You’ve all seen The Truman Show, right? Well, I’m writing a short story where the main character is living in a similar situation (no TV show, though). Imagine that you’re in complete control of Truman’s city and what you want to do is give him clues that will eventually allow him to uncover the truth, preferably by bringing him to a particular building where the truth is revealed. You can’t just serve him the truth on a platter; you specifically want him to work at figuring it out.
Can you think of any good clues you could leave around for him to find? He has to start suspecting something is wrong, and then actively search for the answer, and eventually find it.
So… wait. It’s similiar in that Truman is being watched constantly, every day, every hour? For what purpose–entertainment?
I’d have people actively trying not to look at him when he sees them, and when he pretends to look away the same people staring avidly. Would be creepy as hell and clue him in that something’s up.
Not enough information. How old is she? Does she have extensive enough experience with people to have a basic social/psychological/linguistic template that she can realize, slowly, is being violated by a statistically improbable number of similar departures from it, or was she raised among robots and must discover somehow that she is different from everyone else in a fundamental way? Different rules, different approaches. For example, if she is humanly socialized but at some time was suddenly transported to a city of amazingly lifelike simulacra, then it may occur to her someday that two acquaintances who are unaware of and unrelated to each other always greet her in the exact same way each day, and offhandedly mention the same topic (broccoli, baseball, bar soap) during their brief conversations. From this she may infer that people never do that, that it sounds recorded or programmed, and go from there. If she has never known another “real” person, and there are no easy visual, auditory or tactile clues to help, how long would it take her to realize, for example, that no one she knows seems to ever sleep or even own a bed? Why is her room covered with childhood drawings but every other wall in the city bears, if anything, one or more of the same few pictures? Is there an innocent question she might ask one day which the robots have been inadequately programmed to answer? Example: “Do you love me?” “Of course, my child.” “Do you love (your husband)?” “What a silly question, my dear.” “Do you?” “What a silly question, my dear.” Or she might have been kidnapped at an early age and allowed to keep a mechanical toy which, unknown to her captor/protectors, is broken, and behaves suspiciously like her friend does one day after some accident. The friend has to go to the hospital. The heroine knows about the hospital – she had her tonsils out once. Her friend came to visit her. But she may not return the visit: her friend has to go to a different, “special” hospital. If she doen’t take no for an answer, she might follow her friend, and arrive at the just kind of building you’d want to provide her with answers.
A bigger problem you have is explaining why a city of robots is a more plausible scenario for the situation than any lesser means of the antagonist achieving its goals with respect to your human character. But you didn’t ask about that.
Have a really popular, new hit book, TV show, or movie come out within the story that basically entertains the whole subterfuge plotwise and topically. The heroine or hero of this fiction could have your subject’s same name, and other odd and “coincidental” similarities. You could have the movie or story or whatever constantly brought to her forefront by an inescapable marketing campaign and huge pop presence. A layered 3-dimensionality, the fiction in her life actually being the only truth.
You might also address the idea of a psychotic break that the character might undergo. The experience of discovering the giant lie of her entire life would realistically be quite damaging, comparable maybe to a paranoid schizophrenic break.
If she’s in the city for her own good, and the robots are programmed to look after her, you could always have her run over someone, or accidentally kill someone; then have everyone else immediately forgive her, or cover it up, or claim it’s no big deal.
Of course, if the person gets run over and cogwheels start spinning out, she might get the clue anyway
If she is old enough have her form an attraction to one of the other “people.”
What happens if she tries to leave?
Do any of the people around her die? Or the animals or pets?
Have you seen the series The Prisoner from the sixties? He was sent to a town like this for his own good, but he was aware of it. You might get some ideas from that.
I think a series of highly symbolic “coincidences” tailored to her Psyche could also work quite elegantly towards drawing her towards ultimate discovery. Her curiosity of the unknown and unexplainable could lead her towards slightly larger reveals. Of course the reality is that she could go into a state of shock and denial and stop before she unbinds her reality. This is a more realistic response for most people.
For example, maybe, she might discover robot parts accidentally or discover the robotic recharging stations (I imagine the robots must be recharged or mantained from time to time?).
She might find things strangely amiss and illogical at a local hospital she visits or ends up working at. Surely robots do not have biological needs, bleed, or get sick. These realisms of humanity could only be simulated to an imperfect degree and could make for some really creepy experiences with imagination. Perhaps she sees a freak accident and the victim loses a body part but does not bleed or some other illogical creepieness.
I would say concentrate on areas of setting and story where a robot cannot normally enter in the human experience, namely life and death, and would lead towards subtle distinctions that would make her question existence.
