Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Synopsis
A world far from Earth is terraformed to be the site of a great experiment in evolution, but it goes horribly wrong. Over the next few thousand years, what rises from this world are not intelligent monkeys, as was planned, but a civilization of large and intelligent spiders.
An Ark ship carrying the last remnants of humanity is in search of a habitable planet to call home. They find the perfect planet, but it's being guarded by a scientist of old who is fiercely defending her experiment. When the humans can't find another habitable planet to call home, this spider-dominated world becomes their last hope, and civilizations must collide.
Content Warnings: Spiders and other creepy crawlies
A Plot Summary So Long and Detailed That You Are Better Off Just Reading the Book - Spoilers!
Genesis
On the Brin 2 facility, Doctor Avrana Kern is about to launch the Exultation Program. Two containers are about to be sent down to a planet terraformed specifically for this experiment. The first is full of monkeys, the second a flask containing a nanovirus that when released, will infect the monkeys and expedite their evolution and their journey to enlightenment. Howver, things go wrong at the last moment. A man named Sering had been chosen to be the sole occupant of the Sentry Pod— a satellite that will stay behind and monitor the experiment, transmitting mathematical problems down to the planet as a test. Sering would be kept under suspension until solutions to those problems were transmitted back, initiating the next part of the Exultation Program. However, Sering has an ulterior motive in being a part of this experiment. He is a member of Non Ultra Natura— No Greater than Nature —an extremist group that is against the exultation of other creatures. He initiates the destruction of the Brin 2 facility to put a stop to the experiment. Kern is the sole survivor of this attack, as she escaped into the Sentry Pod and launched herself far enough away to be safe from the blast. The barrel of monkeys is destroyed, burning up in the atmosphere of the planet. Kern activates a distress signal, and goes into suspension, instructing Eliza, the Sentry Pod's computer, to wake her when rescue comes.
On the planet, a small jumping spider— call her Portia —is hunting a much larger spider. A male of her species appears, and while she should instinctively decide to eat him rather than take on the larger, more dangerous prey, something tells her that they are the same. They work together to take down the larger spider. Kern's nanovirus made it to the planet. And though it didn't reach it's intended targets, it is working.
Doctor Kern wakes up from suspension. Eliza needs her to make a command decision. When Kern learns that she had only been in suspension for fourteen years— too short a time for her distress signal to be received and for a ship to travel all the way to Kern's World from Earth —she is concerned, but hopes that a ship had already been on route after someone on Earth discovered that Sering was an agent of Non Ultra Natura. But Eliza informs her that the signals she is receiving aren't from a ship, it's a change in the transmissions from Earth. They had all died out. Upon listening to the last transmissions, twenty years out of date due to the distance. Kern and Eliza determine that a war had broken out on Earth, destroying life on the planet, and that a transmission carrying a virus was the last thing broadcast from Earth. The virus infected and disabled any system that recieved it, meaning that all the ships, space stations, and colonies would have been wiped out. The Sentry Pod also recieved this signal, but it survived because the virus wasn't designed to take out an uploaded personality construct, which Kern had become while in suspension. Kern goes back under suspension, telling Eliza to wake her if rescue arrives— which will now never happen —or when the monkeys contact her— which also won't happen because they all burned up in the atmosphere of Kern's World. Kern expects to sleep forever.
Pilgrimage
Holsten Mason wakes up from suspension on the Gilgamesh, an ark ship carrying the last remnants of humanity as cargo that have been in suspension for two thousand years. Most of the cargo are to remain in suspension until a new home is found for humanity, but a few members— the key crew —are designated to be woken up occasionally to make sure the ship is in running order and to address anomalies. Lain, the chief engineer, has woken Holsten because they have detected a signal. Holsten is a member of the key crew, but he is a classicist, his specialty is knowing things about the Old Empire— which is what they call the era of Kern and the near-destruction of humanity. Holsten determines that the signal is a distress beacon. They know it is impossible for anyone to still be alive out there, but there will be working technology to salvage, so they decide to route towards the signal's origin. Everyone returns to suspension as it will take at least another hundred years to reach the source of the signal.
