The Windup Girl

“Hock Seng shudders at the sight, remembering his own people similarly disassembled, other bloodlettings, other factory wreckage. Good warehouses destroyed. Good people lost. It’s all so reminiscent of when the Green Headbands came with their machetes and his warehouses burned. Jute and tamarind and kink-springs all going up in fire and smoke. Slick machetes gleaming in the blaze. He turns his eyes away, forcing down memories. Forces himself to breathe.”

The megadont’s attack makes Hock recall the violence that he endured in Malaya, China. Hock is a refugee, a yellow card, whose position in the Thai culture is always at risk. The traumatic nature of his past rises in his memory in the form of the Green Headbands, who destroyed Hock’s merchant fleet. 

“[Cheshires] were supposedly created by a calorie executive[…]for a daughter’s birthday. A party favor for when the little princess turned as old as Lewis Carroll’s Alice. The child guests took their new pets home where they mated with natural felines, and within twenty years, the devil cats were on every continent and Felis domesticus was gone from the face of the world, replaced by a genetic string that bred true ninety-eight percent of the time.”

The whimsical cheshires, invented as a kind of curiosity, demonstrate how genetically-engineered creatures can prove to be the dominant creatures in the survival of the fittest. Not natural selection but an unnatural selection, a genetic intervention, led to the prevalence of an artificial breed of cat, so much so that the cheshires obliterated true old-fashioned cats that now are merely shadows of the past.

“Gendo-sama used to say that she was more than human. He used to stroke her black hair after they had made love and say that he thought it a pity New People were not more respected, and really it was too bad the movements would never be smooth. But still, did she not have perfect eyesight and perfect skin and disease- and cancer-resistant genes, and who was she to complain?”

This quotation provides initial information about the New People, of which Emiko is one. Gendo-sama was Emiko’s patron, employer, and lover. He pities her for not being human. Back in Japan, Emiko was valued as a young worker who the Japanese invented out of necessity. The windups thus are the products of the practical—a need arises, and a solution is supplied. While Emiko is not human, the Japanese did not demonize her like the Thai do. Her presence in Bangkok is treacherous for her, and it also illustrates how she is a displaced person abandoned by her own lover.

“The audience roars approval, laughing at the bizarre convulsions the orgasm wrings from her DNA. Kannika gestures at her movements as if to say, ‘You see? Look at this animal!’ and then she is kneeling above Emiko’s face and hissing to Emiko that she is nothing, and will always be nothing, and for once the dirty Japanese get what is coming to them.”

This quotation illustrates the love/hate relationship that the men in the club have for Emiko. Kannika’s treatment of Emiko is one of sadistic humiliation, which both the men and Kannika herself seem to enjoy. The disturbing abuse Emiko undergoes is highly sexualized and piteously disturbing. Kannika’s treatment of Emiko is perhaps payback for Kannika’s own rage at being a windup herself.

“‘There are whole villages up there, living off the jungles. It’s poor country, genehacked half to death, out beyond Chiang Rai and across the Mekong, but the windups there don’t have any patrons and they don’t have any owners. The coal war’s still running, but if you hate your niche so much, it’s an alternative to Raleigh.’”

Anderson tells Emiko about the windup villages in the North. They have managed to shed their patronage and ownership and, as a result, the overbearing servility of their training. Emiko shows great interest in gaining her independence, for she is at a point where her genetically-engineered servility begins to lose its grip. Although obedience is programmed into her, the influence of her own immediate environment—her “niche”—has proven harsh enough that it has started to erode Emiko’s artificial instincts. Perhaps because her instinct is not truly biological, it has become susceptible to nurture, as opposed to nature.

“If her kind had come first, before the generippers knew better, she would not have been made sterile. […]Without the lesson of the cheshires, Emiko might have had the opportunity to supplant the human species entirely with her own improved version. Instead, she is a genetic dead end. Doomed to a single life cycle[…].”

Emiko’s awareness of the potential for not having been a windup also signals her independence and her ability to see beyond herself as merely a windup. Although the cheshires are vermin, they survive beautifully. In the Darwinian world of natural selection, the brightest and the best don’t necessarily survive; rather, the fittest and most adaptable do. At this point, Emiko still struggles with finding her way North, but, as the conclusion of the novel demonstrates, Gibbons intimates that he might be able to do something to help her procreate, at least indirectly.

“Anderson runs his hand up her hip, pushes her blouse open and quests inside. She sighs and presses closer, her lips opening to him. Does she wish this? Or only acquiesce? Is she even capable of refusing? Her breasts press against him. Her hands slip down his body. He’s shaking. Trembling like a sixteen-year-old boy. Did the geneticists embed her DNA with pheromones? Her body is intoxicating.”

This first sexual encounter between Anderson and Emiko illustrates how she is more than a sex doll but still less than human. Anderson’s attraction to her is real in a biological sense, but it is also a manipulation of human sexuality that is both genuine and constructed. 

