The Life of the World to Come - Kage Baker

The danger of just grabbing books in series whenever I find them is I end up reading things out of order. So I’ve missed a chapter or two in the saga since Garden of Iden. Mendoza had met another man, an agent for some secret, British order in the 19^th Century, and recognized him as her lover Nicholas reborn. Except this guy wound up dead, too, killed by American agents after a secret he was guarding. One which helped lead to the creation of the Company, Dr. Zeus Incorporated. Except the secret was one of Dr. Zeus Incorporated’s secret facilities they have scattered throughout time. So the company facilitated its own creation, because history said it would, I guess.

Mendoza had responded to the loss of Edward by ripping the six agents limb from limb, and was for this crime sentenced to live on an island, alone, 150,000 years in the past. That’s where she’s been for three millennia, when the book begins, and her lover’s next reincarnation comes crashing down in a stolen time shuttle. The remainder of the book is split between two threads that gradually weave together. 

 

One thread is the life of Alec, the newest incarnation, born in the 24^th Century, as he discovers he has some special skills at a young age. Skills he’s able to use to make an innocent cybernetic playmate into something much more, possibly the most advanced A.I. mankind had ever seen (though Alex didn’t know he did it at the time). The A.I., which Alec names Captain Henry Morgan, after the rum his father enjoyed (illegally, the future having become an even more pathetic place than the one envisioned in Demolition Man), has two goals, to grow stronger, and to make Alec happy. They spend a lot of time playing at pirate, smuggling illicit goods like tea and chocolate to wealthy people, while the Captain gathers more information and computing power, and brings more and more funds into Alec’s possession.

The other thread is three scientists who work for the Company, and who fancy themselves keepers of some great tradition going back to Tolkein and C.S. Lewis. They’re twits, but twits smart enough, and with enough leeway, to be able to commission a project to build a new operative of sorts for Dr. Zeus. Someone with the capability for violence, but a desire to do good with it, and the ability to inspire others. They merely needed a suitable mother to secretly implant, and then use the Company’s various agents to guide these creations to their heroic destiny. The three would be, Nicholas, Edward, and Alec. And so things begin to intertwine. Due to some nature of time, they learn about the things sequentially, so they learn Nicholas’ fate first (that he was burned at the stake, and became involved with Mendoza). Later they learn of Edward’s death, and the fact he was involved with Mendoza. Being the worst sort of geeks, they conclude this darn woman is what’s throwing off their great heroes, so they’re the ones who have her consigned to the prehistoric prison. What they don’t realize, though, is all the guilt complex and moral fiber they’ve tried to have drilled into Alec is going to be turned against them (and Dr. Zeus) once Alec and the Captain understand what’s been done to the boy. And they still can’t keep him away from that botanist Mendoza!

I hadn’t expected Mendoza to be such a secondary character in the book, but it worked out OK. The whole thing about these three nostalgists playing at being gods and creators, but doing so with real lives, rather than just writing a story, and then their consternation when their creation doesn’t behave as planned, that was amusing, when it wasn’t appalling. It’s funny because they so clearly expect it all to go like in the stories, like they can just conjure up that Hero’s Journey Campbell wrote about if they create the right trauma, but they don’t realize there’s a million other things that can happen. In origin stories, we usually only see what’s relevant to the creation of the hero, and everything we see leads to that point. Peter Parker is a bullied nerd, but one with loving parental figures. He gets the spider-powers, and says to heck with helping anyone other than May and Ben. Thus the burglar escapes, thus Ben dies, thus Peter becomes a hero.

In real life, it’s rarely so straightforward, and Rutherford, Chatterji, and Foxy don’t get that. Of course, it’s also appalling, because they have no real concern for how they screw up people’s lives. All three of their boys have some serious issues, and their mothers don’t fare well at all, either. But that doesn’t matter to the creators, greater good and all that. It’s just moving pieces around on a game board to them (they even used 20-sided dice to determine the traits they’re going to have encoded into him), no matter what higher motive they try to ascribe to it. They do make impressively satisfying villains, if only because their indifference is so infuriating.

And there’s this looming question of the Silence, the worrying fact the Company never receives any transmissions from further in the future than 2355, and what that must mean, though Mendoza was certain Alec is the cause. But there’s also the question of who is at the head of Dr. Zeus Incorporated, and what they know. Because even when the three scientists think things have gone awry, when Alec is behaving in a manner they believe most improper, it still seems to be working the way somebody higher up wants it to. I’m half-convinced Alec will find Mendoza again, they’ll storm the halls of the Company, throw open the door in the highest tower, and find themselves, running the show, bringing everything to the point it all gets torn down. But I’ll have to wait and see.

There's one particularly disturbing thing, and it's that Nicholas, Edward, and Alec, all seem to have some superhuman persuasive ability, and that all three became aware of it over time. I'm not sure if it's hypnosis or telepathy, but it's along those lines, and all three of them seemed to have used it extensively to get women into bed with them, and none of them seemed terribly concerned with that. Alec specifically dismissed it as him making sure they both had a good time, so what's the harm? And all three of them realize they used it on Mendoza. Which is extremely unnerving, and kind of throws the whole "doomed romance" aspect into a different light. All three insist that they truly fell in love with her, and she with them, but after you learn that, can the reader take that at face value? I'm not sure what Baker was going for with that development. Another example of how the scientists failed to recognize how easily the traits they thought a hero needed could be used unscrupulously? A commentary on all the stories where the main love interest is seemingly powerless before the hero's magnetic personality? 

‘”Every influence must be used to indoctrinate him toward a life of service to humanity, you see.” Rutherford stood and began to pace about, rattling the dice in his pocket. “Then, we’ll throw him out alone in the world! Start him on the hero’s journey. He’ll have no family, so all his emotional ties and loyalties will come to settle on those values he’s been taught to hold dear. We’ll see what he does.”

“Here now,” said Ellsworth-Howard, who had only just sorted through the whole speech. “Isn’t that a little hard on him? You’re not only making him feel bad about something he didn’t do, you’re making him feel bad about something that didn’t even happen.”

“I believe churches used to call it original sin,” agreed Rutherford, looking crafty. “But what does it matter, if it serves to make him a better man? If he could understand, I’m sure he’d thank us. I can’t wait to see how he’ll turn out, can you?”

Chatterji raised his glass in salute. “I think you’re right Rutherford. This must be what the gods feel like! I report to the committee on Thursday. You’ll get your authorization for raw materials then, Foxy.”’