58 pages • 1 hour read
Adrian TchaikovskyChildren of Time
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Enlightenment”
Part 4, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Cave of Wonders”
Holsten sits at a terminal, slowly cataloguing the information coming in from the abandoned partial terraforming station. He has now acquired more knowledge of the Old Empire than he has ever collected before. He has created algorithms to translate Imperial languages, and his primary responsibility is to translate anything that the engineering crews pass along to him. As Holsten muses about the project, the past, and the inferiority of his peoples’ technology when contrasted with that of the Old Empire, Guyen taps him on the shoulder and gives him a list of documents he’d like to have translated.
Part 4, Chapter 2 Summary: “Death Comes Riding”
Great Nest is slowly dying as many flee the city ahead of a massive plague that is now sweeping through the spider species. The new Portia, a scientist and priestess, seeks to solve the riddle of this plague in order to save her civilization. Spiders, unlike humans, lack an immune system that responds to vaccinations, so the spiders are more likely to die out than to recover. Because of the plague, many spiders are also losing faith in the Messenger and the order that she represents. Portia thinks for a moment that if she could only send a message back to the Messenger, then The Messenger might destroy the plague, but Portia knows that finding a solution is up to her. She meets with a male, Fabian, and the two of them retrieve healthy spiderlings from a plague-infested area. These infants are likely immune to the plague, so Portia wishes to use them to discover a potential solution. At Fabian’s request, she agrees to let him help her with her research.
Part 4, Chapter 3 Summary: “Notes from a Grey Planet”
Holsten attends an announcement by Vitas, who is in charge of determining whether the nearby planet is safe for human life. Vitas announces that they have thoroughly examined the planet. The oxygen levels and temperature are not conducive for settlement, and the planet’s surface is covered with an invasive and aggressive fungus. However, the technology and knowledge that they have gathered from the station offer major steps forward in their quest. Guyen reassures the audience that he has a plan and states that the technology they have collected will increase their odds of victory.
Part 4, Chapter 4 Summary: “Enquiring Minds”
Despite the spiders’ feverish efforts to cure the plague, the disease continues to rage, causing catastrophic death counts throughout Great Nest and beyond. Portia meets with Bianca, her former peer, who is more ambitious and willing to break rules for the sake of scientific advancement. Bianca wants to send a message to the Messenger and shows Portia a device that she has invented for that purpose, but Portia is unwilling to help her, given the social risks involved in such an endeavor. Portia discusses matter of the spiders who seem to be surviving the plague; she thinks of the Understanding that will be genetically passed down through those survivors and has a sudden idea. She asks for Bianca’s help and promises to help her contact the Messenger if they are successful.
Part 4, Chapter 5 Summary: “Dreams of the Ancients”
Guyen takes Holsten to the terraforming station to examine an artifact, making sure that they are alone in the chamber. As they make their way through the station, Lain secretly patches into Holsten’s helmet, watching and commenting on Guyen’s behavior. They come to a cold storage unit, and Guyen activates it. Holsten struggles to figure out the unit’s purpose as he moves past the machine’s missing links. The artifact reveals itself to be an “emergency upload facility” (284), and while Holsten is confused at what could be uploaded, Guyen is filled with excitement.
Part 4, Chapter 6 Summary: “The Messenger Within”
Portia and Bianca work together to discover how to cure the plague. Portia is now working with a new spider, Viola, who has studied the mechanisms of transmitting Understanding (genetic knowledge) from generation to generation. That research yields a connection between the spiderlings’ immunity to the plague and the mechanism of inherited knowledge, which has just been isolated and identified. However, neither Viola nor Portia have figured out how to intervene in that process except through the natural processes of mating and laying eggs. Bianca, who is now entering the advanced stages of the disease, visits Viola and makes a striking discovery. Embedded in the other Understandings is a distinct Understanding that is markedly different (the nanovirus). Viola calls it “the Messenger within” (292) and discovers that it can also be isolated, just like the immunity in the spiderlings. Portia combines the virus with the immunity genes and uses a modified fang to inject them both into Bianca.
Part 4, Chapter 7 Summary: “Not Prince Hamlet”
Lain invites Holsten to the terraforming station. They share a meal together and then sleep together, after which Lain asks about Guyen’s secret project. Holsten tells her that the upload facility is designed to upload a human consciousness into a computer. Lain expresses concern at this idea, and Holsten halfheartedly suggests that it could be useful. However, he already knows one outcome of melding a human mind with a computer: the hostile sentience that arose from the blending of Avrana Kern and Eliza. He reflects that such an outcome could be even more disastrous in Guyen.
Part 4, Chapter 8 Summary: “Age of Progress” Summary
Portia’s cure works, saving Bianca’s life. This discovery not only saves the spider civilization but offers a new way to transmit all Understanding, drastically speeding up the spiders’ technological advancement and allowing for the accelerated healing of both body and mind. Additionally, because the spiders have saved themselves from the plague, the strict orthodoxies surrounding the Messenger have loosened. Portia brings Bianca to the temple, and her battery is used as a prototype to begin attempting to communicate with the Messenger. Years later, they manage to transmit the answers to the mathematical questions posed by Kern’s pod. The message then stops, creating a momentary panic amongst the spider population. Then, a new message begins.
