“As he scuttled away, I felt like a benevolent god. Through the hole in the wall, I can see the snow-dusted bulge of our main dome, no more than a couple of kilometers away. I’m the spider. I’m the spider, and that thing in the tunnel just set me down in the garden.”

Mickey’s encounter with the creeper is eye-opening for him as he realizes that it may be sentient. He then further connects to the creature by describing it as “scuttling” and himself as “the spider.” This connection prompts Mickey7 to remember his childhood and place it in his childhood role as the spider rescuer, demonstrating his empathy with his sudden recognition that the creeper has rescued him.

“At this point, you may be wondering what I did to get myself designated as an Expendable. Must have been something awful, right? Murdered a puppy, maybe? Pushed an old lady down a staircase? Nope, and nope. Believe it or not, I volunteered. The way they sell you on becoming an Expendable is that they don’t call it becoming an Expendable. They call it becoming an Immortal. That’s got a much nicer ring to it, doesn’t it?”

Mickey7’s humor is evident in these sentences with his sarcastic rhetorical questions. The rhetorical questions also forge a connection between the audience and Mickey7 as he breaks the fourth wall in a literary strategy known as “direct address.” However, this passage also establishes the duplicitous nature of Mickey7’s employer, the Union, as they spin the actual nature of his job into something positive.

“The closest analogue in the long human story to the Diaspora and the formation of the Union is probably the colonization of Micronesia.”

Mickey7’s interest in history is an important part of his character, and he refuses to buy into the ignorance that is rampant among the other colonists. He understands that the Diaspora is rife with propaganda. Mickey7’s analogous connection also illustrates Ashton’s engagement with history, both real human history and the history of the futuristic world he’s created.

“The corpse hole is one of those things we try not to think too much about. I’ve only seen it open on the rare occasions that I’ve been seconded out to garbage duty, and I’ve never really looked inside. I’m not sure what you’d expect an antimatter-driven, all-devouring maw to look like—roaring flames and a stench of sulfur, maybe?—but it’s actually quiet and odorless and kind of pretty. It’s just a flat black disk at first, but then the disassembler field starts grabbing dust motes, and they disappear one by one in tiny firefly flashes. It doesn’t look so bad.”

The corpse hole is an important threat that looms over Mickey7, from the moment he kneels over it with Mickey8 to the moment he stares down it as Marshall threatens to kill him unless he antimatter bombs the creepers. Ashton’s specific description of the corpse hole illustrates the depth of his world-building while subverting expectations of what the “corpse hole,” which is given a deliberately cruel and straightforward name, might look like. In line with everything else at the colony, the corpse hole seems innocuous, hiding its truly deadly nature.

“Maybe. I’d rather save that for desperation time, though. Berto’s not the most altruistic guy on Niflheim, and I don’t know how much of a fundamentalist he is about the multiple thing.”

Mickey8’s doubt of Berto matches Mickey7’s growing suspicion about Berto’s lies surrounding the demises of both Mickey6 and Mickey7. Their lack of understanding of Berto’s fundamental beliefs also further illustrates the lack of connection in Mickey and Berto’s friendship. Although they purport to be friends, Mickey doesn’t really know Berto at all.

“I flash back to that spider I set free in the garden all those years ago. What if that’s not what happened at all last night? What if I was actually an ant they didn’t stomp so that they could figure out where the nest is?”

Mickey7 revisits his analogy, in which he compared the creeper rescuing him to when he, as a child, rescued a spider, and realizes that he might have misunderstood the creeper’s motives. Mickey7 compares the human colonists to ants while comparing the creepers to humans, further foreshadowing the revelation of the creepers’ sentience. The use of the term “nest” further dehumanizes the colonists, showing Mickey7’s continuing disconnection from his own humanity.

“I’ve always believed it’s important to accept the people in your life for what they are. There’s no such thing as a perfect friend, any more than there’s any such thing as a perfect anything, and if you slag everyone in your life for their many and varied failings, you’re going to miss appreciating the good stuff they bring to the table.”

Mickey7’s self-awareness and awareness of others are an integral part of his character. He feels betrayed by Berto’s lies, but he’s also acutely aware of Berto’s limitations. He chooses to look at the positives of people when possible, illustrating his potential optimism. Mickey’s perspective further develops his exploration of the theme of Identity, Personhood, and Self-Awareness.

