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A review by dapplezee
Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson
5.0
Jared is a bot. He's also a dentist, because dentistry is most efficient when practiced with no empathy whatsoever! Ha!
Jared has a lot of thoughts. Humans are hard to understand, but he has plenty of time to think. Most likely while filling cavities and doing root canals.
Jared makes a point of taking his full lunch hour, out of the office, so that he's not available for walk-in appointments. Humans! He cannot!
One day Jared is enjoying his "nutritionally-balanced bag lunch" at the bridge when a number appears in his mind. It counts down, every day, by the number of patients' teeth he's seen that day.
Jared is having an existential crisis!
This is, of course, impossible.
“And as a bot I am specifically designed and programmed to be incapable of feelings. I can no more feel than a toaster! Ha!
“BTW that is a hilarious joke because the programming language I run on was in fact first developed many years ago for use in the domestic toaster.”
His office-neighbor, a human doctor, gives him a "Feelings Wheel" to consider and prescribes him a course of watching old movies.
Jared's quirky observations are one of the highlights of this book. It's all new to him, this absurd idea of feelings. Good and bad, it’s all glorious.
“The next morning a human cut in front of me in line at the coffee shop. I felt a vengeful urge to trip him, but restrained myself. This gave me a surge of regret that was far less enjoyable than my first encounter with it. But when the human’s ongoing hurry then made him anyway stumble and spill his coffee all over himself, I felt a deep and warm glow that remained with me all day!
“10/10 this was the best feeling I had ever experienced, and yet I could not locate it on my Feelings Wheel. It seemed to be a combination of ‘gratitude’, ‘mischief’, and ‘delight’. Dr Glundenstein later told me the word for this feeling was ‘ schadenfreude’.”
Jared is far more than a toaster. His journey into the human experience is sometimes joyous, sometimes heartbreaking, and 100% wonderful.
Jared has a lot of thoughts. Humans are hard to understand, but he has plenty of time to think. Most likely while filling cavities and doing root canals.
Jared makes a point of taking his full lunch hour, out of the office, so that he's not available for walk-in appointments. Humans! He cannot!
One day Jared is enjoying his "nutritionally-balanced bag lunch" at the bridge when a number appears in his mind. It counts down, every day, by the number of patients' teeth he's seen that day.
Jared is having an existential crisis!
This is, of course, impossible.
“And as a bot I am specifically designed and programmed to be incapable of feelings. I can no more feel than a toaster! Ha!
“BTW that is a hilarious joke because the programming language I run on was in fact first developed many years ago for use in the domestic toaster.”
His office-neighbor, a human doctor, gives him a "Feelings Wheel" to consider and prescribes him a course of watching old movies.
Jared's quirky observations are one of the highlights of this book. It's all new to him, this absurd idea of feelings. Good and bad, it’s all glorious.
“The next morning a human cut in front of me in line at the coffee shop. I felt a vengeful urge to trip him, but restrained myself. This gave me a surge of regret that was far less enjoyable than my first encounter with it. But when the human’s ongoing hurry then made him anyway stumble and spill his coffee all over himself, I felt a deep and warm glow that remained with me all day!
“10/10 this was the best feeling I had ever experienced, and yet I could not locate it on my Feelings Wheel. It seemed to be a combination of ‘gratitude’, ‘mischief’, and ‘delight’. Dr Glundenstein later told me the word for this feeling was ‘ schadenfreude’.”
Jared is far more than a toaster. His journey into the human experience is sometimes joyous, sometimes heartbreaking, and 100% wonderful.