MaddAddam

At breakfast, Ivory Bill, Manatee, Tamaraw, and Zunzuncito debate whether the Crakers have culture or only genetics. Singing and mating are genetic, but Crake refused to let them test how circumstance would affect these behaviors. They also wonder why he felt it necessary to wipe out humanity. Ivory Bill agrees that Crake likely saw humans as “greedy, rapacious Conquistadors” (140) and Crakers as Indigenous people to protect. Ren and Lotis Blue coax Amanda to eat. Swift Fox is late to the table after a night in the bushes with at least one man, according to Rebecca. Toby judges Swift Fox for dressing like a schoolgirl but then reminds herself that Swift Fox would never be able to do that before the plague since she was a highly-regarded scientist and would lose clout if she did. Swift Fox complains about the noise last night, glancing side-eyed at Toby, who reddens. She deflects more questions about what noise she is talking about with a comment about vomiting what they have for breakfast in their party-going days, and Amanda rushes off with her mouth covered. Swift Fox insults Amanda and complains that she needs to get over what happened and start contributing. Toby fumes. Then, Zeb, Rhino, and Katuro appear, heading out to glean and look for Painballers. Flirting, Swift Fox announces that she’s coming too for “girl stuff” (143).

Blackbeard appears, excited because Jimmy is awake. Reluctantly, Toby leaves Zeb and the others, resisting the urge to mark her territory. Confused, Jimmy babbles about Crake killing Oryx, but thankfully the Crakers don’t understand. Jimmy moans, “Oh, fuck” (146), confusing the Crakers, who say “oh” before a name to address someone. They accept that “Fuck” is Jimmy’s invisible helper. Toby goes to get Jimmy some water and meets Ren, Lotis Blue, and Amanda, who reveal that Lotis Blue also once knew Jimmy. In high school, Jimmy was in love with her, and even Amanda joins in as they joke about how he used to behave. Toby imagines poor muddled Jimmy being suddenly surrounded by three former loves, but Jimmy is asleep. Helplessly, Toby watches Zeb and the others leave. All day, thoughts of losing Zeb either to danger or to Swift Fox haunt her. The gleaning party still hasn’t returned by midnight.

Toby avoids breakfast and the others. Crozer watches jealously as Ren and Lotis Blue help Jimmy walk, with Amanda and the Crakers watching nearby. Toby returns to thinking about Zeb—perhaps Zeb found Adam, slowing their return, or Zeb could be dead. They finally return in the late afternoon. Toby asks Zeb what happened, but he says, “Long story. […] Tell you later” (154) and heads toward the shower. As Swift Fox shows off toiletries and beauty products she gleaned, Toby asks what happened. Too friendly, Swift Fox explains that the pigs from their garden had cornered them in a drugstore until dark. They also saw the Painballers’ smoke, so they decided to spend the night in the stockroom. In the morning, they found a dead piglet and the remains of the red Mo’Hair at the site of the fire. Proudly, Swift Fox shows off a stash of pregnancy tests, suggesting that they’ll need them to repopulate the world. Toby decides to wait for Zeb to come to her, but by bedtime, he hasn’t shown up.

Zeb doesn’t find Toby until the next afternoon. Zeb explains that he was exhausted and just woke up. He gives her a mirror, notebooks, and pens, surprising Toby, who had been too shy to ask for any of these things. Toby hugs him and asks for reading glasses and a beehive, and Zeb agrees easily. Then Zeb shows her a handmade sandal, the work of a Gardener, that he found by the Painballer’s campfire. They both see it as a sign of Adam. Toby warns him that hope is dangerous but adds that if Adam is alive, he’s undoubtedly searching for Zeb too.

Toby leaves Zeb to tell the Crakers their story despite Zeb’s protests. She goes through the ritual and tells the Crakers about Zeb and Fuck, as they requested. Toby explains that Zeb left his unkind parents and went into the chaos. Zeb was separated from Adam, his brother and “only friend and helper” (164). Fuck, an invisible helper who flies everywhere, appears instantly at the sound of his name. Toby explains that Pilar, not Fuck, is her invisible helper, and promises to talk about Pilar another night. When Zeb went into unsafe places that were full of bad men, many killing and eating the Children of Oryx, Zeb called Fuck for advice. Toby reassures them that Zeb escaped safely since he is sitting nearby and listening to the story as well; then, she tells them good night.

