The Girl Who Was Plugged In

The whole novella hinges on the peculiar connection between P. Burke and Delphi. In one sense, Delphi is just a vessel—a beautiful but inert body that is animated (with the aid of futuristic technology) by P. Burke. It’s Burke’s brain, plugged into the capsule, that does the controlling, the sensing, and the acting. To the world, her adoring fans, and Paul, Delphi is a single, beautiful person.

She’s “fifteen and flawless” (50), “the darlingest girl child you’ve ever seen” (48). It’s disturbing that Delphi, at such a young age, is created precisely to be objectified and sexualized. Throughout the story, she’s referred to as a child, a doll, and a kitten, and her persona is one of playful innocence.

She’s a smash hit in her niche role for the ultra-rich, and she’s an even bigger hit when she given a role in the mainstream entertainment industry. For all of this superficial perfection, Delphi is deficient in some areas. Bodies like hers are made not to feel very much, and to have little to no sexual feeling. The complicating factor here is P. Burke, who strains through Delphi to feel and live as much as she can.

The more Burke strains to feel through and fuse with Delphi, the closer she gets. Delphi, who should be just an inanimate object once Burke is out of the capsule, shows glimmers of life. She smiles, talks in her sleep, even staggers on and speaks after Burke’s death. Who or what possess her in these moments makes for an interesting phenomenological question. It could be the fading impression of Burke’s consciousness or the first signs of something new.

Delphi dies with Burke, but in another sense, Delphi carries on. She’s not a person but a corporate asset. Another remote takes over Burke’s role, and soon Delphi is back on the circuit, reassigned to her original role on the yacht with her elderly Spanish husband. 

Paul is the son of a powerful figure who sits on the GTX board, Paul Isham III. He’s a talented young film maker who is disgusted by the world-order his father helps to maintain.

Paul might despise his father’s world, but his family position has gained him some considerable privileges, immunities, and an underlying sense of entitlement. He’s able to find a career working on “marginal creativity” projects, the closest thing to underground filmmaking in the GTX world. The works he makes are radical, provocative, and full of social protest.

He’s not dissimilar to the conventional male action hero—cool, handsome, smart assertive, and brimming with confidence, yet “tender souled” (64). A kind of futuristic James Dean, as comes across in his first words to Delphi: “‘Living wild, kitten’ Cool voice, hot underneath” (63). The narrator emphasizes that Burke falls for him not least because of his masculine strength and sexuality– “a real human male” reaching for her with his “real male arms” (64). Something very much absent from the beautiful but anodyne and illusory world of the gods. This is made clear in the contrast with the near impotent figure of Davy, who GTX are quite happy to leave in Delphi’s bed.

Paul falls in love with Delphi partly because she closely resembles a previous lover, Rima (perhaps another Remote), who he believes was killed by GTX. It’s the lost Rima he’s pursuing in Delphi, and this previous wrong fuels his rage when it becomes clear that Delphi is also being controlled and made to suffer.

In contrast to P. Burke, Paul is “incessantly active” (64)—and it’s his willfulness and drive (as well as the license afforded by his father’s status) that accelerate events toward their tragic conclusion.

We see his love of Delphi was real and intense as the final events play out. That said, we’ve also seen him act in ways that selfishly put her in danger and are clearly controlling. It’s Paul influence that repeatedly keeps her away from her schedule, despite GTX’s attempted compromises. He sees Delphi as a project of sorts, a child to instruct and wrest free of the corporate machine that binds and blinds her. He has a strong possessive impulse that’s not entirely different from that of the system which controls her.

Paul’s self-belief and ignorance of the truth are key components in the chain of events that lead to P. Burke’s deaths. It could be considered a kind of hubris. In the brief epilogue we’re told that the grief and pain Paul experiences lead him to a new maturity and wisdom. He ends up taking on a role in the GTX boardroom, where he tries to fight the system from within. Whether this approach amounts to a new subtler form of resistance or a kind of acquiescence is unknown.

Joe is the technical specialist in GTX who oversees Burke’s training and her integration into the capsule. He’s the first person Burke interacts closely with in her new life, and the two develop a bond of friendship and trust.

Unlike almost every other character in the narrative, it’s P. Burke he cares about, not Delphi. In fact, he shows no interests in Delphi and the beautiful bodies created by the “flesh department”: “without a Remote Operator it’s just a vegetable” (48). He’s not in any way repulsed by Burke’s looks. He doesn’t even notice. What interests and fascinates him are cerebral systems, and it becomes clear that P. Burke has the most complex and elaborate of these. She’s a Remote like no other, breaking new scientific frontiers. At the end of the final tragic scene in Carbondale, we see Joe rush in and desperately try to save P. Burke. We learn “he alone had truly loved P. Burke […] the greatest cyber-system he had ever know” (78).

It might seem that to view her in these terms is overly scientific and itself objectifying, but in a world where P. Burke has been viewed as a monster and a commercial asset, and Delphi is purely sexualized and objectified, Joe’s relation to Burke may ironically be the closest thing we see to a genuine and knowing love. It’s true he sees through her to the beauty of a system—but it is the cerebral system, the pattern and potentiality of her consciousness, that he loves. This is wedded to a genuine tenderness he shows towards her.

Tiptree gives balance to the world she creates by showing characters like Joe to be more than soulless functionaries in a system.

Mr. Cantle is the GTX official who gives Burke and Delphi the final interview and check before she’s officially cleared to begin her new role. He is a figure of some authority, but it’s also clear that he’s far from being a GTX bigshot. He’s described as “quiet and fatherly,” but very much in the fashion of an old authoritative father.

It’s from Cantle that we hear the most about the roles Remotes and celebrities play in the economic and social order. He’s an intelligent mouthpiece of the present system, angered by any disruptions or threats toward it, but he is not depicted as evil or power-hungry. Indeed, he shows restraint when dealing with Burke’s disobedience, and the narrator points out he doesn’t enjoy threatening Remotes. It’s not so much out of tenderness that he’s reluctant to take extreme measures like inflicting pain or pulling Burke out of the capsule. There’s perhaps some moral consideration at work, but more pressing is his desire to maintain order, and his keen grasp of the capital worth of Burke. To him, she’s first and foremost an investment, an asset to be protected.

He’s angered by her naïve complaints about the products she’s supposed to be promoting, but he’s a man able to quickly and shrewdly control his emotions and translate the situation into something more abstract and orderly—the mathematics of profit and loss. In one sense, he’s a pragmatist, a shrewd operator, but one who thinks and operates entirely within the accepted bounds of the system and works to preserve it.