MaddAddam

Zeb met Crake when he was only about 10 and his name was just Glenn. At HelthWyzer West, the company held Thursday barbecues to uphold the image of the company as family and to distract from their paranoia about bioscrapers kidnapping their employees, hacking their brains, and stealing their intellectual property. Adam suggested cryptically that Zeb might play some games at the barbecue. Zeb met Glenn, who beat him at chess. Then Zeb beat Glenn at Three-Dimensional Waco, and when the rematch Glenn demanded ended in a tie, Glenn gained some respect for Zeb. Zeb told altered versions of his background stories when Glenn asked him about himself, and they became friends. Glenn’s parents were neglectful, and Glenn discouraged anyone from touching him. His father was a top researcher, working with microbes, viruses, and antigens. Glenn’s mother sometimes seemed to come on to Zeb, but Zeb ignored her advances. One game Glenn and Zeb played together was called Blood and Roses, in which one player would trade the accomplishments of the human race for erasing atrocities held by the other player. Zeb also started giving Glenn coding lessons, including hacking. Glenn learned quickly and was impressed by Zeb’s knowledge.

To Toby’s surprise, Zeb tells her that he also met Pilar at one of the barbecues. She was playing chess with Glenn, and after Glenn introduced them, Zeb watched for a bit then wandered away. Pilar found him and mentioned his untied shoelaces—the password to the encrypted Extinctathon chat room. To Zeb’s surprise, Pilar said, “Welcome to MaddAddam, Zeb” (241). Pilar knew Adam and had helped get Zeb hired. She suggested they play chess at the next barbecue. Not wanting to risk the chatroom to ask Adam about Pilar, Zeb casually asked Glenn questions about her. Glenn tells him Pilar worked with his dad and her works focused on mushrooms and fungi. She and Glenn were in the chess club and had been playing together since Glenn was five years old. He commented, “She’s not too stupid” (243), which was the highest compliment Glenn gave.

Glenn didn’t attend the next barbecue. Zeb joined Pilar at a chess table and asked about Glenn as they played. Glenn’s father had died. His death was reported as a suicide, but he was really pushed from a pleebland overpass after discovering a HelthWyzer plot to endanger public health for profit. Pilar was being reassigned to HelthWyzer headquarters. She directed Zeb to take the bishop from the board, which she’d replace, and take it to Scales and Tails. The chess piece contained pills, vectors for bioforms. Pilar reassured him that Glenn would be fine and told Zeb to retrieve an info package from the Extinctathon chatroom.

Zeb’s new name would be Hector, but Seth was going out in a car on a fake pass. Street gangs would create a diversion, and Zeb would fetch his new identity from a dumpster and go to Scales and Tails. There, he gave the password to the bouncer, who led Zeb to an office. Zeb was surprised to see Katrina WooWoo and Adam, who was wearing a caftan. Katrina left them alone, and Zeb handed over the chess piece. Adam poured out six pills, explaining that two pills were HelthWyzer vitamins. They had the monopoly on treatment for certain illnesses, and they had been randomly inserting those diseases into vitamins to increase profits. The other four pills had experimental bioforms. This was what Glenn’s father had discovered.

Toby imagines, with a little help from the last influences of the herb mixture she took for her talk with Pilar, how she will tell the Crakers the story of Zeb and the Snake Women. She will tell them that when Pilar was still a human woman, she needed Zeb’s help. She had stolen a seed that would make people sick from bad people. These people made people sick for Money, which she personifies for the Crakers as an invisible helper like Fuck, but Money would disappear when needed most, unlike Fuck. Pilar sent Zeb to take the seed to the home of the Snake Women, who were part snake, part woman and lived with Bird and Flower Women. The Snake Women hid Zeb, who was happy to find Adam hiding there too “because Adam was the helper of Zeb and Zeb was the helper of Adam” (257). The Snake Women cared for Zeb and provided a bed for him and Fuck. All the Women, who were Children of Oryx since they were part animal or plant, protected Zeb while he slept in case the bad people showed up. They did show up, but that’s the second part of the story, which she will tell the Crakers next time.