Another Portia, distant descendant of the first, is the product of the nanovirus doing its work for generations. She is far larger than the original spiders on Kern's World, and more intelligent too. She is travelling with another spider, Bianca, and a male who has a name, but Portia doesn't bother with the names of lowly males. They have travelled far out of their territory, exploring. They are hunting, and make a kill, but are driven off by a group of spitting spiders that outnumber them. They have to hunt again, and manage to capture a smaller meal, which isn't enough to satisfy them. They supplement their meal with honeydew produced by the aphids Bianca cares for and brings with them on their journey.
When Holsten wakes up again, all of the key crew— Commander Vrie Guyen, Chief Engineer Isa Lain, Chief of Science Renas Vitas, Chief of Security Lem Karst, and of course classicist Holsten Mason —are awake to see what the distress beacon was coming from. It is coming from a satellite in orbit around a green planet— one that looks too Earth-like to believe. Holsten explains that it's a terraforming project. The crew is excited because it just might be the new home of humanity. Lain discovers another, clashing signal, and thinks it is from the planet itself, but realizes that it's just a a signal from the satellite bouncing off the planet. The strange signal being broadcast at the planet is a series of mathematical problems, and they recognize it to be an intelligence test. They decide to send the answers to the satellite to see what happens. A few minutes later, the distress beacon goes silent.
Portia and Bianca come of the end of their long journey when they reach a small spider settlement. They are treated with hostility, the locals thinking they are coming to hunt in their territory, but Portia tries to explain that they come for knowledge of what lies beyond their territory. What lies beyond is of interest to the spiders in her home territory, Great Nest. They negotiate a trade. Portia will give them the Understanding— hereditary knowledge transferred by a sperm packet of a spider with that Understanding —of aphid husbandry in exchange for Understanding of how the spiders live here, and the precautions they take against what lies beyond. But the other spiders take that to mean that they want to invade their territory and live there themselves. They get into a fight, and Bianca kills their leader with a slingshot. The others back down, and decide to trade. They learn that the land to the north is a potential threat to Great Nest, and one that they may have to encounter soon. Portia decides they need to take a closer look before returning to Great Nest with their findings.
On the Gilgamesh, the crew gets a response from the satellite, which tells them they are transmitting from the wrong coordinates, and that they are not allowed here. Lain thinks it is still just automatic responses, but Holsten is starting to think that it's something else. The satellite keeps sending them warnings about how the planet is claimed by the Exaltation Program, and interference is forbidden. This is when they discover the purpose of the planet— to allow simple Earth monkeys to evolve into intelligent beings. They send drones towards the planet, but they are destroyed by the satellite. However, they have just enough time to see the beautiful green planet. They try to talk to the satellite and tell them about their situation, but they get a weird transmission that is two overlapping signals. One is a coherent automated message telling them the planet is under quarantine, but the other is a stream-of-consciousness rambling about the cold of suspension. Then, it asks if they want to speak to Eliza. They say yes, and a system speaks to them, introducing itself as Eliza Kerns. But again, there is a stream-of-consciousness transmission saying that there is no Eliza Kerns and that 'she has stolen my mind.' They can't convince Eliza to let them land on the planet, and Eliza asks if they want to speak to her sister. When they say yes, Avrana Kern speaks to them. Having been asleep for two thousand years, she is deranged, doesn't recognize them as human, accuses them of being Sering's people, and raves about monkeys. They beg her to let them settle on her planet, and she infiltrates the Gilgamesh's systems like a virus. Kern says she will help them, and gives them starmaps leading to other terraforming projects. The crew decides whether to risk being destroyed by Kern, or leaving to investigate another planet.
