Gateway Chapter 7: Fat Kid, Lonely Kid, Broken Kid
After the Blue Hell party and the casino shock of Chapter 6, Pohl drops us right back on the therapy couch. And this time, Sigfrid goes deep. Really deep. This is the chapter where Rob’s armor starts to crack in places he did not even know existed.
Why Did You Stay in the Mines?
Sigfrid asks a simple question. Why did Rob stay in the food mines for so long if he hated the work?
Rob’s answer is honest and uncomfortable. He calls it a death wish. Not the dramatic kind. Not standing on a ledge kind. More like the slow, grinding kind where you know each year that passes makes escape harder, but you cannot find the energy to leave. Nothing out there seemed better enough to justify the risk of change.
If you have ever stayed in a job you hate because the alternatives felt worse, you know exactly what Rob is talking about. It is not laziness. It is a specific kind of paralysis where the fear of the unknown beats the misery of the known.
Rob had what he calls compensations. His girlfriend Sylvia. His mother, while she was still alive. A few friends. Sailplaning on weekends. Little things that made the mine tolerable. Not good. Just tolerable.
But Sigfrid does not let him hide behind the word “compensations.” The AI keeps pushing.
The Fat Kid
This is where the session takes a turn.
Sigfrid steers the conversation toward childhood. And Rob starts talking about being a kid. The picture he paints is not pretty.
He was fat. He was lonely. He was afraid of other children. He spent most of his time alone, watching TV and eating. His mother spoiled him with food because food was easier than figuring out what was actually wrong.
Pohl does not spend a lot of words on this but every sentence hits hard. Rob was not the cool kid. Not the brave kid. Not even the weird kid who had his own thing going. He was the kid who sat alone and ate because nobody wanted to play with him, and he did not know how to make them want to.
If you grew up as the odd one out, you feel this in your chest. Pohl writes it without drama or self-pity. Just facts. I was fat. I was scared. I was alone. And that makes it hurt more.
The Teddy-Talker
Then a memory surfaces. Rob had a teddy-talker as a child. Some kind of talking stuffed animal, a toy companion.
And when he remembers it, he starts crying.
Not dramatic movie crying. The kind of crying that surprises you. The kind where your body decides to cry before your brain gives permission. One second he is talking about a childhood toy, the next second the tears are just there.
This is such a Pohl move. He does not build to the emotional moment with big dramatic speeches. He just places a small, specific detail in front of you. A talking teddy bear. A lonely kid. And lets you do the math.
Rob had a toy for a friend because he did not have real friends. And now, decades later, he is paying a computer to listen to him. The teddy-talker grew up into Sigfrid von Shrink. The pattern never changed. He still cannot connect with real people, so he connects with machines.
Going Down
Here is where the chapter gets intense.
Sigfrid starts probing the phrase “going down.” It comes up in therapy as a loaded phrase. It has layers. Going down into the mines. Going down in a Heechee ship. Going down on someone. Going down as in falling apart.
Sigfrid pushes on this. And Rob does not just get defensive. He explodes.
He starts screaming the words. “Going down, going down, going down!” Over and over. He crumples onto the mat on the floor. It is a full breakdown. Not anger. Not sadness. Something deeper. The kind of breakdown where all the walls come down at once and you do not even know which pain you are feeling because they have all merged into one thing.
The phrase carries sexual shame. Emotional fragmentation. Memories of the mines. Memories of what happened in space. It is all tangled together, and when Sigfrid pulls one thread, the whole mess comes loose.
This is the most raw we have seen Rob. In previous therapy chapters, he was clever. He deflected. He played games with Sigfrid. Here, there is no game. He is on the floor, screaming a phrase that means everything and nothing at the same time.
The Algorithm
Pohl includes a block of computer code in this chapter. It shows Sigfrid’s therapeutic algorithm. How the AI decides what to probe, what to leave alone, when to push harder and when to back off.
It is a brilliant detail. Right after showing us the most human, most vulnerable moment Rob has had, Pohl reminds us that the thing witnessing this breakdown is running software. Sigfrid does not feel sympathy. Sigfrid processes inputs and calculates optimal therapeutic responses.
And yet. The machine got Rob to a place no human therapist might have reached. Because Sigfrid does not get tired. Does not get bored. Does not get scared by screaming. The AI just sits there, processing, waiting, always ready with the next question.
There is something both comforting and horrifying about that.
The Expensive Substitutes
One more thing this chapter reveals. Rob talks about how he spends money now. Full Medical Plus. The best food. Top-shelf everything. He is rich now, and he uses expensive luxuries to fill the same hole he used to fill with TV dinners and a teddy-talker.
The method changed. The pattern did not. When Rob was a fat kid, food was the substitute for human connection. When Rob is a rich adult, luxury is the substitute. Different price tag. Same emptiness.
Sigfrid sees this pattern. Rob sees it too, on some level. But seeing a pattern and breaking it are two very different things.
What Matters Here
Chapter 7 is a therapy chapter, which means no action, no ships, no Gateway. But it might be the most important chapter so far. It shows us who Rob was before Gateway, before the mines, before everything. A scared, lonely, fat kid who learned early that real human connection was too hard, and substitutes were easier.
Every choice Rob makes later in the book connects back to this kid. The guy who signs the Gateway contract without reading it? The kid who stayed alone because trying felt worse than not trying. The guy who falls for Klara but cannot hold on? The kid who hugged a toy because people were too unpredictable.
Pohl is building a character from the inside out. And the inside is a mess.
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