After a while, Zeb left Wynette, returned to Truck-A-Pillar hitchhiking, and ended up in Santa Monica. This largely underwater district, called the Floating World, attracted transients, squatters, and sordid businesses, such as gambling and sex work. Acrobats performed dangerous feats and were sometimes killed or injured. Wealthy people who lived in the sheltered compounds visited looking for risk and excitement. Zeb became a magician’s assistant whose job was to place Miss Direction, the magician’s beautiful lady assistant, into a box to be sawed in half. Zeb fell hard for Miss Direction, “a lynx-eyed Asian-Fusion hybrid” (171) named Katrina Wu (or WooWoo in Zeb’s mind). Disinterested, Katrina rejected Zeb’s flirting. She was seeing an acrobat who was helping her to create a highwire act where she sometimes dressed as a bird and other times as a snake. One day, Katrina ran off, and she and her boyfriend started Scales and Tails. The magician moved on, and Zeb hitchhiked to Mexico.

Zeb ended up in Rio. People called it The Hackery, a homebase for hackers and the “Wild West of the web” (174). He was hired by Hacksaw, “an anything-goes sex bazaar” (175), to skim from an online poker site. After a month, Zeb had trouble hiding his distaste for the brutal treatment of trafficked sex workers, which included children. Zeb killed a guard and stole his motorboat and identity, taking along Minta, a trafficked sex worker he hired to act as a decoy. They moved from hotel to hotel, but Minta, who had trauma, started having episodes of terror and eventually jumped from a hotel balcony. Zeb moved on, receiving a dropbox message from Adam: “Confirm you’re still in the body,” to which Zeb replied, “In whose body?” (178). Zeb knew his quip would prove it was him. Next, Zeb joined Bearlift, and after the events with Chuck and the bear, he found himself in another hotel room wondering who hired Chuck.

After Bearlift, Zeb messaged Adam to let him know he was alive. Adam replied that he should come to New New York for a potential job. Zeb hitchhiked back, relieved to know Adam was safe. Zeb continued to wonder who hired Chuck and concluded that only the Rev would have sent someone so inept and fake-smiled as Chuck, but how did the Rev track him? It would have been impossible. Then Zeb recalled the Church hated environmental organizations like Bearlift. Chuck had infiltrated the organization and found Zeb by chance, and the Rev would have then seen the opportunity to take Zeb out. This meant the Rev had gone against the extortion orders, so Zeb followed through and sent embezzlement evidence to the Church Elder, adding instructions to search for the embezzled funds under the rock garden instead of in the offshore account, which Zeb then emptied and sent the money to Adam. Zeb waited and watched the news until the story broke about the embezzling preacher and his murdered wife. Trudy effectively proclaimed her innocence, which he had to admire. He sent a link to the news article detailing the Rev being arrested to Adam and left town; he needed to not be there if the investigation included tracing the tip to the Elder.

New New York was on the Jersey Shore and replaced flooded and collapsing Old New York. Zeb messaged Adam when he arrived. From the news, Zeb learned the Rev was swearing his innocence while he awaited trial. Out on bail, the Rev was dangerous and could probably guess who sent the tip. Trudy was giving interviews as his victim. Zeb waited at a Happicuppa, as per Adam’s instructions, and was surprised when Adam himself sat down across from him. Zeb would take a data entry job at HelthWyzer West, a major pharmaceutical Corp, near San Francisco. Adam left a bag with Zeb’s identity and deflected Zeb’s questions with an infuriating smile. Zeb took the bag with “his new skin” (192) and hit the Truck-A-Pillar back across the country.

Zeb’s new name was Seth, a biblical joke since Seth was Adam’s third son, and Adam designated his style as “casual geekwear” (193). Adam also directed Zeb to a secret chatroom, accessed through a gateway in an internet game called Extinctathon. It was “Monitored by MaddAddam” and greeted players with “Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?” (194). The game was boring enough to deter anyone. Zeb wondered if environmentalists designed the game. In the chatroom, Zeb found a message with new chatroom coordinates and nothing else. The clothes felt ridiculous, but the HelthWyzer housing and food were decent, and the job was exceedingly easy. He had time to hack HelthWyzer’s databases, and he decided Seth would be a gamer to cover his playing Extinctathon. He tried out some of the games developed by his new coworkers, and his favorite was called Intestinal Parasites. He hid a flash drive with the chatroom gateway in a plain lockbox in his desk.