Portia and Bianca are lent a male to be their guide. His name is Fabian. They head north and come across a colony of ants. They go to observe the ants, and infiltrate them by taking out some of the workers and harvesting their scent glands to disguise themselves. Portia spots something at the top of the mound in the centre of the colony and goes to investigate. There she finds a spire with a crystal sitting upon it. She wonders what it is for, and when the moon is positioned just so, the ants start to gather. An ant climbs the spire and touches the crystal with some sort of metal prosthesis. The ants begin to dance. When it ends and most of the ants leave, Portia decides to steal the crystal, and narrowly escapes capture with the clever use of a silk parachute.
Guyen decides that they should direct the Gilgamesh towards one of the other terraforming projects, leaving the Green Planet alone. As they leave they sneak a drone down to look at the planet behind Kern's back. Guyen directs the Gilgamesh towards another planet in the system, wanting to set up a colony on a desolate moon there so as not to have all eggs in one basket. They call up the images from the drone, hoping to see Kern's monkeys. What they see are large spiders.
War
Holsten is pulled out of suspension again, and fears that Guyen has no further use for him and is sending him to the moon colony. The people waking him up aren't key crew, they're strangers. They take Holsten hostage and put him in a room with Lain, who explains that their captors are colonists that are revolting because they don't want to be colonists on a desolate moon.
Generations later, another Portia from Great Nest is in another metropolis known as Seven Trees as they prepare for war with the approaching ants. Seeking comfort before the battle, Portia goes to Seven Trees' temple. It doesn't have a crystal, like the temple in Great Nest, so she can't listen to the message, but she can repeat it in silk, which is just as calming. The battle comes, and the ants overpower them. Seven Trees starts to burn, and the defenders are forced to leave or die. Portia flees. Now the ant army is heading for Great Nest.
Holsten and Lain try to talk down the colonists but are unsuccessful. The colonists reveal that they have control of the shuttle bay, and if nothing else works, they will be going down to the Green Planet. Holsten tries to explain to them the threatening satellite and the monster spiders, but Lain had already told them, and that's why they're bringing Holsten with them— to negotiate with Kern.
Portia returns to Great Nest and goes to her peer house, telling the others who live there of what transpired at Seven Trees. Then, she goes to the temple, as the Messenger will be passing by soon. When the Messenger is visible in the sky, it speaks to them in riddles through the crystal— the message. But the priestess notices strange whispers in the message, and the spiders are concerned. After the service finishes, Portia is notified that Bianca— a scholar —wants to see her.
Holsten and Lain are left alone for some time, but when their captors return wearing oxygen masks, they realize that Karst had gotten control of the air vents to take the mutineers out. They grab Holsten to head for the shuttles, and he convinces them to bring Lain along instead of killing her, as she would be invaluable to them as the lead engineer. They escape on the shuttle and head towards the Green Planet. Eventually, Eliza/Kern takes notice and signals them. Holsten communicates with her again, getting the same doubled transmission, one again informing them that the planet is quarantined, and the other continuing to rave about monkeys. Lain isolates their systems before they ask to speak to Avrana Kern, so she can't take over their shuttle like she did with the Gilgamesh. They try to convince her that they are human, like her, but she doesn't believe them. They then send her the picture of the spiders on her planet to try and convince her that her experiment failed anyways, and she freaks out briefly before ending contact with them.
Portia goes to Bianca's laboratory, where she has been researching the ants and learning how to manipulate them with pheromones from certain beetles. Portia tells Bianca of what happened at Seven Trees, and Bianca tells her that the message is apparently contaminated now, that there are other Messengers. The priestesses are receiving messages at the wrong time, that aren't strings of numbers but incoherent vibrations. But what Bianca really wanted Portia for was to show her a new weapon that she needs Portia to help her deploy. Portia and a carefully selected group of spiders take Bianca's weapon— and an armour of beetle pheromones —and prepare to set off to infiltrate the ant colony nearing Great Nest.