“He is a bully, he thinks sourly. Nothing but a bully walking amongst water buffalo, and though he tries to herd them with kindness, again and again, he finds himself using the whip of fear. The whole Ministry is the same—at least, those who still understand the dangers they face, who still believe in the bright white line that must be protected. I am a bully.”

This quotation is the musings of Jaidee, as he analyzes his role as a white shirt. He has good intentions, means well, and respects people, but the nature of his office is so corrupt that he also must play by its rules, and that means his hands can never be completely clean of bloodshed and, as he puts it, bullying, in order to command. It’s much like the discussion of duty, or damma, in which one sometimes must be violent or even homicidal as the great karmic machinery of the universe works its way to its destined end.

“Nothing lasts forever. A kuti is a cell. This cell is a prison. He sits in a prison while the ones who took Chaya live and drink and whore and laugh. Nothing is permanent. This is the central teaching of the Buddha. Not a career, not an institution, not a wife, not a tree[…]. All is change; change is the only truth.”

Jaidee realizes the central truth of Buddhism: that all is change. This quotation also plays with the imprisonment/liberation binary. Jaidee occupies a cell but becomes enlightened, while the kidnappers and murderers of his wife Chaya are free but continue to create more bad karma they will have to burn off in future, retributive lives. Many of the professional goals and aspirations Jaidee has attained he also understands now as transient, elusive, and illusive. 

“He can’t get his legs under him. Akkarat is wiping blood off his face. Somchai is struggling with another pair of Panthers. Jaidee doesn’t even feel the shove that sends him over the edge. The fall is shorter than he expected.”

The death of Jaidee results from his final swipe at Akkarat while his colleague, Somchai, struggles with Akkarat’s men. This conflict between Trade and Environment is described in short, staccato sentences that describe the fight and its rhythms. As the Tiger of Bangkok, Jaidee seems like an eternal character in the novel, and his death comes as a surprise. He returns as a spirit with unfinished business and so has not vacated the novel completely. His death also functions as a catalyst for the downfall of Akkarat.

“She is an animal. Servile as a dog. And yet if he is careful to make no demands, to leave the air between them open, another version of the windup girl emerges. As precious and rare as a living bo tree. Her soul, emerging from within the strangling strands of her engineered DNA.”

Anderson’s comparison of Emiko to Buddha’s tree elevates her. Her servility, in the end, is not attractive, so he permits her to be herself. Unused to such treatment, Emiko becomes pliable in a different kind of way, one in which some semblance of a soul emerges from her DNA. This reflection also raises the question as to the exact location of the soul as well as the possibility that Emiko’s soul could still be in her, among the complexities of her biological engineering.

“Jaidee fought like a tiger, and died like a thief. Dismembered, disemboweled, tossed to dogs and cheshires and crows so that there was little left of him. Jaidee, with his cock in his mouth and blood on his face, a package delivered to the ministry grounds.”

The highly disrespectful treatment of Jaidee’s corpse figures as both a sin and a crime. Since much of Jaidee’s body is missing, the package that arrives seems to consist merely of his head with his penis in his mouth. This disturbing image shows how Akkarat has further humiliated him and defiled his image as the Tiger of Bangkok, an emblem of heterosexual masculinity engendered by his past as a great muay thai fighter.

“‘You should have considered that before you gave me up to them,’ Jaidee says. Kanya stumbles at his voice. Jaidee is trailing a few paces behind her. Kanya gasps and presses her back against wall. Jaidee cocks his head, studying her. Kanya can’t breathe. Will he simply strangle her here, to pay her back for her betrayals?”

Jaidee’s haunting of Kanya seems at first to be not genuine but rather extend from Kanya’s guilty conscience, a trick of the mind as it punishes itself. Given that it is a science fiction novel with a Buddhist context, however, Jaidee is real, or as real as a spirit can be. He taunts her initially but then proves to be an ally. Kanya struggles with her own karma and damma. She will eventually avenge the death of Jaidee, reinstate the white shirts, and move North, to begin anew.

“‘All right,’ Anderson grimaces. All or nothing. ‘What if I offered you and your Kingdom my company’s next iteration of U-Tex rice? Would that be a worthwhile bet? And not just the rice, but the grain before it is rendered sterile. Your people can plant it and replant it for as long as it’s viable against blister rust. My life can’t be worth more than that.’”

Although this quotation occurs later in the novel, it provides the scope and information about the running of the calorie company AgriGen. Anderson makes a deal with the Somdet Chaopraya to save his life after Akkarat accuses Anderson and Carlyle of sending Emiko to kill the Somdet. The bet is both huge and risky, but the payoff for Anderson will be access to the seedbank and the benefit of rice and grain for the Kingdom. This quotation also typifies how trade continues to plod along, intent on ill-gotten gains, while the Kingdom itself teeters on the edge of ruin.

“‘Everyone dies.’ The doctor waves a dismissal. ‘But you die now because you cling to the past. We should all be windups by now. It’s easier to build a person impervious to blister rust than to protect an earlier version of the human creature. A generation from now, we could be well-suited for our new environment.’”

