O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti tells the story of Alastair “Al” Sterling, a prodigious engineer and pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence. After a sudden and tragic death, Al wakes up 16 years later in a completely synthetic body, unsure of who’s behind it. To understand more, Al reconnects with former business partner and lover Brendan Pinsky, who has taken the development of artificial intelligence far beyond Al’s imagination as there are now fully synthetic people with their own selfhood, agency, and protected rights. Al also meets Brendan’s daughter Sulla, an excitable and gifted synthetic teenager who’s base code is Al himself. Al is suddenly confronted with the truth he kept so deeply hidden from others, while still trapped in a body that never really felt comfortable.
Why does meeting Sulla seem so unnerving for Al at first?
Imagine for a moment waking up in the morning. With the usual grogginess and slow pace, you slowly realize that your surroundings are different. This isn’t where you fell asleep. In fact, you don’t remember actually falling asleep at all. Shortly after, you’re informed that you simultaneously are but aren’t yourself. You’re a synthetic being who carries all the thoughts and memories of yourself up to the moment of your death. You died, but you’re still here. The kind of unnerving feelings that surface from these thoughts are attributed to the uncanny. Based on Freud’s concept of the “unheimlich” or the unfamiliar, the uncanny refers to the unnerving experience caused by a phenomenon that is paradoxically familiar yet unfamiliar. The uncanny can take many forms. For example, death is considered one of the most uncanny concepts in human experience as it is a perfectly natural and universal experience, yet it is beyond our grasp to fully understand it and come to terms with it. The uncanny lies between the realm of the explicable and the inexplicable, which is why it is a prime source of anxiety and fear.
Credit: Blue Delliquanti
A five-panel page.
First panel: Al is sitting on a couch, hunched forward with his hands together against his chin, quietly looking at Sulla who is sitting across from him, having breakfast.
Second panel: A close-up of a small robot grabbing a whole cracker for itself, surprised it got caught.
Sulla (off-panel): Hey, you! Don’t take his breakfast!
Third panel: Sulla, holding a cup in both hands, is eagerly talking to Al.
Sulla: You’ve made some friends.
Fourth panel: Sulla sets the cup down as she looks as Al inquisitively.
Sulla: Are you okay, Mr. Sterling?
Fifth panel: Al is still sitting in the same pose. Across the table, Sulla is rearing her head back in laughter.
Al: Yeah, yeah. I’m just not used to seeing myself as a prepubescent girl.
Sulla: No fair! I’m not prepubescent!
Al’s experience in the future has been nothing but uncanny since woking up. To begin with, he is struggling with the fact that he died yet still walking and talking 16 years later. Furthermore, not only does his body still look the same, it is now completely synthetic. Perhaps the most uncanny moment Al experiences, however, is meeting and getting to know Sulla. She is the literal embodiment of the uncanny phenomenon known as doubling, which itself can manifest in many forms. The double can be an exact replica of the subject either physically, mentally, or both. In other cases, the double can be a twisted mirror image of the subject, an embodiment of the subject’s darkest side or an inversion. In general, the double is far from a source of comfort. It is a copy that threatens the subject’s reality by usurping their place or by revealing the subject’s innermost secrets. In true Gothic tradition, encountering one’s double means only one will survive in the end.
Credit: Blue Delliquanti
A three-panel page.
First panel: Al is leaning back on the couch, one arm on the armrest and the other resting on the back, fist over his mouth as his eyes narrow on Sulla. Sulla is standing, picking up the empty plates off the coffee table.
Al: Whatever. It’s a lot to take in. What with being a... robot... now and still needing to eat and sleep.
Sulla: Yeah, you must have conked out real good. You didn’t even change clothes or anything.
Second panel: Sulla is holding a tray with empty dishes, looking back at Al over her shoulder.
Al (off-panel): I don’t have any other clothes. This is all they gave me.
Sulla: “They”?
Al (off-panel): The guys that made me.
Third panel: Sulla is facing forward with the tray and dishes in hand. She looks slightly confused and mostly thinking out loud.
Sulla: And they didn’t give you anything but one set of clothes? Huh. That seems like a crappy thing to do.
While Al’s encounter with Sulla isn’t as traditionally grim and Gothic, the overall experience still resonates as uncanny and hits the usual beats. Al is already in a disoriented state of mind as he makes sense of his new life state (for want of a better word) and who the person behind it is. Then he comes face-to-face with a young teenager who in fact shares his face but is completely synthetic, capable of flight and, most striking to Al, a girl. The significance of the encounter isn’t evident at first, but when rereading with the knowledge of Al’s true identity, the way that Al looks at Sulla and his conversations with her are much more contextually charged. For Al, Sulla is a double in the sense that she is the embodiment of an alternative reality, one that Al was unable to venture into in the past. Sulla is the freedom that Al never had, either because of societal expectations or because of his own repression. While Al finds her fascinating, there’s a tinge of jealousy and anger at the world he can’t help but feel. Nevertheless, Sulla is also proof that Al can finally embrace his true self which, in accordance to Gothic tradition, leads to his second death, if you will, and actual rebirth.