Karst has taken a shuttle to pursue the mutineers. Kern takes over Karst's shuttle and leaves them drifting in space, but since she can't take control of the mutineer shuttle, she tells them to go away or she will destroy them. Holsten distracts Eliza/Kern by asking to speak to Eliza, then asking to speak to Avrana, then asking to speak to Eliza again, stalling while Lain sends the satellite's own distress signal back at it, which silences it. They think it worked, but Kern is still there and shoots them out of the sky, leaving the shuttle to crash to the planet's surface.
As they are infiltrating the ant army, the spiders see something fall from the sky. They think it is the Messenger, and wonder what it means that she is here. Bianca tells them to focus on their mission. They travel deep into their ranks and detonate the weapons, which saturates the area with a modified form of the beetle chemicals that had made them invisible so far. Essentially, Bianca has removed the ants' sense of purpose, and they are now confused. Bianca's tame ants come and communicate with the confused ants, and give them a new purpose— to serve the spiders. With the war over, they wonder about what fell from the sky.
Holsten, Lain, and some of the mutineers survive the crash. They send one of the mutineers outside in a suit to run an analysis on the air. But shortly after she leaves they hear her screaming over the radio. They drag her back into the shuttle, and she is thrashing around. By the time they get her helmet off, she is dead. A large ant appears at the neck of her suit. There are ants everywhere now, attacking others with metallic claws and shooting fire at them. Their shuttle catches fire, and everyone has to evacuate. Suddenly, the ants stop attacking and wander aimlessly. They see a massive spider watching them from the treeline. Karst's shuttle lands on the planet to rescue them. He shoots all the mutineers except one, who flees into the forest. They leave her behind on the planet. When they get into Karst's shuttle, Kern is there in their systems. She tells them to leave, and she'll destroy the crashed shuttle with their drone that she took over.
Portia observes the human left behind on the planet. Wondering what it is, if it's some kind of herald of the Messenger. She plans to capture it for study.
Holsten, Lain, and Karst are back on the Gilgamesh. Once again, some cargo is woken up and briefed on their mission to colonize the moon. The new colonists are not happy about their new designation, but are resigned to it.
The human left on the planet dies after generations of scholar spiders observe it. Portia and the spiders puzzle over the weird vibrations that it makes with its mouth, and wonder if that is how it communicates. They dissect and study the human, learning all they can from it. Their civilization is shook when they discover a second Messenger, orbiting a nearby planet. They can't understand it, but for some reason they think it is someone calling for help. One day, the signal stops. They don't know why.
Enlightenment
The Gilgamesh crew arrives at one of the terraforming projects on Kern's starmaps. It is barren and grey, and there is a half-built space station orbiting it. Holsten's job is to translate all the data that engineering retrieves from the station.
A plague strikes spider society, killing many of the spiders. With the plague, the societal role of the male spiders has started to change. Since they are less independent and less able to fend for themselves in the wild, they have a tendency to stay in their cities whereas females choose to flee into the wilds. With a shortage of females, the males have been stepping into traditionally female roles.
Vitas delivers the news about whether or not the grey planet is habitable. She has discovered that the planet is covered in a huge fungal organism, and that the atmosphere has next to no oxygen. The planet is uninhabitable. Guyen proposes that they continue to gather what they can from the station and overhaul the Gilgamesh so they can return to the Green Planet and take it by force with what they've found.
The plague is now well documented, but there is no way to prevent or cure it. Fabian brings spiderlings he found in the plague's origin city, who seem to be immune, and Portia is studying them to try and find a cure. Bianca has the plague, and she wants Portia to help her complete her work— to send a message back to the Messenger. But Portia doesn't want to help, as that would be going against the Temple. Bianca reveals that she has already developed a technology to achieve this, but Portia still will not help her.