The next morning, Toby is still feeling the residual effects of the hallucinogen. She turns down ham for breakfast, still thinking about the sow. Toby finds Rebecca, who is watching Blackbeard write with amazement. Blackbeard leaves to collect more names, and Toby admits that she took too many mushrooms. Sympathetically, Rebecca offers tea. Toby realizes that the sow recognized her as the one who shot her husband at the AnooYoo spa. Rebecca can’t wrap her mind around the idea that a pig had a husband even if they are very intelligent. Jimmy managed to eat breakfast at the table but wants Toby to check his foot because it itches. In his cubicle in the cobb-house, decorated by Ren and Lotis Blue, Toby pronounces Jimmy’s foot healing normally. The Crakers told Jimmy about the vision quest, and Toby is surprised that they’ve also told Jimmy that the sow told them Toby shot a boar.

Jimmy complains that the Crakers treat him like the priest of Crake, even if it's his own fault. The Crakers asked so many questions that Jimmy had made things up. Jimmy can’t deal with leading them to worship Crake, so he just directs all their questions to Toby. Now that they’re so into Zeb, Jimmy suggests that Toby follow that storyline instead. Toby points out that Jimmy is manipulating her by sending the Crakers to her and expecting her to come up with more stories. Jimmy agrees and apologizes. They have to keep the Crakers happy so they’ll stay where they can be protected. She needs him to tell her more about Crake to help make sure they’re keeping the stories consistent. Sadly, Jimmy says that not understanding Crake is par for the course, “He cut her throat, did you know that? Good, kind Crake. She was so pretty, she was… Just thought I’d share that. But I shot the fucker” (265). Stunned, Toby asks him to clarify, but he’s already crying into his hands.

Excitedly, Blackbeard interrupts to announce that the pigoons are coming and they have brought one of their dead. The MaddAddamites grab their weapons. About 50 pigoons approach in a strangely orderly manner, many with piglets. Blackbeard speaks to the pigoons and translates that they promise not to hurt anyone. They’ve brought a piglet the Painballers killed. They ask the humans to kill the Painballers with their guns, and they want truce. No more killing and eating between humans and pigs, and the pigoons will stay out of their garden. Zeb accepts. The pigs will locate the three men, and tomorrow the humans can kill them. The humans are confused because they were only aware of the two Painballers, but Blackbeard confirms with the pigoons that there are three men. The pigs leave their piglet as a gift. Humans can eat them as long as they don’t kill them, as the pigs would otherwise eat the piglet themselves.

The piglet has simply been killed, not for food but as a message of psychological terror. Rebecca asks if she should cook the piglet. Disturbed, Ren exclaims, “It would be like eating a baby” (273), which makes Amanda cry. Ren announces that she’s also pregnant, and Swift Fox chimes in that she is too. Amanda’s baby could still be a Painballer’s, but Ren knows hers isn’t. Swift Fox has had multiple partners, including two Crakers, and claims that she is conducting genetic experiments and doesn’t know who the father is. Toby wonders if it could be Zeb’s. Zeb and Black Rhino return to the group after checking the perimeter, and they worry that when they go off to battle with the pigoons, they will have all the weapons and leave those who stay behind vulnerable to the Painballers ambushing the camp. They all agree that they must temporarily move the whole camp to a safer location. Toby suggests that they use the AnooYoo spa as a base since there are still basic supplies there and doors that can be locked. She adds that they should bury the piglet, and everyone agrees.

The MaddAddamites spend the day preparing. Toby speaks to the bees so they know she will not see them for a few days, and she asks them to tell Pilar to help keep them all safe. The Crakers don’t understand why the MaddAddams are leaving, but they plan to come anyway. At dawn, they start walking with two pigoon guards and their Mo’Hair flock. The Craker women fawn on the pregnant women, which Amanda enjoys. Once they reach the spa grounds, the pigoons smell that the three men passed through the spa, but they’re gone. Toby remembers that a man murdered by Painballers still hangs from a tree on a forest path she and Ren took while tracking Amanda, and she thinks they ought to bury him when this is over. Toby finds the door unlocked as she left it, and invites everyone into AnooYoo spa.

