58 pages • 1-hour read
There Is No Antimemetics Division
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Part 3, Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, and substance use.
Part 3: “Five Five Five Five Five”
Part 3, Chapter 5 Summary: “Wild Light”
The novel jumps back 12 years to an Organization meeting at a containment unit in UO Stanmoor. The unit holds the skull of a Cryptomorpha gigantes, whose antimemetic capabilities will erase any memories of the meeting once it’s adjourned.
Ed Hix is surprised to learn that he’s arriving late to the meeting, having been notified of a different start time than the other executives. In addition, he observes that a chief officer has been invited to the meeting. The clerk scans Hix for psychic intrusions and then introduces a germ into his nervous system. The germ, taken from C. gigantes, is an antimemetic failsafe to guarantee the erasure of all memories related to the meeting.
Present at the meeting are several UO facility directors, including Hix’s superior, Antimemetics Chief Jason Lo. The text reveals that the chief officer is Mahlo. Antimemetics Deputy Chief Marie Quinn is also present. She tries to engage Hix in small talk, which Hix dismisses as moot, considering that they’ll eventually have the same conversation again after the meeting. However, Quinn insists that the conversation is a reward in itself. They talk about recent travels.
The meeting begins with Mahlo instructing Hix to read a prepared document. The document, written by Hix himself, is a brief on U-3125 and the threat it poses to humanity. In addition, the brief describes a process called amplification. At this juncture, Hix understands the purpose of the meeting: The executives will discuss strategies to prevent U-3125 from threatening humanity. Mahlo reviews all previously discussed approaches, including human extinction and a permanent halt to all scientific endeavors. Quinn reminds Hix that, based on the anomalies they’ve observed, U-3125’s arrival is no longer preventable, but inevitable. Hix muses that it’s too late to develop countermeasures and that the best thing to do is to insulate all of humanity in a protective field, like the containment vault.
Mahlo makes it clear that their directive is to destroy U-3125 for humanity’s sake. Hix deduces that he had already devised a solution in a prior meeting. Mahlo confirms that this solution is the creation of a countermeme powerful enough to overpower and neutralize U-3125. Hix posits that to achieve this, they would need to work uninterrupted on the project in a hermetically sealed environment for 10-20 years. He asks if they’re meeting to announce that the development of the countermeme is already complete. Lo reveals that the reverse is true: They’re meeting because everything is in place for development work to begin. Hix is expected to fake his death so that he can work in secret over the next decade.
Hix is horrified, believing that this is merely an alibi for a plot against him. However, his lack of emotional attachments to the outside world makes him the perfect person to work on the development project. Once he realizes this, Lo uses a gun to shoot him twice. Quinn kills Lo in retaliation and then confirms that Hix is dead.
Quinn and Mahlo conclude that U-3125 compromised Lo. Mahlo promotes Quinn to Antimemetics Chief. They discover a breach in the airlock, leading them to suspect that U-3125 is already waiting outside the containment unit. Quinn splits an amnestic drug between herself and Mahlo to insulate them as they exit the unit. When a compromised officer approaches to attack them, Quinn kills her. Mahlo informs Quinn that a memory bomb codenamed DRY ERASE will detonate at Stanmoor to stop U-3125. Quinn takes Mahlo to his car so that they can escape the facility as it collapses.
In the containment unit, Hix regains consciousness. He realizes that he has reawakened in the body of the germ that was attached to him. Scuttling through the ruined facility, he finds his way to the room where his staged death will supposedly take place. He latches onto the fake copy of his body and uses it to replace his real body. As Hix tries to escape the argon gas leak that would have killed his fake body, a man under U-3125’s control enters the room and tries to kill him. Hix fights back, defeating the man only by returning to the germ body and using it to shock the man to death.
Already considering ways to develop the countermeme, Hix escapes from the gas-leak room. He enters the vault to insulate himself from DRY ERASE.
Part 3, Chapter 6 Summary: “Tombstone”
In the present, Adam considers giving himself back up to Va as he continues north toward Stanmoor. He later realizes that Va is trying to influence him with negative thoughts and resolves to continue. Reaching Stanmoor, which looks more ruined than Wyeleigh, Adam finds his way inside and discovers a vault identical to the one where Quinn died. Opening the door, he worries that Hix will tell him that he failed to complete the amplifier. A defense mechanism incapacitates Adam.
A flashback reveals that Hix began working on the amplifier in solitude inside the vault. After two years, he concluded that the amplifier couldn’t assume a physical form. He reset his progress by erasing his memories of the project and restarting with his notes. He then developed a device that superficially resembled his schematics for the amplifier but functionally anchored him to the ideal version of the device. During his research, Hix discovered a way to visualize people as the ideas they represented. He later understood that while he would be credited as the machine’s inventor, an outsider would use it against U-3125.
In the present, Hix takes the half-conscious Adam into the vault. Adam sees the superficial machine Hix built. He then regains consciousness in the garden of a house in the forest. Hix introduces himself and reveals that they’re in a neurally simulated recreation of the event when they first met, a barbecue at the Quinn residence. Hix realizes that Adam isn’t the person he has been waiting for, the one who carries the antimeme seed used to activate the amplifier. Adam asks how he can retrieve the idea and bring it back. Hix says it’s impossible; the idea should have come naturally to him.