Holsten has never gone to the station. It is dangerous, and he didn't need to be there in order to do his work. But now, Guyen brings him to the station with him. It seems that Guyen has found something that he wants Holsten to see in person. It turns out to be a room with a whole lot of machinery that seems to exist to support a sole suspension chamber-like pod. Holsten's task is to figure out what it is. He discovers that it is something called an 'Emergency Upload Facility.' Guyen seems pleased. Whatever he was looking for, this is it.
Portia gathers every scientist to help her efforts in finding a cure for the plague. She determines that the cure must be an Understanding that the immune spiderlings were born with. A spider named Viola, who is infected, has studied Understandings all her life, and is working on finding a way to isolate this Understanding in her last days. The Understanding of the cure is isolated, but they isolate something else as well— the nanovirus, which they call The Messenger Within. Bianca is in the final stage of the plague, and Portia uses her to see if her cure works.
Lain and Holsten wonder what Guyen is after. Holsten is starting to understand what the upload facility is, though. And he thinks that the result is something like Doctor Avrana Kern.
Bianca still suffers from some of the fits caused by the plague, but she has been cured. The cure came too late for Viola, and many other great minds, though. Portia's cure is the first time adult spiders have been able to benefit from an Understanding they were not born with. This is a great technology that will change much about spider society. Portia brings Bianca to the temple and explains her contributions to the cure, and Bianca is allowed to address the priestesses about answering the Messenger. They decide that they should try it, and use Bianca's technology to send all the answers to the string of equations back to the Messenger. When the last solution is sent, the Messenger goes silent. The spiders panic, but a few days later, the Messenger speaks again.
The Brin 2 Sentry Pod receives the signal from Kern's World. It does its best to wake Kern. She wakes but is confused after all the years where her human self and her uploaded self bled together. But the next phase of the experiment is to begin. Kern sends down a message to tell them that she is their god. She still thinks that they are evolved monkeys, and is unaware that she is speaking with spiders.
Schism
Holsten is pulled out of his suspension chamber by people he doesn't recognize. They keep him in a cage for twenty-seven days with nothing but an old computer that was entirely self-contained. His captors want him to explain the data that is on the terminal. He understands that these people aren't cargo, but were born on the ship. People are living on a ship that wasn't meant to be lived on. One day his cage is opened and he is lead out by some of the people. He discovers that these people are different from his captors when they pass some dead bodies on the ground, and he is brought to Lain. It turns out that Guyen woke up a whole bunch of the cargo and created a cult with him as their god. Guyen has been working on the upload facility so that he can live forever and lead them to salvation.
Portia— another Portia —is a senior priestess of the Messenger. One of her scientists, Fabian, is unhappy about how male spiders are treated in comparison to females. Males can be killed at any time, and their female killers would get only a reprimand. But if a female is killed, it's investigated and punishment is appropriately doled out. But Portia doesn't understand what it is he wants. Then, she goes to talk to Bianca, who has been declared a heretic for her ideas about the Messenger. She has looked at the Messenger through her telescope, and knows that it is a rock of metal and nothing more. Portia tells Bianca that she will be exiled if she keeps talking like this.
Holsten, Lain, Vitas, and Karst have a meeting to discuss Guyen. They fill Holsten in on what happened with the moon colony— they had all died while they were on the way to the Grey Planet. The colonists had sent transmissions to the Gilgamesh asking for help, but Guyen intercepted them and ignored them. Lain only knows about them because she found the transmissions archived by chance. Lain thinks Guyen is going to wreck everything by uploading himself, but Vitas and Karst don't know if it's something to panic about. Lain fails to convince them. This has turned into a war between Guyen and Lain.