Here’s a clue, Truman- FDR’s gonna die, and Hitler’s gonna surrender. That leaves Japan. You’re gonna have to do something, and do it fast. How about dropping a bomb on them? That always works.
Oh, wait a minute- wrong Truman.
If you have lived your whole life among solely robots I don’t know that their acting like robots is going to be any indicator to her that her world isn’t real. AKA people accept the reality they are presented with. If the robots had many of the characteristics ascribed in this thread, like repeating phrases or not feeling emotions properly the result wouldn’t be that she would realise she was surrounded by robots; she would simply have not had a “human” upbringing and would probably herself be lacking or overadjusting her emotions, etc. etc.
Similarly, if I one day saw the person next to me collapse into a pile of robotic bits, my main thought would be “Well someone had a lot of money to play with” or if it was someone I knew and who had been acting perfectly human for the last several hours I would just be freaked out. Finding out everyone besides me was a robot would just further freak me out until I had adjusted. But at no point would my natural conclusion be that “Oh hey, I must be living in a giant fake city and there must be an invisible wall and something outside of that wall.” Certainly I might flee and bump into said wall, but that would just be a matter of coincidence, not my having actively put together clues to come to such a conclusion. …And of course if I grew up inside the invisible wall and had been taught all through school by the robots that there is an invisible wall keeping people from falling off the edge of the world…
I would say have the robots act like robots on occasion. This will mess with the readers mind when she seems to always take it in stride–plus then when the robots all go ape-shit at the end of the book it won’t be a big, “Hey man you just pulled that out of your ass!” for all of the readers when the robots have magically all gone from perfect humans to cheesy B film death-bots, a la Will Smith’s I, Robot. Clues then would be that there is an outside world.
If you want to have someone actively trying to send her clues… (And assuming the robots are smart enough to spot and hide the clues if they come upon them first.) Perhaps first a series of photos of her growing up, perhaps all from cameras that would be floating in the air. Just to get her trust a little.
I could then say give her a pair of glasses that alternated beteen translucent and opaque at certain frequencies–by fiddling with a dial, the frequency will change. This would be generally unnoticable until you look at something with a refresh rate like a television screen–where the image would disappear or get bars if you matched the refresh rate. And then if you looked at the sky and it was a projected image with a refresh rate…
The technology used to make the world appear real to her will all still be necessarily illusions and tricks–and most importantly is human products. Any device made by a human is made to work under a given minimal set of standards–you just can’t test every conceivable thing a twisted mind could ever want to submit a device to and make it proof against all of them. So if you think about all of the methods that would be employed to keep her both trapped and unaware, you should be able to also find the ways that a person could expose the illusion. After that it’s just a matter of making the device which will break the illusion sufficiently innocuous, getting it to her, hope that she will use it in the right way, and come to the correct conclusion for what she is seeing.
Okay, the other “people” in the city are robots, right?
Do they know they’re robots? Who exist only to provide a society for one human, no less?
What if, say, one or more of them starts to get the idea that something’s awry, or they have a “crisis of faith” about the whole project?
Perhaps an increasing number of robots start acting up, and get “disappeared” by the robot gestapo (or the robot NKVD—your preference), and the heroine traces them back to the secret building? (Maybe’s a concerned citizen, maybe a robot friend or lover got nabbed.)
Alternately, if you want to go with the “Twilight Zone” approach, you could have one of the robots have an epiphany that something’s off in he world, he convinces some of his buddies to investigate the building, they do and find out the truth, and it comes out that one of his friends was the real human, who someone wanted to liberate, but couldn’t talk to directly—so they electronically planted the seeds of ideas in the robo-hero’s mind, betting that he’d convince and take along his human friend. In the end, he was only being used to serve a human, just in a different way. And now he’s obsolete, so…
Well, my house is a mess. The tile floors seem to have little bits of human hair and whatnot. My furnishings are worn. There is the place where I cracked my stereo speakers.
I would suppose that robots would live in houses, and cities that look like a Sear’s showroom. That would certainly be a clue.
I presume robots never tan. I suppose they never get sick. I even guess they do not eat. If they fake eating, could they tell if you switched the sugar for the salt?
One point that I failed to make clear enough: the person who constructed the city of robots deliberately left clues so the main character could figure out that something was wrong. When she starts working it out it isn’t because something’s gone wrong in the city’s operation, but because she’s noticed clues that were specifically left there for her.
Priceguy, I advise you not to do this. Keep working on the story on your own. If you plan to put only your own name (or pseudonym) on it, use your own ideas (or collaborate with somebody and share authorship).
Also, I’m sure you’re aware that your basic premise is strongly reminiscent of a Fred Pohl story. This shouldn’t discourage you, but you’ll want to make sure it’s not too similar. Actually, I hate your premise, and hope you abandon it for something better.
