(Emet) by Lauren Ring (F&SF, July-August 2022)1 opens with Chaya in her countryside home watching a golem dig up dandelions in her garden—these creatures of Jewish folklore are created daily by Chaya and linked to her home network:
After a few false starts, Chaya has the bestowal of life down to a science. Each morning at dawn, she molds assistants from clay, connects them to her wireless network just like any smart watch or Bluetooth dongle, and passes them the day’s variables: a list of chores, with each step painstakingly defined. The golem in charge of the dandelions finished early, but there are others of various sizes lumbering about the yard, carrying eggs from Chaya’s chicken coop and clearing loose stones from her long, winding driveway. p. 67
We learn that Chaya is a teleworker for Millbank Biometrics, a company that is developing facial recognition software. Then, after some backstory about how Chaya’s mother taught her how to make golems and the generalities of Chaya’s job, Chaya virtually attends a company meeting where she and the other employees are given a list of thirty-six protestors that law enforcement want to track:
Confusion spreads across the faces on Chaya’s monitor. If her camera was on, she is sure that she would see the same expression reflected in her own frown. Tracking protesters isn’t exactly what she signed up for when she applied to Millbank. Sure, it’s what their software was ultimately going to be used for, but she wasn’t supposed to have to do it.
“Are there any questions?”
Chaya expects someone to ask what crimes these people committed, or what is going to happen to them when the information is turned over to the police, even though she already knows the dark answer to that. She expects questions about ethics and precedent and nondisclosure. At the very least, she expects someone to ask how they are supposed to check every partial match from every instance of every client’s software without neglecting all their other work.
No one asks any questions, though, not even her manager, so Chaya stays in line and keeps quiet. She sets the thirty-six faces to display on one of her monitors and returns to her code. What else can she do? She’s only one person, after all. pp. 72-72
The next section of the story sees, among other things: (a) Chaya remember a childhood incident when a black friend was arrested on a false positive match (Chaya’s family didn’t do anything before the child was eventually released); (b) Chaya spot one of the thirty-six protestors in a local shop (when they talk to each other, Chaya is told about a surveillance protest in a couple of weeks); (c) Chaya garble the code for one of her golems—this makes it create another one, which in turn creates one more (“like a line of self replicating code”); (d) Chaya’s mother’s death due to cancer and health algorithms; and (e) Chaya realise, when she receives another dubious request from her company, that she is little better than a golem herself.
The story ends (spoiler) with Chaya’s long simmering rebellion, which sees her create self-replicating golems with the same faces as the target individuals, something designed to overload Millbank’s servers (she is helped with this by the man from the shop, who she meets again at the protest, and who gets the dispersing protesters to take a self-replicating golem with them to increase the area where Millbank will record sightings).
I found this story interesting but something of a mixed bag. On the plus side, the gimmick (golems controlled by computer code) is original, and the story is more multi-layered and complex than most but, on the minus side, the golem/computer mix feels a bit odd (a fantasy idea mixed with science fiction), and the politics of the story (surveillance + algorithms = bad) feels a bit simplistic (look at how much surveillance data we give away willingly).
I’d also add that the very last part, where Chaya conflates her actions with the idea of “truth” (“Emet” in Hebrew) doesn’t make much sense as they seem to be more about political values or freedom. Finally, I didn’t understand why “Emet” is the word that brings the golems to life.
*** (Good). 7,800 words. Story link.
1. This won the 2022 World Fantasy Award for best short story. It was also a Nebula finalist.