“The thing I remember most vividly from that first upload is a close shot of my mother’s face. She died joyriding in a flitter when I was eight, and I barely remembered what she looked like…but in that image she was young and vivid and beautiful, and when they finally took the helmet off of me, I was sobbing.”

Mickey7’s emotional vulnerability is a rare moment in the text. He’s often funny and sarcastic, breaking the fourth wall and expressing a casual outlook about the more dangerous aspects of life. However, the memory of his mother’s death prompts an emotional response from him, illustrating the humanity within Mickey7, even as he wrestles with his own human identity.

“You’ve developed a bit of an obsession with them, in fact, and Commander Marshall tells me he’s had you out observing them for the past few weeks. We need more than that. We need to figure out exactly what we’re dealing with. If they start knocking holes in the dome, we’re finished.”

Mickey7 has to pretend he has no memories of the creepers from his own experience, and he also lacks Mickey6’s memories, as Mickey6 died before uploading his most recent memories. Mickey7’s preoccupation with the creepers foreshadows his role as the colony’s liaison, and the reference to the hole in the dome illustrates the shrinking role of isolationism in the colonial culture.

“I only know any of this because when I came out of the tank as Mickey3 the next morning, the first thing they made me do was watch the video feed from my suit camera and listen to the running narrative I’d kept up right until the point when, halfway back to the air lock, I stopped moving, popped the seals at my collar, and showed my naked face to the universe.”

Ashton utilizes poetic language to describe Mickey2’s death, crafting an image of Mickey2 facing the raw beauty of the universe in his final moments. In a science fiction novel, the lush language stands out against the erudite description of astrophysics present elsewhere in the novel. This moment also illustrates Mickey’s thoughtful character, as well as his appreciation of beauty even in the face of death.

“Reading that got me thinking about Two. That sent me into a spiral that lasted the better part of a month. The thing that pulled me back out of that spiral was Nasha.”

This memory is a reminder that Mickey7 remembers the deaths of all the Mickeys that came before. Mickey2 died of suffocation, and Mickey7 is triggered by the reminder, highlighting that although death is a recurrent experience for him, it is always devastating. These lines illustrate the importance of Nasha in Mickey’s life, as she reminds Mickey that he’s alive and capable of living a fulfilled, human existence.

“You wouldn’t think a place like Midgard would be hard on immigrants. It’s not like we didn’t have the room or resources to take in a few hundred lost souls. You’d be wrong, though. Humans are tribal, and the refugees’ accents were enough to mark them as outsiders, even setting aside the fact that the majority of them had skin a few shades darker than most of Midgard’s original population.”

Ashton’s analysis of tribalism and racism on Old Earth and Midgard connects the fantasy of science fiction to the realism of human history. This adds texture and nuance to his idealized depiction of Midgard and Nasha’s character arc. It also highlights one of the foundations of the connection between Mickey and Nasha—like him, she has been deemed an outsider for no reason.

“Of the ones that kept trying, I could count on one hand the number that actually succeeded. Seeding a colony is hard on a hospitable planet. On an inhospitable one, it’s damn near impossible. And what about one like Niflheim? Time will tell, I guess.”

The uncertainty of Niflheim’s success is important to the novel’s narrative. The tension of possible death plays a role in not only Mickey’s story, but the broader story of all the characters who scrape to make the icy planet their home. The small possibility of success highlights how desperate the colonists are for it to work, highlighting the theme of The Ethics of the Human Drive for Survival.

“The Ching Shih is still out there somewhere, humming through the void at point-six c or so—and so, I suppose, are the bodies of those last twelve would-be colonists. I find myself wondering sometimes if someone somewhere might see them zip by someday and wonder where they’re going in such a hurry…and why the hell they’re not wearing suits.”

Ashton blends scientific language by describing the speed of the ship with casual language like “zip by” and “in such a hurry,” illustrating the combination of serious and silly that occurs throughout the entire text. The Ching Shih also serves as a serious reminder of the potential of death lurking around every corner, as an example of what a mission disaster can look like.

“The things that came out of the bio-printers then were empty, tabula rasa bodies with less awareness or physical competence than a newborn baby. They were okay for creating fodder for medical experiments if you could overlook the obvious ethical issues, but they were not in any way a path to immortality.”

