Microreading: “Codemus”: When Humans Become Coded
Tor Age Bringsvaerd, in his short story “Codemus” (1967), scrutinizes a future where human reliance on computers blurs the line of who is coding who. The reader explores an authoritarian world controlled by the direction of the Moxon XX central computer, which relays orders to humans through the portable Little Brother devices not dissimilar from modern cellphones. His cold third person narrator resembles the perspective and writing of a machine, framing human emotion and free will as obstructions to the efficient society. The ideal of the efficient society is a mantra chanted and weaved throughout the story, and humans are generally happy with their conditions and sense of purpose. However, Bringsvaerd relies on the emotions and freedom of the reader to realize the cracks in this false utopia, exposing it as a prison that strips humans of their humanity.
Codemus, our eponymous character, is a human with a malfunctioning Little Brother unit. Disconnected from the regional computer hub, Little Brother begins to think for himself and display fully developed emotions. Codemus, whose name is a hodgepodge of the Latin “mus” ending and English “Code” combining to mean “We are Code,” reflects the dependency of humanity on their Little Brothers. He relies on it to communicate, tell time, know where and when to go, and what to do. The Little Brother, if working properly, would instruct his every movement and thought without being initiated to do so. Codemus lacks agency over any choice, he is a pawn in the “chessboard city” (Bringsvaerd, p. 770) described in the opening sentence. In this state humans no longer program the machines; the machines program the humans.
Codemus’ disconnected Little Brother still desires what is best for him, although the line is blurred if it is because of leftover programming or if it is a personal choice. Little Brother seeks to free Codemus from the dull cyclical nature of the society. It wants Codemus to start making choices and feeling true emotion. The irony is Codemus is still only following the urges of Little Brother, who still retains full agency, even to self-identify with the line “I’m not a telephone today” (Bringsvaerd, p. 773). Little Brother begins to express human characteristics with Codemus, such as curtness, nonchalance, joviality, impatience, eagerness, forgetfulness, and anger, showing complex emotions that none of the humans in the story express. Once pursued by the robotic sherlock police force Little Brother sacrifices himself to be left behind so that Codemus cannot be tracked; however, this act has the deeper significance that Little Brother also acknowledges that Codemus will never be free from the yoke of the programming as long as Little Brother is there to instruct him.
Bringsvaerd utilizes a scene in the park to expose the warped relationship Codemus has with emotions. Skipping work on Little Brother’s mandate, Codemus “didn’t have a guilty conscience. [He] didn’t have any conscience at all” (Bringsvaerd, p. 775). He has no sense of consequence, for he has never had to choose how to act or feel. Codemus lacks the emotional maturity to interact with the female groundskeeper. Both seem to have a general attraction, but their love would not have the ideal impact on society, so the computer does not allow them to marry, let alone even flirt. The lady shows Codemus compassion by showing him a way to escape the arriving police force, but still obeys her Little Sister to initially avoid him and his maniacal advances. Codemus “dreamily” said “I think maybe she likes me…” (Bringsvaerd, p.778), showing his first experience with infatuation. Bringsvaerd is highlighting the integral beauty of spontaneous happiness innate to humans; consequently, this emotion is the happiest the reader sees Codemus in the story. This represents the theft of pure emotion by this structure of society. To shelter people from the sadness and hostilities of life, the computers replace actual joy and sorrow with content and wistfulness. Humans are subjected only to the median of emotions, never feeling depression but also never elation.
The park itself would have been dystopic for Bringsvaerd’s own domestic Norwegian readers. While Norwegians value efficiency and homogeneity, which is pushed to its extreme in the story, they value freedom in nature as integral to their identity. They would have been appalled by description of an overcrowded artificial environment amongst a rigid urban landscape. Freedom and nature are intwined with their identity, and Codemus’ society has lost all three.
The third person narrator becomes integral to how readers perceive the story, especially once Little Brother makes Codemus abandon him. The numbering of paragraphs, positive view of exterminating emotion, and overall sneering tone when Codemus cannot handle frightening emotions are all indicative of this being a machine narrator, possibly retelling the story as anti-emotion propaganda. Thus, when Codemus cannot face “the fear, of course” (Bringsvaerd, p. 780) of being disconnected from a Little Brother, the reader should recognize this is a narrative conclusion that benefits the agenda of the computers. The computer narrator would surely attempt to leave out any glimmer of hope or happiness Codemus may have had when liberated from the Little Brother network. He would have been struggling with fear, but it may not have been to the extent described. He may even have felt the thrill of an adrenaline rush from being self-guiding for the first time. The final paragraphs have claims that it is not good for humans to be alone or different, but they are to be social. However, as Codemus realizes when unattached from Little Brother, the only thing these humans socialize with is the computer system. Never interacting, never antagonizing, never loitering, these humans cut out inefficiency, but they also cut out genuine, raw interaction. This means they may be safe physically and emotionally, but they can never reach the peaks of human satisfaction that can only come through freedom.
Looking at this society envisioned by Bringsvaerd in a historical context, he depicts a dreary effect of a Marxist authoritarian society, which fits Norwegian politics in the 1960s as a NATO country near Soviet Russia. Bringsvaerd relinquishes that these societies may be efficient in production and lack class strife, but he paints them as lacking the essential qualities that make life worth living. He displays Marxist ideas through state controlled and uniform housing, jobs, and transportation. This is only possible by having extreme governmental control over individual life. Individuals place the society over themselves and there are essentially no class divides. Bringsvaerd depicts Codemus’ and thus Marxist society as aggressively authoritarian. People are dehumanized to merely categories such as “a) male, b) 38 years old… e) normal, f) stable” (Bringsvaerd, p. 771). In this type of “efficient society the police are – as good as – superfluous” (Bringsvaerd, p. 778). Bringsvaerd exposes the police state and loss of personal liberty within the Marxist nations of his time for being incompatible to human emotional nature, as well as violent against actual happiness.
“Codemus” was written by Bringsvaerd criticizing infringements on personal freedom from the overreliance on computer machines as well as authoritarianism in Marxist states. The computer becomes a destructive tool against humanity in order to promote production and a content society. “Codemus” is a warning to us to prevent our manipulation from both machines and propaganda.
(1199 words)
Works Cited
Bringsvaerd, Tor A. “Codemus” (1967). Trans. Steven T. Murray. The World Treasury of Science
Fiction. Ed. David G. Hartwell. 1st ed. Canada: Little, Brown & Company, 1989. 769-781.