Galapagos

James Wait is a 35-year-old American man. He buys a ticket for a cruise from Ecuador to the Galapagos Islands. The cruise is billed as “the Nature Cruise of the Century” (11). Wait is a con man but leads Jesus Ortiz, the barman in the Ecuadorian hotel, to think that he’s a pitiable figure. In the past, Wait tricked 17 women into marrying him and then stole each woman’s life savings and abandoned them. He’s now a millionaire and—he believes—completely free from police suspicion. The narrator is surprised by Wait’s ability to deceive but attributes this “brilliantly duplicitous” behavior to the large brains that humans possessed during this time.

In the air-conditioned hotel bar, Wait drinks while he searches for his next victim. The cruise departs on Friday, November 28, 1986—which to the narrator is “a million years ago” (13). Wait is unaware that the cruise requires that passengers be in reasonable physical condition, as they’ll need to scramble ashore when visiting places such as Darwin Bay, named after famed evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin, who visited the Galapagos when writing “the most broadly influential scientific volume produced during the entire era of great big brains” (14). Darwin returned home to write On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, which outlined his groundbreaking theory of evolution. Wait knows little about Darwin and had minimal formal education after growing up as an orphan and then spending time as “a successful homosexual prostitute” (15), which was when he learned to scam women. Like Wait, the narrator was a teenage runaway.

The people of Ecuador are grateful to Charles Darwin for turning the Galapagos Islands into a popular tourist destination. A Spanish ship accidently landed on the unpopulated islands in 1535 and, in 1832, they became “part of Ecuador” (16). Three years later, Darwin’s work transformed the islands “from worthless to priceless” (17), as many people became interested in visiting the spot of Darwin’s revelation. Now, the islands and Ecuador are popular tourist destinations. However, during the time of Wait’s visit, a global economic collapse has destroyed the local tourist industry, and only one hotel is left open, where Wait now enjoys a drink in the air-conditioned bar. The hotel currently hosts only six guests. In addition to Wait, these guests include a 29-year-old Japanese computer genius named Zenji Hiroguchi; Zenji’s pregnant wife, Hisako Hiroguchi, who teaches the art of flower arranging; a wealthy 55-year-old American adventurer and widower named Andrew MacIntosh; Andrew’s blind 18-year-old daughter, Selena MacIntosh; and a 51-year-old reclusive American widow named Mary Hepburn. Andrew and Zenji, the narrator explains, will die before the end of the day. The narrator claims to be present at this time while being “perfectly invisible” (17).

The Bahia de Darwin is the luxurious cruise ship that operates between Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. The ship was built in Sweden, where the narrator “worked on her” (18), though the narrator died before the ship was launched. Because of the global financial crisis, the Bahia de Darwin is the only ship operating out of the port of Guayaquil. As the crisis worsens, countries around the world declare bankruptcy. They can no longer afford to buy food, and people are “beginning to starve to death” (19) even though there’s enough food to feed everyone on the planet. The narrator blames the famine on the oversized brains.

The global financial crisis is “the latest in a series of murderous twentieth century catastrophes which had originated entirely in human brains” (20). Mary Hepburn blames her big brain for her increasingly suicidal thoughts. A thief at the airport stole her luggage, and she refuses to leave her room in the combat fatigues she packed for the more physical parts of the cruise. She also blames her brain for making her take the cruise trip despite the financial crisis and despite her husband’s recent death from a brain tumor. During 1986, Mary lost her job as a public schoolteacher, and her husband became increasingly ill and erratic. Her vulnerable position and relative wealth make her “natural prey” (21) for a man like James Wait. The narrator interjects to blame his own big brain for telling him to join the Marines and “go fight in Vietnam” (22).

The financial crisis has rendered most global currencies worthless. In her room, Mary reflects on her reasons for being in Ecuador. Her late husband, Roy, was a sensible man whose behavior seemed to become suddenly erratic when he first booked the trip. Later, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and the trip became all he had to look forward to as the world economy crashed.

Before the economy crashed, both Roy and Mary lost their jobs. The factory where Roy worked hired a Japanese firm called Matsumoto to help with modernization. Zenji Hiroguchi works for Matsumoto. The Japanese firm replaced many men at the factory with computers, and Roy was among the many who were fired. When the local residents couldn’t pay their taxes, the town of Ilium closed its public schools, and Mary was told to take early retirement. The narrator suggests that the human tendency for “turning over as many human activities as possible to machinery” (27) is a further criticism of big brains.

Both the town of Ilium and Roy were dying. Roy’s brain tumor affected his sanity. He became convinced that he was once hired by the US government to tether all sorts of animals to the spot in the Pacific Ocean at Bikini Atoll where the government tested nuclear bombs. Roy, an animal lover, hated his misremembered past, in which he took part in “the exact reverse of Noah’s ark” (28) by forcing two of every creature to be killed by the bombs. He even believed that a golden retriever from his neighborhood named Donald was killed during the tests. Roy spent some of his last days playing in the yard with Donald.

As Roy lay dying, he regretted that he and Mary had no children. He listed extinct animals as points of comparison. With his last words, he told Mary that the difference between animals and humans is that humans can tell when their “brain isn’t working right” (30). Surprisingly, he then asked for a Bible and made Mary promise “to get married again as soon as possible” (31) and to take the cruise that he’d booked for them months earlier. Mary promised. In her hotel room, she prepares to join the other guests for dinner. The narrative reveals that despite her pessimistic thoughts, she’ll live another 30 years and will eventually become “the most important experimenter in the history of the human race” (31).

As Mary prepares for dinner, the other guests are in their rooms. Zenji and Hisako know Andrew MacIntosh, who’s pressuring Zenji to sign a business proposal. The narration reveals that both men will be dead before sunset along with the hotel manager, Siegfried von Kleist, whose uncles own the hotel and the Bahia de Darwin. Siegfried’s brother, Adolf, is the captain of the Bahia de Darwin and will become “a latter-day Adam, so to speak” (33). In their hotel room, Zenji and Hisako talk in Japanese about their difficult situation. They feel like prisoners because Zenji received a business proposal from Andrew MacIntosh to help set up a technology company based on the language translation device that Zenji invented. Called Mandarax, the pocket computer is based on an earlier, more primitive model called Gokubi. Andrew MacIntosh shares a trait with James Wait in that both are predators of a sort. Wait preys on widows, while Andrew MacIntosh is “a fisherman of sorts” (34) who wants to lure investors to his company based on Zenji’s invention. In addition, Andrew owns shares in the cruise company and has invited Zenji and Hisako to Ecuador to seal the deal. To hide the trip from Zenji’s employers, they’re travelling under false identities.

Zenji and Hisako are convinced that Andrew is “an actual maniac” (35). In fact, he’s quite sane—but is greedy and inconsiderate. As he explained to his blind daughter, he plans to buy up many Ecuadorian assets thanks to the collapsed economy. The reason Zenji and Hisako believe Andrew is a maniac is that they consulted Mandarax about Andrew. The device is programmed to give medical diagnoses as well as translate languages. Mandarax diagnosed Andrew with a “pathological personality” (36). All flights from Ecuador have been cancelled, however, so they find themselves dependent on Andrew.