In her journal, Toby writes short, dry notations about recent happenings and her best guess as to the coinciding Gardener feast. Blackbeard finds her and asks what she’s doing. Toby explains pens and paper and then letters and how they make sounds and words. Writing Blackbeard’s name, Toby points to the “B” and explains that the letter makes the same sound as the first letter of the word “bees.” Confused by the abstractness of language, Blackbeard argues, “That is not me. […] It is not bees either. It is only some marks” (203). With a smile, Toby tells Blackbeard to take the paper to Ren and ask her to read it, predicting that she’ll say his name. When he returns, Blackbeard is beaming. The paper told Ren his name. Amazed, he starts to understand the possibilities of writing. Later, Toby sees Blackbeard writing his name in the sand for the other children. Suddenly, she worries that she did something she can’t take back.

At breakfast, the group discusses whether the Crakers are human. Ivory Bill comments that they could see whether they can breed with humans, which would require “the co-operation of the ladies” (207), but he is corrected that procreation wouldn’t tell them anything until the following generation proved to be either fertile or infertile. The Crakers would cooperate anytime, but they think human women are always in heat. The men make jokes about women’s libidos until White Sedge finds it offensive. Later, Zeb surprises Toby in the garden because he has found her a swarm of bees. Happily, Toby follows him into the woods to find a watermelon-sized bee ball. Shy, Toby asks Zeb to look away while she talks to the bees, asking if she can give them a home. They don’t sting, which she takes to mean yes. Suddenly, there’s a thrashing sound. Zeb moves to protect Toby. Then, he laughs.

Crozier and Swift Fox emerge from the bushes, and it’s clear they were having sex. Zeb doesn’t seem bothered by Swift Fox’s activities with another man, proving to Toby that she may have the wrong impression about his attraction to her, but she is confused because she had the impression that Crozier was courting Ren. Toby creates a makeshift beehive and catches the bees in a pillowcase. After Zeb leaves, Toby talks to the bees and introduces herself, promising to bring them the news. Blackbeard appears and asks what Toby is doing. She explains that she’s talking to the bees. Pleased, Blackbeard is surprised that she can speak to the Children of Oryx without singing, which finally clears up why the Crakers sing. Then, Ren and Lotis Blue tell Toby that Amanda is pregnant and deeply depressed. Toby worries the father is a Painballer rapist but then realizes it’s possible that it’s a Craker’s baby. Birthing a baby will be dangerous with no hospitals and without knowing what will happen to a human carrying a Craker’s baby. The Crakers try to soothe Amanda, but she begs Toby to help her abort the baby. Toby replies that she doesn’t know how to do it safely. Ren is panicked that she could be pregnant too since she was also part of the “cultural misunderstanding.”

In bed together, Toby expresses her worries about Amanda to Zeb. After Zeb promises not to laugh, Toby says she wants to speak to Pilar by going to where she’s buried and having a hallucinatory mushroom vision quest, explaining, “Think of it as a metaphor. I’ll be accessing my inner Pilar” (219). Sighing, Zeb agrees to help. Zeb knows Toby is also wondering about what happened with Swift Fox during the overnight gleaning trip, but Toby decides she’d rather not know. At dawn, they go to Pilar’s burial spot, which is marked with an elderberry bush. Blackbeard appears, having followed them. Toby welcomes him, though Zeb is anxious, but she is already hallucinating so he can’t leave to escort Blackbeard back. Toby asks Pilar about Amanda. Feeling ridiculous, Toby pleads for a sign. Suddenly, a giant pigoon sow appears with five piglets. The men lift their weapons, but Toby orders them not to shoot. The pigoon sow stares at Toby, and Blackbeard steps up and sings. After a moment, the sow is gone. To Toby, Blackbeard exclaims, “She was here” (223), and Toby wonders what it means but accepts that she has gotten the vision she came for.