The introduction of the mysterious Gibbons elicits an alternative view of clinging to the past and despising windups. Gibbons’ comments to Kanya are very practical: Humans have destroyed the old way of life of natural humans, who themselves grow increasingly extinct among the heartiness of cheshires and windups. Gibbons’ suggestion is not a throw-up-your-hands-in-despair moment, but rather a realistic one. In effect, use now what is available and, in a generation or two, things can improve, rather than grow worse.

“She stifles the urge to clean up the rice, to make things neat for Anderson-sama when he returns. Instead, she makes herself stare at the mess and recognize that she is no longer a slave. If he wishes rice cleaned off the floor there are others to do his dirty work. She is something else. Something different.”

Emiko’s refusal to clean up the rice is a climactic moment in her development from servile windup to almost human. She is her own person now. Her realization is a rich and enlightening one that also parallels Jaidee’s recognition of the core truth of Buddhism.

“The windup girl returns, kneels beside them at the low table. Kanya forces herself not to speak, not to interrupt the girl’s precise whisking and steeping of the tea, but it is an effort. The windup girl pours, and as Kanya watches the creature’s strange movements, she thinks she sees a little of what the Japanese desired from their engineered servants. The girl is perfect, precise as clockwork, and contextualized by the tea ceremony, all her motions take on a ritual grace.”

This is a description of Hiroko. Hiroko is elegant, doll-like, and a perfect worker. She is not subject to tardiness, illness, or laziness, and this perfection is what perhaps disgusts and even terrifies Kanya, who recognizes the admirable deftness of Hiroko’s role in the tea ceremony. Hiroko also represents how an age of automation threatens to replace human workers. The introduction of robots can be both uncanny and profitable, as they eerily mimic humans without being susceptible to their imperfections.

“‘Hai.’ She forgets to translate, then finds her words. ‘Yes. It is possible. Unlikely, but possible.’ She continues. ‘But it would take an extraordinary stimulus to do so. New People value discipline. Order. Obedience. We have a saying in Japan, ‘New People are more Japanese than the Japanese.’”

Hiroko’s initial failure to translate indicates her shock that the loss of her own training, although most unlikely, could result in her becoming a killing machine, just like Emiko. This quotation is also significant in the sense that though New People are more Japanese than their inventors, and while Hiroko may be the perfect worker, something has gone wrong along the way in establishing this corps of workers. The whole idea in the first place may have been doomed, but, like a refusal to stem the ravages of global warming, the damage has occurred, and dire consequences must be faced.

“Hock Seng stares at the burning slum that had been his home, watching with horror as all his cash and gems turn to ash. Fate is fickle.”

This quotation is notable for its emphasis on fate (a purely Western concept derived from the ancient Greeks), rather than karma. Hock has become somewhat Westernized because of his merchant fleet company.

“Emiko opens her eyes. A young girl grips the pistol in trembling hands. She stares at Emiko, terror-stricken. […]An old Chinese man looms behind her, his expression shadowed. They peer over the balcony precipice, watching Emiko as she dangles. Emiko’s hands begin to slip. The pain is almost unbearable now, ‘Please,’ Emiko whispers. ‘Help me.’”

The significance of this quotation lies in Mai’s and Hock’s decision to help Emiko rather than kill her and profit from doing so. Perhaps for the first time by a person besides Anderson, Emiko is shown pity rather than disgust. 

“‘Many things will be changing now. But we can’t let anyone see you. There are too many people who will never forgive. You understand?’”

Reunited with Emiko, Anderson promises to help her, despite all the danger. He is dying, however, and though he has saved the damsel-in-distress, he won’t be around much longer. 

“Emiko doesn’t answer. The cheshire jumps onto the bed. She shoos it away, but it jumps up again, seemingly sensing the carrion opportunity [Anderson] represents. Anderson tries to raise a hand. ‘No,’ he croaks. ‘Let it stay.’”

Anderson lies dying. Emiko is immune to all disease. Anderson has contracted the sickness fostered by his own company’s algae tanks. His willingness to let the cheshire stay on the bed emphasizes how he has given up resisting what everyone else despises. As a foreigner and an American, he tolerates difference because he has grown up in a country without monarchism and religious intolerance. For once, a cheshire has been given the chance to act like the old house cat that was always welcome to snuggle on the bed.

“Hock Seng shakes his head. Why does she torment him now? He owes her nothing. She is nothing, in truth. Just some fishing girl. And yet against his better judgment he allowed her to stay with him, told her he would hire her as a servant of some sort. Would keep her safe. It was the least he could do[…].”

Hock struggles with his decision to leave Mai behind or let her accompany him. She has been extremely loyal to him, and has had a mollifying influence on him. She’s no longer just another “daughter-mouth,” and his own experiences have helped him to recognize that maybe it’s time to start some semblance of a family again.