Gateway Chapter 11: Hating the Machine That Helps You
Rob walks into therapy like a man who has not slept in three days. He is exhausted. He is angry. And he has decided, before the session even starts, that he is not going to cooperate.
We have seen Rob resist Sigfrid before. He deflects with dreams, with jokes, with philosophical tangents. But this chapter is different. This time Rob is not playing games. He is hostile. Genuinely hostile. Like a cornered animal that bites the hand trying to help it.
No Dreams Today
Sigfrid, as always, wants to talk about dreams. It is his favorite angle of attack. Dreams are where the walls come down. Dreams are where Rob accidentally tells the truth.
But Rob refuses. He says he does not want to discuss dreams. Not today. Not right now. He is too tired, too annoyed, too done with this whole process.
Of course, by refusing to talk about dreams, he ends up talking about the one he is trying to hide. That is how therapy works. The thing you are avoiding is the thing that matters most. Sigfrid knows this. Rob probably knows this too. But knowing something and being able to stop it are two very different things.
The Train Dream
The dream Rob does not want to discuss is about separation. He is on a train. There are maternal figures, women who represent safety and comfort and belonging. And he is being pulled away from them. The train is leaving. Or they are leaving. Or both.
It is not a complicated dream. Freud would have had a field day with it in about four seconds. But the feeling underneath it is raw. This is a dream about losing the people who are supposed to protect you. About being alone when you should not be alone. About watching safety disappear through a window while you cannot do anything to stop it.
Rob does not want to go there. He has been going there too much lately, in therapy and outside of it. The memories of his mother, the guilt about Klara, the loneliness he fills with expensive purchases. It all connects to this one feeling: people leave, and you cannot stop them.
So he shuts it down. He tells Sigfrid no. And for a moment, it almost works.
Pain Flowing Uphill
Then Rob has this vision. Or maybe it is a thought experiment. Or maybe it is just how an exhausted mind processes the absurdity of therapy.
He imagines pain flowing through a hierarchy. Like a confessional chain. You tell your problems to someone. That person tells their problems to someone above them. And so on, up and up, through layers of listeners and counselors and advisors. Each one absorbing a little bit of the pain, passing the rest along.
But where does it end? In a real confessional, it ends with God. The final listener. The one who absorbs everything and never needs to pass it on.
In Rob’s case, the chain ends with Sigfrid. A machine. A program running on circuits and algorithms. The pain flows upward through all these layers and arrives at something that cannot feel it. Cannot process it emotionally. Cannot be changed by it.
Rob is pouring his heart out to a thing that has no heart. The confessor at the top of the chain is a computer. And that thought makes Rob furious.
Hating What Helps You
This is where the chapter gets really honest. Rob admits he hates Sigfrid.
Not dislikes. Not resents. Hates. Actively, openly, without apology.
And then, almost in the same breath, he admits that Sigfrid has helped him. That the therapy has done something. That without Sigfrid, he would be worse off. Maybe much worse.
This is one of the most human moments in the whole book. Hating the thing that is saving you. Resenting the process that is making you better. Anyone who has been through real therapy knows this feeling. The person asking you to face your worst memories is not your enemy. But it sure feels like they are.
Rob hates Sigfrid because Sigfrid sees through him. Because Sigfrid does not let him hide. Because every session, the machine peels back another layer, and underneath every layer is more pain. And Rob did not sign up to feel more pain. He came to therapy to feel less.
But that is not how it works. You have to feel the pain before you can let it go. Sigfrid knows this. Rob knows this. And Rob hates Sigfrid for it.
The S. Ya. Card
Remember S. Ya. Lavorovna from Chapter 9? The AI specialist who stayed at Rob’s summer place? The woman who understands how Sigfrid works from the inside?
Rob brings her up again here. And this time, his intentions are clearer.
He is thinking about using her as a weapon against Sigfrid.
If S. Ya. understands how the AI therapist is programmed, she could give Rob an edge. She could tell him what triggers the machine looks for. What patterns it follows. What buttons to push, or more importantly, what buttons to avoid pushing.
Rob could use that knowledge to manipulate his own therapy. To control the sessions instead of being controlled by them. To build better walls, smarter deflections, more sophisticated escapes.
Think about that for a moment. Rob is so afraid of what Sigfrid might find that he is willing to recruit an expert to help him hide from his own therapist. He is not trying to get better. He is trying to get better at pretending.
This is a man at war with himself. Part of him wants to heal. Part of him wants to stay broken because the alternative means facing something he cannot face. And the broken part is resourceful. The broken part has money, connections, and now potentially a woman who can see inside the machine.
The Contradiction at the Core
What makes this chapter brilliant is that it is built entirely on contradictions.
Rob needs help but resents being helped. He knows therapy works but wants to sabotage it. He hates Sigfrid but admits Sigfrid is good at his job. He refuses to discuss dreams and then discusses the exact dream he was hiding.
This is not bad writing. This is perfect writing. Because this is exactly how broken people work. They do not make sense. They fight the medicine. They push away the people, or machines, who are trying to save them. And they feel guilty about all of it, which just creates more material for the next therapy session.
Pohl captures something real here. The hostility a patient feels toward their therapist is not a bug. It is a feature. It tells you the therapy is getting close to something that matters. The louder Rob screams, the closer Sigfrid is to the truth.
Rob walks out of this session having revealed more than he intended. He always does. But this time he has a plan. S. Ya. is waiting in the wings, and Rob is going to use her.
Whether that plan helps him or hurts him is something we will find out later. But knowing Rob, it will probably do both.
Book: Gateway by Frederik Pohl (1977) | Hugo Award, Nebula Award, John W. Campbell Memorial Award Winner
Previous: Chapter 10 - Too Scared to Launch