To prove a point, Fabian spends a day in the most dangerous parts of Great Nest. Portia is furious, because he could have been killed. He says that he could have lived his whole life there and been killed, his value never having been discovered. How many other males were left to die who could have been great scientists? Fabian has a new Understanding— a way to give the ant colonies new tasks instantly, instead of having to take the time to reprogram them. Additionally, a colony would be able to carry out many tasks at once, rather than just one dedicated task at a time. Fabian holds this Understanding hostage. He has taken measures to make that the Understanding can't be taken by force. Fabian wants Portia— the most influential spider in Great Nest —to go to all the other most powerful spiders and tell them to create a new law where the killing of a male is treated with the same weight as the killing of a female. But Portia refuses. Fabian decides to travel to Seven Trees, because it was rebuilt by males and they have been forced to see the value of males there. But he needs help to get to Seven Trees without being killed in the wild, so he visits Bianca in her prison cell. Bianca wishes to go to Seven Trees also, for there are many like-minded spiders there. Fabian uses his Understanding to break Bianca out of her cell so they can escape Great Nest together.
Holsten goes to see Guyen. Guyen explains that he's had people awake for generations to overhaul the entire ship in preparation for war with Kern so they can take over the Green Planet. But Guyen wants to be immortal, and he wants to be humanity's new god. He wants Holsten to write the new histories of how they came to live on the Green Planet.
Portia seeks advice from the Messenger about a resource war between the spider cities. Fabian and Bianca reach Seven Trees, and Bianca has fit in well, but Fabian finds that males don't have the equality that he thought they did. Fabian spends a lot of time climbing the social hierarchy of Seven Trees, getting into more and more powerful peer houses. Just as he is starting to get somewhere, the rumours of the resource war come in. He re-establishes contact with Bianca, who has become a political advisor. Great Nest has taken all of Seven Trees' mines, and now demands their resources, ant colonies, farms, and laboratories in a crusade sanctioned by the Messenger. Bianca presents Fabian to the leaders of Seven Trees and its allies. He says that if they can give him a few hundred ants, he can defeat Great Nest's army. The females grant him this, thinking there is little to lose. Fabian uses his Understanding to control his ants, and they destroy Great Nest's army from the inside out. The females are impressed, and ask him how he did it, but he won't tell. He will, however, take an army all the way to Great Nest and win the war, on one condition: he wants males to have the right to live, and to form their own peer houses, and be on equal footing with females.
Guyen continues explaining to Holsten what happened. He says that if he thought they could do it all without him, then he would let himself finally die. But they can't do it without him. Guyen admits that he could have gone back to save the colonists on that moon, but didn't. Guyen almost convinces Holsten that he is doing his best for humanity, until he says that the people on the moon colony were traitors who got what they deserved. It is time for Guyen's upload— his ascension. When Guyen gets into the systems and tries to take control of life support, Karst and Vitas are swayed against him and help Lain to try and contain Guyen the virus.
Fabian and his army arrive at Great Nest. Well, technically it is Viola's army, as Seven Trees wasn't about to give a male control over a whole army. Great Nest sends a delegation to talk. Things have changed in Great Nest, and Portia has fled. An agreement is made, and war is avoided. There is an ideological shift, the Messenger's message is now not all-important. Fabian is still working towards gaining rights and protections for males, but he is assassinated before he can see the world he helped create.
Kern has taught her monkeys— or what she thinks are monkeys —a common language. She is concerned about the differences in perspective and concepts that the monkeys have from her own. But Kern sees that the Gilgamesh is returning, and she needs to warn her people.
Zenith / Nadir
Portia, Fabian, and Viola are part of a crew that is to take flight in the Sky Nest— an airship that Bianca has invented. When the crew is in place in the Sky Nest, Bianca sends a message to the Messenger saying: 'we are coming.'
Once again, Holsten is woken up from suspension, and once again, it's by people he doesn't recognize. He tries to fight them, and they try to calm him down. They are trying to reallocate him a new chamber since his is starting to break down. But there are special instructions for him to stay awake for a little while. The people tell him that they are Engineering. They are the grandchildren of the original engineers, and they are fixing the ship. Their chief wants to see him. Holsten hopes it's Lain.
