Have you read or written anything about how Hera and Lovelace are both women who have died via brain damage at the hands of a man who doesn't see her as a person (and even if he did would still have no qualms about murdering her, and has the ranking/authority to do so without charges) and who is confident (yet not certain) that she could/would come back to life? Sorry if this is too heavy.
you know, there's a lot i have to say about this that will probably need to go in another post at some point, but it's really interesting what wolf 359's attempts at being non-gendered reveal about the ways that it still, unavoidably, just because of cultural context, is. and i think this is one piece of that. what hilbert does to hera is likened to a lobotomy, imagery that's evoked again with the concept of a dummy program, which is textually equated to what pryce does to the crew of the hermes. a lot of the cruelty done to hera in particular is done at the hands of doctors / in a medical context. both lovelace and hera are traumatized, marginalized women, and the image of a man with absolute authority over a woman (who he doesn't even see as human) destroying her brain to enforce compliance is visceral.
(as an aside, while most of the worst violence done to hera was done by women, i would argue that carries its own gendered connotations, in the context that hera's womanhood is conditional, and considered less "real", and the uniquely vulnerable position that places her in.)
i say it often, but i do think it's significant that hera and lovelace are both marginalized women who have moments in the text that link their personhood, and defense of their autonomy, to womanhood, specifically: "you are never touching that woman ever again" and "that woman? for the last two weeks, she was the only person who even tried to resist what pryce and cutter were doing to us, so you are going to show her some goddamned respect." it's a sci-fi lens on something very real, and it's why i find it so uncomfortable to see either of them described as nonhuman; they're explorations not of what it means to be non-human, but of what it means to be dehumanized. hera is consistently degendered as a form of dehumanization; kepler does the same to lovelace after he kills her. and they are both characters whose struggles with identity and autonomy are very closely linked with memory. the destruction of the brain is an attempt to destroy the self. hilbert says he "did not murder anyone. deleted program from computer."
(i think it's also worth noting that kepler could've been responsible for hera's death in limbo/memoria, and hilbert would have killed lovelace if she hadn't fled in the shuttle first - both circumstances i'm sure they would've considered regrettable, but necessary. oddly enough, they also both have "humanizing" moments regarding names - hilbert is the only one who calls lovelace by her first name, and kepler keeps using hera's name and pronouns even after pryce orders otherwise. i don't think that changes anything about their actions, but it is an interesting insight into what those two men consider "respect.")
there is definitely something about how confident both kepler and hilbert are, too. hilbert needs hera to keep the hephaestus in operation, and kepler is told by cutter, directly, that they need lovelace for the mission. that there is no failsafe speaks to how certain they are in their own actions; while lovelace and hera do both come back, hilbert and kepler are both ultimately undone by hubris - the same certainty that they are in control of the situation.
and because death is assumed to be temporary, it can be used as a means of control. when hera gets through to lovelace in do no harm, she says: "it's feeling there's nothing you can do because someone has taken your life away from you. because someone thinks so little of you, they can choose whether you live or die. and knowing there's nothing you can do about it. no one should have to live through that. and no one who's gone through it should have the gall to do the same thing to anyone else. ever." what if they can also choose when you live again? what if they discourage you from even calling it death? death is something permanent, something natural, something human - don't be so dramatic. think of it as "decommissioned." to end the program in box 953, someone has to shoot and kill eris with a gun. that version of her is gone forever. a "symbolic gesture." i think it's impossible to ignore the ways that the dear listeners' relationship to the duplicates they create mirrors goddard's treatment of their AIs. lovelace's and hera's humanity are fundamentally linked by the text.
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