The Girl Who Was Plugged In

Until this point in the narrative, the tension between P. Burke and her new world were still just emerging. Now, with the arrival of Paul Isham, they intensify and become explicit.

Paul provides an alternative source of authority and desire that draws P. Burke away from the controlling forces of GTX and presents those powers in a critical light. He attempts to disentangle her from GTX altogether: ‘You’re mine they can’t have you’ (68)—something which spells huge danger for P. Burke. Now that she’s caught between these two worlds, P. Burke loses her innocence and contentment. She’s drawn into conflict, both internal and external, as she tries to balance the competing demands of GTX and her passion for Paul.

For P. Burke, this struggle is more about love than political resistance. She was entirely happy with her life as Delphi, until the arrival of Paul showed her something new: “A real human male burning with angry compassion […] who reaches for her with real male arms and—boom!” (66). The emphasis here is on something more real, intense, and sexual, that pierces through Delphi’s superficial contentment and exposes its limitations. It’s love and desire that breaks the happy illusion, rather than any political instruction. It reveals to P. Burke that there’s something missing in her world.

Her love of Paul sparks a deeper conflict, not just the one between worlds and values, but the one between P. Burke and Delphi. While previously content with the dimmed sensory experience that she felt through Delphi, the intensity of her love for Paul makes her want to feel more fully and close the distance between herself and Delphi, so as to get closer to Paul. She’s left to breach the distance and sensory lag, “fighting through shadows to give herself to him […] to love him back with a body that goes dead in the heart of the fire” (66). It also leaves her feeling a fraud.

Love brings something more meaningful into Delphi’s world, but it also brings inner turmoil. It creates P. Burk’s desire to fuse with Delphi, however impossible that is. We see the power of her efforts in the tears that it should be impossible for Delphi to cry, and those early signs of life Delphi shows, even when P. Burke is out of the capsule. This patten of striving for the impossible is repeated in Paul’s desire for Rima through Delphi.

This play of distance and intimacy also appears in the narration. At the moment in the story where you might expect we’re drawn into Paul and Delphi’s relationship, the narrator interrupts the flow of the action: “Do you need a map?” she asks us (65), suggesting it should be obvious how the character relations are developing. She goes on to provide a zoomed out account of how their feelings for each other develop, rather than showing us through action in the story.

The narration takes us away from the immediacy of events, decisions and feelings in the story and makes us see instead certain patterns of behavior and psychological drives in a more objective fashion. The narrator’s removed perspective also makes the unfolding of events seem inescapable, and hints towards a tragic conclusion she knows in advance. This is something supported by the narrator’s fatalistic references to ancient myths about mortals destroyed by encounters with gods.

As for the relationship with Paul, it doesn’t straightforwardly represent a step towards freedom for Delphi, but a different form of constraint. Paul seeks to influence and control her in his own way. He instructs her like a child, pressures her to break with GTX, despite the obvious danger it puts her in. When he says “You’re mine. They can’t have you” (68), he’s adopting the same language of possession and the same underling notion of Delphi as an object that he criticizes in GTX.