Wandering Meditations

Children of Ruin

8 min read

Summary

  • this book switches back-and-forth between two different plots: the Past and the Present. Eventually they converge

Past

  • this timeline seems to take place at the same time as Children of Time
  • some of the characters in the past timeline include:
    • Yusuf Baltiel: commander of the terraforming expedition
    • Disra Senkovi: scientist who created a super-intelligent Octopus race that eventually inhabits a newly discovered planet
    • Irma Lante: a biological scientist / doctor
    • Gav Lortisse: explorer
    • Rahni: not really important
  • these 5 characters make up the terraforming expedition crew

Summary:

  • the expedition find 2 planets worthy of exploring
    • the first is an ice-planet that they terraform into an ocean planet
      • they call this Damascus
    • the second is a planet already teeming with wildlife
      • they call this Nod
  • Nod is home of many species, including a poisonous turtle
  • Senkovi is busy with his work on ensuring Damascus becomes terraformed and his octopus are ready to be deployed. He’s up on a spaceship in space orbiting these new planets
    • he also works on ensuring the intellectual evolution of the octopus is sped up
  • the rest of the crew go down to Nod
  • Lortisse gets infected by the parasite coming from the turtle. Eventually this makes him go crazy. The parasite is “alive” inside him and controlling him.
  • Lortisse infects Rahni and Lante, but the 3 kill him.
  • Eventually Rahni and Lante go crazy and go after Baltiel. Baltiel kills them with an axe
  • Baltiel then heads back up to the spaceship that is in orbit and starts to communicate with Senkovi telling him what happened
  • Senkovi quickly realizes Baltiel is also infected. At this point the octopus race is already on Damascus and evolving, making good progress.
  • Senkovi sends a signal to his octopus to shoot down Baltiel’s spaceship, which gets shot down into Damascus (I think)
  • Senkovi is the sole survivor of the expedition crew
  • Senkovi lives out the rest of his day alone, observing his octopi creation from high above in orbit, attempting to understand their language and communication. He never does fully decipher their language, but he still manages to send them various commands and communications, guiding them, educating them, etc. Eventually he passes away.
  • the octopi create a monument in one of their ocean cities for Senkovi after his death. The octopi citizens treat it with “unusual tenderness and respect” - p. 371
  • Baltiel’s spaceship is still on Damascus in the middle of the ocean. Senkovi managed to communicate to the octopi that this spaceship must be avoided at all times.
    • NOTE: I’m actually not sure if this is Baltiel’s spaceship or another ship from Nod. Regardless, it doesn’t change the story. Both spacecraft would’ve been from Nod.
  • Despite the octopi not knowing fully why, they obey Senkovi’s command and even after Senkovi dies, the succeeding generations of octopi learn not to get near the spaceship for there is some unknown danger lying there.
    • NOTE: I wrote about this in my analysis below
  • The past storyline ends here

Present

  • this part of the story kicks off directly after Children of Time
  • there is at least a few thousand years between the Past and Present storylines
  • some of the characters in the present timeline include:
    • Avrana Kern: the human turned AI/machine thing from Children of Time
    • Portia: spider, linguistics expert, works with Helena on translating between spider and human language
    • Helena: human, linguistics expert, works with Portia on translating between spider and human language
    • Bianca: commander of the spiders
    • Viola: captain after Bianca dies
    • Zaine: another human aboard. An adventurer.
    • Fabian: spider, works with Meshner on medical experiments.
    • Meshner: human, works with Fabian on medical experiments.
      • he is a test subject of one of his and Fabian’s projects. They put something in Meshner’s head that will help him receive “Understandings” that the spiders have (honestly I don’t even know how to explain it)
      • his brain is somehow connected to Kern the AI