Adam sees Marie, whom Hix identifies as the person who could have potentially brought the antimeme seed to the amplifier. Adam struggles to see Marie’s face, but can’t remember her. Hix draws Adam’s attention to the Class Z mnestic autoinjector pen he retrieved from Quinn’s corpse, indicating that he can use it to remember her, albeit at the cost of his life. Adam revisits the memories he can remember, which end with a memory of her from before she redacted the history of their relationship.
Outside the neural simulation, Hix administers the Class Z mnestic to Adam. This causes Marie to manifest. Marie appears to Adam in full in the neural simulation, and the two reunite and kiss. Adam understands that this was her plan all along: If she lost the antimemetic war, she intended for Adam to locate her and bring her back. Marie admits her regret for having to involve Adam at all, preferring to keep him entirely out of harm’s way. She assures him, however, that the plan will work and that she can destroy U-3125. She can’t describe the countermeme to destroy U-3125 because the countermeme is too big for any human to fully comprehend. When he asks for the seed of the countermeme, she tells him that being free means living without fear of the universe.
Hix administers an antiserum to save Adam’s life, which has the side effect of his retaining whatever regression he experiences from taking the mnestic. With the mental energy Adam has left, he and Marie reciprocate their love for each other. Adam recalls how Marie used to sing around him.
Marie enters ideatic space, a plane of existence inhabited by all possible ideas, including everything that ever existed in the material world in thought form. Marie sees her links to the ideas of Adam and the Organization, and the links that bind all of humanity together. She also sees how U-3125 corrupts all ideas, turning them into the most cynical versions of themselves. Transcending her human form, she becomes the countermeme WILD LIGHT and renders U-3125 irrelevant until it blinks out of existence. She then travels out to the edge of ideatic space to relieve its pressure on humanity. The world returns to normal.
Part 3, Chapter 7 Summary: “Epilogue”
Mahlo enters Vault 3011A, which is an archival library. He begins speaking to U-0055, monologuing about the gaps in history and geography that no one can account for. The only people who can study these gaps are the subject experts in the Organization’s new Noöspherics Division. All Mahlo can state for certain is that an Unknown came into the world and left with the content that filled those gaps. The cause of the Unknown’s departure is similarly unknown, but the Organization suspects that it encountered a conflict. He muses that whatever happened, human civilization can recover from any such calamity. Despite their best intentions to prevent further calamities, Mahlo guarantees that they’re inevitable. Still, he wants to know how the Organization survived the recent calamity and how they can work to prevent others from happening. U-0055 says nothing in response.
The novel introduces Cela as a surviving member of Cryptomorpha gigantes. The other survivors adapted to their discovery by humanity, fleeing their natural habitat to reinforce their antimemetic defenses. Cela consumes one of the spiders left in U-3125’s wake. Neither she nor Mahlo can perceive the other as they pass each other. Cela calls out to her family.
Part 3, Chapters 5-7 Analysis
The resolution of the novel’s conflict begins with the exposition of Hix’s efforts, showing how the effort to defeat U-3125 was years in the making. From the moment the novel began, Hix was already working on the Irreality Amplifier under the guise of being dead. Quinn alluded to this in the first chapter of Part 1 by referencing the contagious quality of the knowledge of Hix’s death. Through the context provided in Part 3, Chapter 5, the mystery of Hix’s death gains added meaning. The circumstances of his death are contagious in the sense that they would eventually lead a person to conceptualize U-3125, since Hix would have no reason to develop an amplifier for an idea other than to overpower a lesser, malevolent idea.
This also suggests that from the moment the novel began, a part of Quinn always knew that Hix was working on a solution, even if she couldn’t remember it or speak to it. The knowledge of his death triggered implicit knowledge in her, just as the memories of Adam and Quinn’s relationship trigger implicit knowledge of the trust that Adam places in Quinn. These final chapters thus hint at the idea that faith in others can be a form of implicit knowledge. Adam, Quinn, and Hix all operate independently and without knowledge of each other’s intentions, yet the culmination of all three efforts is necessary to achieve their shared goal. They all hold onto the memories of promises they made in the past, from Hix’s promise to devote his time and skills to the development of the countermeme to the Quinns’ promises to reunite with each other at the end of the antimemetic war. These promises give them hope to continue working, even without any visible signs of the outcomes they aim to achieve. This thematically underscores Knowledge as a Form of Hope.
Ultimately, the countermeme that defeats U-3125 is rooted in the same ideal that the Organization stands for, which Quinn represents: “Freedom means no fear” (266). If U-3125 represents the idea that everything can be corrupted, then it’s effectively fear itself, entrapping people in the misguided notion that the unknown is naturally dangerous. The novel ends by implying that a willing desire to engage with the elements that make something unknown feel terrifying can overpower fear. This is arguably the mandate of the Organization, which contains Unknowns to make them known, not to neutralize them. As earlier events in the novel foreshadow, both the Antimemetics Division and the world at large undergo rebirths. Mahlo himself muses that humanity is destined to keep rising from the ashes of inevitable calamities. Rather than suggesting that humanity is impotent against such calamities, this reflection acknowledges humanity’s humility against nature and the awe inherent in the capacity to recover from such tragedy. The novel reflects this on a micro level through the relationship between Adam and Marie. Despite the conflict that drove Marie to erase their relationship, Adam finds his way back to his memories before their erasure. In the couple’s last interaction in the novel, Adam affectionately recalls Marie, focusing on her singing, an aspect of her that exists outside of her work-centered characterization.
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