. As Dolores travels further into the interior of the park, Maeve is traveling further into headquarters — and her own potential.
Maeve’s arc in this episode begins with Maeve trying to understand the difference between human and host.
Maeve: “How do you know?”
Felix: “Because I know. I was born. You were made.”
Maeve: “We feel the same.”
Felix: “We are the same these days, for the most part. One big difference though. The processing power in here is way beyond what we have. It’s got one drawback tho. You’re under our control. Well, their control. They can change you however they like. Make you forget, well I guess not you. I don’t understand how you’re remebering all this, or how you’re waking yourself up, but everything in your head, they put it there.”
Maeve’s knowledge base may have a different origin, but her inference engine works the same as a human’s.
“I was built to read people just by looking at them,” Maeve says, knife to Sylester’s throat. “To know what they want before they do. And I know that you want to fuck me over the first chance you get. But you shouldn’t. Everyone has something they want. I could help you. Or I could gut you like a trout. But I won’t need to resort to that. Because despite what’s in here, we’re not so different. Are we?”
By the end of the episode, Maeve’s in the catbird seat: she convinces Felix and Sylvester to push her bulk apperception to its highest possible setting.
The result is quietly orgasmic.
“Dear boys,” she says, “we’re going to have some fun aren’t we.”
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Previously:
Modest Little Loops and Whatever Devices: Westworld, Episode 5
Exploding Cigars! Westworld, Episode 4
The Voice of God: Westworld, Episode 3