Summary

  • this story kicks off at the end of Children of Time where the spider-human civilization hears a signal coming from away. They build the Voyager spacecraft and embark on a journey.
    • destination: Nod and Damascus
  • once they arrive near the planets, they send a smaller ship into the solar system (or closer to the planets). This ship is called Lightfoot.
  • there are other ships that are trying to attack them. Eventually they back off
  • the two side try to communicate to each other but it proves difficult (they are talking to octopus!)
  • eventually Helena picks up on a signal in the communication, one the seems human: Disra Senkovi
  • Helena and Portia are captured by the octopus. They have access to an archive of digital files left by Senkovi where Senkovi attempted to decipher the octopus language. He couldn’t fully decipher it.
  • Eventually Helena and Portia decipher enough to communicate at a very basic level in a broken way.
  • the octopus seem to have a preconceived notion that the humans are bad, likely because they have had a bad experience in the past
  • Helena and Portia discover a recording in the archives of Yusuf Baltiel going crazy. They discover the truth about the planet Nod. They want to urgently send a message to the Lightfoot because they know they are trying to get to Nod. They realize the octopus know about the dangers of this planet, especially the dangers of what happens to humans who get infected, and they do NOT want that to come to Damascus. This is likely why they are so hostile to the octopus.
  • Zaine and Meshner are sent into the dead space station. It seems Meshner get infected by the Nod virus. Zaine gets out but Meshner gets left behind.
  • Portia discovers some records from the octopi. Turns out they shot down the Lightfoot and it went spiraling into the planet below (Nod)
  • Viola, Fabian, Artifabian, and Zaine are stuck on Nod, meanwhile Helena and Portia are still captured by the Octopi. Helena continues her work on deciphering their language
  • Meshner is now infected by the Nod parasites. He becomes like an AI thing, similar to Kern. Eventually, Kern gives herself up and gives all her computing resources so Meshner can live
    • Kern still lives on in other “instances”, like on the Voyager and back on their home planet
  • Helena and Portia convince the Octopi to save their friends on Damascus
  • Meshner/Kern communicates to Helena and the Octopi and tell them that the parasites are not bad, they simply want “adventure”. They make some sort of agreement
    • I’m not 100% I understand, but this is what I got from it: Right now Damascus is uninhabited (the Octopi have been living in orbit for a long time) due to the outbreak of the infection that happened generations prior
    • the Octopi are convinced by Meshner/Kern that shooting a rocket, loaded with the parasites, into Damascus may heal the planet, so that’s what they do.
    • The Octopi save the Lightfoot from Nod
  • Now, the Octopi are living in space on their orbs alongside the inhabitants of the Lightfoot, Helena, Portia, Viola, Fabian, Zaine, and Artifabian
    • they are waiting for the Voyager to come (or for them to go to the Voyager to regroup)
  • Noah was an Octopi who lived generations ago (they talk about him earlier in the book). He created a device (basically warp-drive / space manipulation) that they decide to test out so they can further explore space
  • The present storyline ends here

Future

  • this is the epilogue that is only a few pages long
  • the narrator is an unknown character

Summary

  • sometime in the future, the octopi, humans, and spiders are traveling together, discovering new planets and solar systems
  • a message is received by the ship, it’s an urgent message: a planet has been discovered with signs of an unknown civilization, or rather, a former civilization (it seems uninhabited)
  • the ship travels there and the crew split up into 2 groups, one group continues their space exploration, the other group goes down to the planet to excavate and research this unknown dead civilization
  • BOOK DONE

Analysis

  • “Senkovi’s prohibition holds. The deformed tomb that is the last shuttle out of Nod remains, crusted with sea life, drifting with weed, half buried in the mud. The expansion of Paul’s civilization moves only away from it; the sea for miles around is untouched, a forbidden zone within easy reach of countless infinitely curious octopuses held back only by the word of one dead human. - p. 373
    • I find this very interesting. It reminds me of the way we look at religion now a days. A lot of people, especially those born within a religion, and even more so for those born in an area that has very little religion education (or any education for that matter), view religion in a similar way as how the octopi view the forbidden zone / Nod shuttle.
    • The octopi don’t know why they are avoiding it. They just follow the words of Senkovi, the “dead human”, their “creator”. They blindly trust him in a sense. This is especially strange because the octopi, in many passages, are described as being extremely curious creatures, questioning everything, constantly experimenting, etc. “They question everything. Save for one thing.” p. 373, these 2 sentences are written right before the long quote above.

Reflections

Great book, but not as good as the first book Children of Time.

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