Part 4, Chapter 9 Summary: “Ex Machina”
The machinery in Kern’s Pod activates in response to the solution that the spiders send to it. Kern, or some amalgamation of Kern and her AI counterpart, is activated by Eliza. Kern has conflicted memories and feelings regarding the other humans and is still convinced that the beings responding to her math problems are the evolved descendants of the monkeys that she originally sent to the planet. The second stage of the experiment begins—the initial contact from the planet to the outer universe. She sends a message back, which may take many generations for the spiders to decode, declaring that she is their God.
Part 4 Analysis
Because the characterizations of the humans and the spiders are decidedly at odds, Tchaikovsky uses this ongoing contrast to deliver a series of social commentaries upon common human biases and practices. While the spiders have the same desire to discover and improve themselves, they exhibit far greater empathy than the humans do. Of all the humans, only Lain and Holsten demonstrate any willingness to explore multiple options and to try to communicate with any possible threat sources prior to engaging in violence. Holsten in particular is dedicated to increasing his understanding of the universe and is just as concerned with the evolution of human morality as he is with the advancement of human technology. However, the other humans—especially Guyen, Karst, and Vitas—refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that preserving alien life is as important as preserving human life. When presented with an uninhabitable planet, the only plan that Guyen can conceive of is conquest. The spiders, on the other hand, overcome their innate nature as hunters and cannibals and share a cultural emphasis upon increasing their collective knowledge, and as a result, they work to neutralize threats in a way that allows them to assuage their curiosity and learn more about the “other.” Without that curiosity and commitment to both knowledge and understanding, the entire species would have been eradicated by the plague. Although Tchaikovsky is careful to to avoid anthropomorphizing his arachnid characters and to acknowledge their inherently predatory nature, the spiders are still far more measured and sympathetic than their human counterparts.
When Viola discovers the virus within spider genetics, the wording that the author uses suggests that the spiders conceive of everything—even genetics—in terms of language and the conveyance of meaning. As the narrative states, “Viola has uncovered the secret language of Understandings—if it could only be translated” (290). This passage makes it clear that the key to curing the plague is the same key to advancing the species—writ large—and Tchaikovsky therefore uses the metaphor of language to emphasize the connections between the nanovirus, the plague, and the concept of genetic inheritance. The nanovirus is described as “a […] second book in a second code” (292). Presenting genetic code as literature, especially for a species that doesn’t have a cohesive written language, is a metaphor that is designed to connect the power of language to the necessity of gaining a greater understanding of the world. Even the religious language that the spiders use for Kern, “The Messenger,” evokes an aura of communication. The spiders’ language is entirely visual and sensory rather than audible, and they don’t have words as humans understand them. However, by using literary images to describe an internal sense of connection, Tchaikovsky creates a thematic connection between communication, empathy, and language.
Just as earlier segments of the novel focus on warfare, the primary metaphor of the fourth section illuminates the dynamics of disease and infection. However, the narrative suggests that unlike warfare, disease and contagion are essentially neutral. The nanovirus carries the solution to the spiders’ plague, while the plague itself destroys the mind and body of the spiders. However, even the plague carries the seeds of progress, for it proves to be the impetus that allows the spiders to reach beyond their current level of knowledge and to finally contact the larger universe.
In a sharp contrast with the spiders’ willingness to understand the plague that is killing them, Kern thinks of the last of humanity as a disease, a mold, or an infection, and she avoids discovering anything about them despite the fact that they represent the next chapter in humanity’s story. Likewise, throughout the human chapters, the concept of contagion persists. Even the fungus on the abandoned terraform planet and Guyen’s interest in uploading his consciousness are both metaphorical pathogens—forces that can invade and threaten the very nature of human existence in one way or another. Just as Tchaikovsky maintains an element of ambiguity surrounding sentience, he also creates and maintains ambiguous depictions of contagion, delivering the implicit message that elements of technology and nature are morally neutral; it is only in their application that they become positive or negative.
Against this highly nuanced philosophical backdrop, the comparison between Kern/Eliza and Guyen’s goal to upload himself into a computer advances a concern about the ethics and potential dangers of AI in general. Earlier in the narrative, Kern’s identity and life are described ambiguously, suggesting that AI sentience may potentially take the place of individual human beings. Guyen’s ambition to become one with the ship’s computers similarly has multiple implications for the survival of humanity—not all of which are favorable. When Holsten realizes that a digitized version of Guyen could become just as psychologically unstable as Kern has proven to be, the novel highlights the dangers involved in granting sentience to computers. His concern is amplified by Guyen’s existing mental health issues and megalomaniacal desire to become a godlike being, which echoes Kern’s determination to style herself as a god to the subjects on the planet. The idea that a human can use technology to “play god” references many real-world ethical concerns surrounding the risks of scientific advancement.
