The novella “Runtime” by S.B. Divya was published for the first time in 2016.
Marmeg Guinto’s dream is to win the Minerva Sierra Challenge, an endurance competition for cyborgs. Her implants are makeshift, sometimes literally scavenged in the trash, but she sees them as the only hope for a better life for herself and for her siblings. Facing competitors with new and more advanced systems is only one of the difficulties in a race full of unexpected events.
“Runtime” begins as the typical story of a person who grew up in difficult conditions and seeks revenge, also against the people who opposed her dream. Mary Margaret “Marmeg” Guinto is considered a second-class citizen and her mother wants her to go to nursing school at all costs. Her story soon begins to show complexity and ambiguity that go against the clichés one might encounter in this type of plot.
For Marmeg, the difficulties in the Minerva Sierra Challenge are due to the fact that her implants are of low quality and she has no team to support her but what becomes a sort of quest also begins to reveal unexpected problems. Each new situation puts Marmeg in front of a choice that isn’t easy due to the repercussions that she will face even after the competition. These are situations that have ethical and moral implications as well and show the various aspects of the protagonist’s personality.
Food for thought is also offered by the fact that S.B. Divya includes several references to the American society of that future in Marmeg’s personal story but again goes beyond clichés. That society is the projection of the one existing today with all its inequalities and discrimination but the author avoids preaching and easy contrasts between the privileged rich and the poor who have to make do with scraps.
These elements make “Runtime” a story focused above all on the human and social side but future technologies that can allow cyborgs to become stars are still important. S.B. Divya explains what you need to know about these technologies to understand the story, and provides pro-implant and anti-implant points of view. It’s an argument that intertwines with that relating to gender since in that future physical changes make the male/female duality somewhat obsolete. Every new technology, cybernetic or biological, ends up spreading bringing opportunities and risks, and the author exposes both.
The nuanced story is the great strength of “Runtime” and this leads to developments that can be surprising. It shows the difficulties that a person who follows their dream has to face, in the future like today, when the main problem is obtaining the necessary means without having the economic resources. It’s not a dystopia with tones that are always dark nor a comforting story for the people who find themselves in a situation similar to Marmeg’s. Its complexity offers a lot of food for thought about various important themes and for this reason, I recommend reading it.