Bianca transmits a picture of the airship to the Messenger, and it takes a while for Kern to decode the data and see the image. Kern demands that they show her more, so they send an image of the spiders in Seven Trees. The Messenger goes silent.
In the Sentry Pod, Kern comes to terms with the pictures she has been shown. She now understands that her people are not monkeys, but spiders. It takes her a while to accept that they are her children, even if they are spiders. She sends a message back to them telling the spiders she is here for them.
Holsten is being taken to the the chief of the engineers. He passes by a room of children, learning about the ship from a screen, where a recording of Lain is playing, instructing them. He is brought to their leader, and he is afraid that it won't be Lain, and that Lain is dead. But it is Lain, just older now. Lain explains what has been going on. They did their best to purge Guyen, but he is still lingering in their systems. The ship, at nearly two and a half thousand years old, is falling apart. Lain is going to continue Guyen's plan— the part about defeating Kern and taking over the Green Planet, not the part about becoming an immortal god. Lain has something else to show Holsten. They have been keeping strict population control. Any surplus babies are removed as fetuses and put in suspension for when they land on the Green Planet. Lain shows him one of them, their own unborn child. Holsten is sent back to suspension in a new chamber.
Portia and Fabian watch the rest of their crew do their work, as they wait for their own to begin. Bianca orders them to their station— a smaller craft sitting atop the Sky Nest, called the Star Nest. They are trying to reach the ends of the sky, and reach the Messenger. They launch, and they hear the voice of god. God apologizes, and says that there was some misunderstanding, but things are clear now. She invites questions. Down on the surface, Bianca answers, asking: 'why are we here?"
Kern answers the questions of the spiders, explains about the humans, explains the experiment. She tells them that they aren't what she wanted, and not what she planned for, but they are hers, and they are a success. Kern is proud of them.
The Star Nest is beginning to reach it's maximum altitude. It is time to deploy their payload— the first thing from their planet to ever be put into orbit. But the payload isn't detaching like it should. Even though Portia and Fabian are both weak from the cold, one of them needs to exit the cabin and try to fix it. Portia goes, and she manages to detach the payload. Then, she falls. She is caught by her safety line, but is too tired to pull herself back up, and accepts her fate. Fabian hauls her up and back into the cabin. He knows that there is not enough oxygen for both of them. Fabian sends a message to God, the first male to ever do so. He tells the Messenger of his plan, and asks her to relay the message to the other spiders when it's done. Fabian triggers Portia's hunting instinct. She automatically kills and eats him, but this gives her the strength to survive.
The spiders know that they are not alone in the universe, and it isn't a good thing. Kern has warned them of the returning humans. They need to prepare.
Collision
Holsten is woken by Vitas. When learning that Karst has become the commander of the Gilgamesh, Holsten realizes that Lain must have died long ago. They are nearing the Green Planet, and getting ready to fight for their last hope at a new home. Holsten is taken to a console to translate the signals coming from Kern's satellite. He decodes the messages that are telling them to stay away, that they don't wish to fight. When they near the planet and see an orbiting network, they realize that the transmissions weren't coming from Kern, but from the spiders. Karst decides it's time to wake up Lain.
The spiders have been preparing for the humans' arrival for many generations.
They wake up Lain, who is now very old and frail, and wasn't supposed to be woken until they landed on the Green Planet. But this is an emergency, and they need her. Holsten sends a message to Kern, telling her the fate of the entire human race is now at stake and they need to land on her planet. From what Holsten understands of what he gets back, Kern, or whoever it is, is agreeing to let them come down to the planet. But they aren't sure this is the case, as the message is garbled. They find themselves in a prisoners' dilemma. They decide they can't risk it, and shoot down Kern's satellite.
The spiders watch the Messenger fall. Kern herself has been backed up to Fabian's computers. In this form, Kern does not like being called God, so the Spiders call her by her name, Doctor Avrana Kern. Portia and Bianca prepare for battle.
