I know this sounds like lunacy, but…

I kind of unwittingly fell in love with Duncan Jones’ film Moon. The movie is a snapshot of character Sam Bell’s life as the sole inhabitant of the Earth’s moon. There, Sam spends his days mining a clean-burning energy (Helium-3) for consumption back on the Earth. His only companion as he lives and works is an AI computer reminiscent of 2001’s Hal-9000, called GERTY… that is until, one day, Sam finds a mysterious figure on the perimeter station, who appears to be an exact replica of himself.

I exited the theatre I knew that I enjoyed the movie, but it took me a while to realize why I was so completely charmed: Some hours later, as I lay in bed reviewing the movie in my mind, I slowly understood the films storyline as a twisted mirror of my current state of life. I am a diabetic. I wear an insulin pump. I have met others with the same device, but they are not a regular part of my life… Living with a machine attached to you for 24 hours a day seven days a week is a bizarre state of being and it sometimes gets to feeling as lonely as living on the moon. I can communicate this to others who lack this attachment, but it is never the same as occupying that lonely sphere. Like Sam Bell, I do have conversations with myself about life on veritable lunar landscape and, like Sam Bell, my only other companion is a mechanized helper. Although, of course, my helper lacks the self-consciousness of GERTY…

Or, does it? As I lay reviewing the movie in my mind I had a very strange epiphany- I seem to have developed this unconscious belief that my insulin pump just might be a sentient being. I know consciously that it does not calculate and calibrate my blood sugars without my input, but I do have this worry that it has wants and needs of its own that are unmet either because of my ignorance of machine-life or, perhaps, because of some unimaginable language barrier. And then I realized that I feel guilty about all the times I’ve yelled at it to shut the f@*! up when it would belligerently beep at me to remind me of the need to test my blood sugars and/or replace its insulin cartridge. After all, it was only trying to help… just like GERTY.

Perhaps, at this point, you are wondering if I have lost my mind. But, in truth, I think that people need stories- whether in film, books or subconscious attachments to (in)animate objects. These narratives sometimes instill less than equitable ideologies, but sometimes they can also help people make some sense out of what can be the frightening and senseless make-up of life. So, let me explain- I saw this film little film called Moon and I fell in love with it, because it somehow made me like my cyborg self a little more than I did before…