Children of Memory

Miranda is a key figure in the novel. She is an explorer whose consciousness is a complex layering of identities, as she is a Nodan parasitic entity inhabiting a purpose-grown human body. Her primary personality is a copy of a Human woman who donated her mind to the Nodan collective and she feels the tension between trying to inhabit this identity after only ever knowing existence as part of a collective parasitic entity. The version of Miranda that the reader follows on Imir is a further iteration: A simulated copy of this Nodan entity, inserted into the alien engine’s ongoing re-creation of the Landfall colony, thus further removing her from anything resembling her original, authentic self. Miranda’s defining traits are her deep empathy and an insatiable curiosity, or “adventurous” (471) spirit, which drive her both as a member of the Skipper crew and as a covert operative within the simulation. This adventurousness hearkens back to the previous novel, when the entity often expressed itself through the mantra-like claim to be going on an adventure. In this novel, Miranda’s mission plays into the theme of The Ethics of Covert Intervention; intended as a passive observation, her presence becomes a chaotic variable that fractures the simulation’s stable narrative, forcing the engine to constantly rewrite its history in an attempt to incorporate her unexpected presence.

Miranda’s primary internal conflict stems from the tension between the idealistic, empathetic ‘Miranda’ persona she wears and the fundamentally alien, absorptive nature of the Nodan entity that she truly is. Within the simulation, this conflict manifests as a deep, instinctual drive to help the suffering people of Landfall, which is constantly at odds with her mission’s directive to remain a passive observer. She feels drawn to the collective we, even when she is not necessarily part of the community this pronoun represents. Her repeated attempts to intervene, though well-intentioned, only accelerate the simulation’s breakdown and lead to her own recurring traumatic death. When confronted by Kern with the resurrected mud-golems of her own past selves, like Erma Lante, Miranda’s carefully constructed identity shatters. She sees herself as a “monster,” a “devouring mass” (399) whose very nature is to corrupt and consume. This crisis forces her to confront the moral implications of her existence, questioning whether she has the right to be human at all.

By the end of the novel, Miranda’s journey has become one of radical empathy and self-acceptance. After being rescued from the simulation, she becomes the foremost advocate for the personhood of the simulated colonists, arguing that beings who feel and suffer are real, regardless of their origin. She rejects Kern’s dismissal of Landfall as mere “life fan-fiction” (462), having lived countless lives there and formed a genuine bond with the simulated girl, Liff. By championing Liff’s integration into the real world, Miranda finds a purpose that reconciles her dual nature. She channels her parasitic ability to absorb and understand others into a force for preservation, choosing to save a single, fictional life and, in doing so, affirming the moral weight and reality of her own simulated experiences.

Within the Imir simulation, Avrana Kern functions as an antagonist and a frustrated, unwilling mentor figure. She is a splinter-instance of the primary AI, sent into the simulation with the Corvids on a mission to rescue the lost Miranda. To the inhabitants of Landfall, her inexplicable presence and power lead them to cast her in the role of the Witch in the cave, a mythic figure to blame for the world’s decay. This label infuriates Kern, who sees herself as a scientist and pragmatist, the “exact opposite of a witch” (150). The arrogance of her self-identity and her desire to be seen in this manner stems back to her original human existence, earlier in the series, before her consciousness was uploaded into an artificial intelligence construct. Such lingering human traits call into question the difference, if any, between artificial and organic life. In this novel, her primary traits are impatience, arrogance, and an overwhelming sense of duty. Trapped within the simulation and unable to simply extract Miranda, she becomes increasingly desperate, resorting to direct and chaotic interventions like reanimating the mud-golems of Miranda’s past selves, which only exacerbates the narrative’s collapse.

Kern’s role highlights the limitations of power without understanding. Despite possessing godlike abilities within the simulation, such as manipulating the weather, she is unable to achieve her simple goal because she cannot comprehend the engine’s internal logic or the human-centric narrative it is built upon. As a splinter of an artificial construct, moving ever further from her humanity, she is turning toward pure logic and ego in an attempt to operate within a system governed by emotion, memory, and flawed human choices. Her relationship with Liff is particularly revealing; she initially dismisses the girl as an irrelevant distraction, but is eventually forced to rely on Liff’s unique connection to the simulation’s core narrative to finally corner Miranda. Kern’s motivations never change, but her methods are forced to adapt, pushing her far outside her comfort zone and into the messy, unpredictable realm of human myth-making, thus reuniting her with the human Kern who died many centuries earlier.

Heorest Holt is the foundational figure of the Imir colony, serving as both its historical originator and a recurring narrative ghost within the simulation. As the captain of the Enkidu, the real Holt died when his shuttle, the Urshanabi, crashed during its initial descent. However, his mind and the minds of his crew were copied by the alien engine at the moment of impact, providing the seed for the entire simulated history of Landfall. Within this simulation, Holt is a round, dynamic character defined by his visionary leadership and a deep, gnawing guilt. He is forever torn between the pragmatic need to build a future for the colonists he has landed and the moral weight of having abandoned the thousands of sleepers left on the Enkidu.

Holt’s primary function in the novel is to represent the origin and central conflict of the colony’s narrative and the way these emotions redound across generations, even in a simulated environment. The simulation engine repeatedly deploys him at various points in Landfall’s history, often as an old man seeking the Witch in the cave, in an attempt to correct the narrative disruptions caused by Miranda’s presence. He is one of the simulation’s antibodies, an anchor to the original timeline who tries to guide events back to their tragic but stable course. His impossible existence as Liff’s grandfather, a man who should be centuries dead, is one of the most significant clues that Liff’s reality is not what it seems, embodying the theme of Narrative Control Over History as the simulation struggles to reconcile its past and present by repeatedly returning to a familiar, if tragic, narrative.

Gothi and Gethli are a collective character, a pair of uplifted Corvids from the planet Rourke who function as a single, distributed intelligence. They embody the theme of The Nature of Consciousness. Gothi is the “memorizer,” possessing a perfect recall of all observed data, while Gethli is the “processor,” an analytical engine that identifies patterns and devises novel solutions. Together, they form a highly effective problem-solving tool, though they themselves argue they possess no true consciousness, merely “mechanical complexity” (444). Their speech, a mix of direct analysis and seemingly random literary quotes, constantly challenges the other characters’ understanding of what constitutes intelligent communication. These literary quotations gesture toward academic understanding, but they are rote repetitions without any depth or significance, showing how intelligence can often be illusory.

As catalyst characters, the Corvids are instrumental to the plot’s progression. It is their unique analytical ability that first detects the alien signal from Imir and they are later essential to mapping the simulation’s complex, fractured timelines in order to locate and extract Miranda. Within the simulation, they adopt the roles of familiars from Liff’s storybook, using her narrative framework to communicate with her and guide her toward her role in their rescue plan. In this sense, they reflect the novel’s suggestion of the significance of narratives, as even these evolved and alien creatures seek to fit neatly into existing tropes. Their dual-minded nature is a foil to both Miranda’s collective consciousness and the very structure of the simulation engine itself, representing a different, non-human model for processing a chaotic and contradictory reality.