The issue of bioethics plays a significant role in Ashton’s discussion of cloning. As he describes the genesis of the cloning process that creates Expendables, he illustrates the ethical quandaries the science inevitably encountered when experimenting on human beings. At the end of the passage, he brings it back to the root cause behind the experimentation surrounding cloning: immortality.

“I take a deep breath, hold it, and then let it out again. Maybe they’re right? They’re not right. I know they’re not.”

Mickey7 finds himself opposed to the idea of having sex with both Nasha and Mickey8, and he finds their relaxed reaction to the multiple situation upsetting. This further illustrates the dichotomy between Mickey7 and Mickey8, as they disagree on the ethics of not only violence, but also intimacy. The differences between Mickey7 and Mickey8 support Mickey7’s contention that he is an individual, distinct from the other Mickeys.

“He walked away then, and left me sitting naked on the edge of the tank to ponder which is worse: an infinite loop of torment that you don’t remember a bit of, or a single bad death that’s stuck in your head forever.”

The ethics of the Diaspora’s creation of the Expendable role develops as Mickey questions which scenario is more agonizing. Regardless, both options are ethically wrong, as the physical and psychological agony plagues Mickey both ways. Throughout the novel, Ashton uses Mickey7’s contemplative intelligence to explore the philosophical issues around the Expendables and cloning.

“Ever since I walked into our room to find Eight in my bed covered in tank goo, I’ve had this knot of visceral dread hanging around in my stomach.”

Mickey8 is a physical manifestation of Mickey7’s dread and growing discomfort with his role as an Expendable and the colonial tendencies toward violence. Mickey7 was okay with his job until he came face to face with Mickey8 and realized fully that the immortality promise he was fed is a myth. His growing struggles with the Expendable role highlight The Conflict Between Individual and Collective Needs as Mickey7 begins to consider the possibility that his own needs are more important to him than the colony’s.

“Berto told me he got torn apart by creepers. Berto told me I got torn apart by creepers. Berto has demonstrated pretty clearly that he can’t be trusted when it comes to me and dying. I wonder now—did Six wind up abandoned in the tunnels too? Did he just never manage to find his way back out? If I ever get the chance to see Berto again, I’m gonna squeeze the truth out of him. Even if it kills me.”

Mickey and Berto’s friendship completely falls apart when Mickey realizes that Berto’s lies not only placed him at risk but also placed the entirety of the colony at risk. This illustrates Mickey’s selflessness, which is in direct contrast to Berto’s growing selfishness. The depth of his disgust with Berto is displayed through his uncharacteristically violent thoughts.

“The second area where every new technology is applied, of course, is war.”

Ashton’s discussion of the impact of technology and humanity’s tendency toward violence plays an important role in both his worldbuilding and the arc of the narrative. The Bubble War launched the Diaspora, and technology pushed the destruction of that war forward. The reminder of the Bubble War also motivates Mickey to refuse to commit genocide against the creepers.

“Then, two by two, the bubbles popped. Annihilation occurred, and off we went.”

Ashton’s succinct description of the Bubble War illustrates an example of his use of casual and sparse language to describe a serious and violent incident. The abrupt and straightforward summary confronts the reader with the reality of war, rather than talking around the issue. Ashton also utilizes the collective term “we” to further connect Mickey7 to the rest of humankind, illustrating his humanity.

“Each of our packs, for all intents and purposes, contains a miniature bubble bomb: fifty thousand tiny nuggets of antimatter taken from what’s left of the Drakkar’s fuel stores, each one isolated in a magnetic monopole bubble. When we release them, they’ll disperse, drifting through the air like will-o’-the-wisps. Eventually, the bubbles will pop.”

Ashton again uses playful language (“nuggets,” “bubbles,” and “will-o’-the-wisps”) to describe something as serious as a bomb capable of mass destruction, further blurring the line between the grave and the silly. The antimatter bombs are devastating, but this description highlights their deceptively innocuous appearance.

“Time. That’s the key. We just need time.”

Mickey7 comes to a clear and salient realization about what his colony needs to break through the symbolic dome of isolation. They require time to adjust to the idea that the creepers are not a threat, time he buys them by lying about the location of Mickey8’s antimatter bomb. This time also allows the seasons to change on Niflheim, giving the colonists hope when the spring thaw begins.