The Gilgamesh is bombarded with rocks from the spiders. Suddenly there is a hull breach in cargo. Holsten gets a message from Kern, taunting him. They are losing hull sensors one by one. Then they realize that the spiders are on the ship, trying to get in.
Now that the spiders have taken out the Gilgamesh's sensors, its eyes, they can work on breaking in. They look for an entrance hatch. They breach the hull with acid. But it soon becomes apparent that the Gilgamesh is defending itself— there is a blast that disables the spiders' radios.
Holsten thinks they should be careful not to repeat the Old Empire's mistakes. What if the spiders are sentient? Vitas is having none of it, and they're distracted by more drones being taken out by the spiders. Karst gets suited up to go fight the spiders. The spiders get their radio back. Holsten reiterates that the spiders aren't just Kern's puppets. He knows this because of how they communicate. It's inefficient. It's real language.
Karst and his team are about to exit through a hatch when it starts depressurizing. The spiders are breaking in. They latch down and brace as the pressurized air inside rushes out. The spiders rush in and a battle begins. The spiders trap the humans in webbing, and Karst sees one inject one of his people with something. Then a spider lands on him.
The spiders release a gas into the air circulation system of the ship, disabling the humans on board.
Air circulation has been shut off. Vitas explains over the radio from her lab that she shut it off because the spiders released something into the air. Vitas works to cut off the areas that have been infected from the rest of the ship. Then Vitas says that the spiders have broken into her lab, and she goes quiet. It's just Holsten and Lain now. They accept that they have lost. But then, Karst hails them. He tells them that the spiders are like them, and that everything is going to be alright. The spiders ambush Lain and Holsten, injecting them with the virus too. The battle is over.
A shuttle comes to the planet's surface, and human and spider meet as friends. The spiders welcome them to their planet, the new home of humanity. The oldest human ever is brought out. She dies on the Green Planet, seemingly at peace.
Diaspora
The descendants of the Gilgamesh crew and the spiders are getting ready to head for the stars again. Their ship is named Voyager, and they are heading out to seek their inheritance.
Thoughts - Spoilers!
This is my favourite book. The evolutionary world-building is truly something else. The world through the eyes of the spiders is so wonderfully alien and delightful. Holsten's perspective as he goes to sleep and wakes up a hundred years later over and over again is also really interesting, being the oldest man in history and skipping through time.
I love how we're taken through generations and generations of spiders, but still have characters to connect to. All the spiders named Portia, Bianca, Fabian, and Viola are different in each of their iterations, but they are multi-generational characters that the readers can grow attached to.
I think my favourite thing about this book is that there aren't any villains. Kern is not a good person in the beginning of the book, and her mind gets scrambled after being partially uploaded to the Sentry Pod. She is the main antagonist of the story, but she isn't a villain. I think her story is actually pretty tragic. She was a selfish person with a dream that was crushed, and then she slowly went crazy over millenenia, becoming confused and fused with a computer. In the end, even after she discovers her monkeys are not monkeys at all, she accepts the spiders as her children, and continues to do everything she can to protect them. Guyen becomes another antagonist after acquiring the upload facility. But even after they defeat Guyen, they follow his plan. He had a good plan, and he had humanity's best interests at heart, but in the end, he snapped from all the pressure, turning him into a power hungry god-being. It wasn't his fault, it was just a result of the stresses his job put on him.
This is the first book in a trilogy, but I appreciate how self-contained it is. A whole story is told in this book. I appreciate that it can be read as a standalone, which isn't something you often get in a series. The epilogue teases the next great adventure, but it's a different story, with different characters, so this book is really tied off with a nice bow.
This is my absolute favourite book. I love it so much. I would recommend this book to literally anyone. Even if you aren't into science fiction, I'd recommend giving this one a go. Although, I suppose I wouldn't recommend this to anyone with a phobia of spiders.
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snowynight