The spa, with its shiny floor and mirrors, amazes the Crakers. Toby finds the rifle bullets she stashed and her old journals, which are now just “a whisper from the past” (282). She wonders why she’s teaching writing to Blackbeard if all writing becomes whispers from ghosts. Toby assigns rooms and sends the Mo’Hairs to the defunct garden and the Crakers to the roof. They eat dinner in the dining room, and Rebecca warns Toby that the Crakers have asked her to cook a frog for Toby to perform the storytelling ceremony because they could not find a fish. The pigoons smell the three men nearby, and Toby wonders if the third could be Adam, but Zeb repeats Toby’s earlier advice about hope being dangerous. Then Blackbeard comes to fetch Toby for storytime.

Toby thanks the Crakers for the frog and explains that Crake has told her it’s all right to only take a nibble of the frog as she begins the storytime ceremony. Tomorrow, she says, they will finish Crake’s “work of clearing away the chaos” (289). She explains that this was only one part of Crake’s work and then explains the second part, which was to create the Crakers. Crake formed them in the Egg, and then Oryx, as an owl, laid two small eggs, one containing the animals, and the other all the words. The Crakers ate the words, which is how they can speak. Crake presumed the Crakers ate all of the words, but “Crake was not always right about everything” (290). When the animals hatched, they chewed the leftovers until humans couldn’t understand, but pigoons ate the most, which is why they are so smart. Oryx created singing for the Crakers to communicate with animals, not caring that Crake didn’t want it because he worried that they would not speak if they could sing. Then, Toby shifts to telling them about Crake making the Great Emptiness. Crake decided that the people in the chaos couldn’t learn to stop hurting the planet, so he created seeds that made them feel good and then ill until they died.

He scattered the seeds, lying to Oryx as well as the Snake, Bird, and Flower Women, so they helped him spread the seeds, not knowing people would die. Oryx and Crake flew away to live in the sky, and Snowman-the-Jimmy stayed to keep the Crakers safe and tell them stories. Toby ends her story for now and explains that everyone must sleep now because tomorrow is important. Zeb, Rhino, Manatee, Crozier, Shackleton, Jimmy, and Toby will go with the pigoons, with Blackbeard to translate, to get rid of the bad men. In response to the Craker’s worry, Toby says, “Yes, we will come back. I hope we will come back. Hope is when you want something very much but you do not know if that thing you want will really happen” (292).

Toby finds Zeb on the roof with the sleeping Crakers and tells him, “This is where I waited for you” (293). Zeb asks if the wait was worth it, and she replies, “You need to ask?” (293). Then, Zeb continues his story.

He became a bouncer at Scales and Tails, working alongside Jebediah, or Black Rhino. Corps execs would come out to feel adventurous in the pleeblands, and they were sheltered and easy to subdue with a knock-out cocktail when they got out of hand, waking up just remembering a great time. The Corps execs were easy to subdue, but the Painballers were much more difficult to manage. They were far more dangerous and could kill a valuable, skilled dancer in a moment. They didn’t take chances with Painballers, so if they saw them getting worked up, they would put them out before they could cause any real damage.

The chess piece was hidden in a novelty saltshaker in plain view. Adam wasn’t worried, but Zeb watched it closely. Toby interjects Zeb’s story, struggling to imagine Adam at Scales and Tales. Unbeknownst to Zeb, Adam was already launching the God’s Gardeners, and Toby balks at the implication that Pilar might have been Eve One because she was already too old. Adam was also keeping track of the news about the Rev. Trudy wrote a memoir and was found suspiciously dead in Mexico before she could testify against the Rev in the murder trial. Consequently, the evidence against the Rev was deemed inconclusive and he was released. To the Church, the Rev confessed his embezzlement, asked for forgiveness, and regained his Church and his fortune, so Adam believed the Rev would then be hunting his wayward sons. One night, Zeb was shocked as the Rev walked in with three OilCorps execs. The Rev ignored Zeb as he did all the help since they were considered unworthy of his acknowledgment, but staring at him made Zeb furious. He retrieved the chess piece and decided rashly to use one of each pill, slipping it into the hallucinogenic cocktail that came with the private dance the Rev’s friends had bought him. After a while, Katrina summoned him backstage for an emergency. Zeb asked if the guy had lost it and gotten violent. Quietly, Katrina said, “Worse than that” (305).

In the private room, red foam seeped from under a green bedspread. The girls had started their routine, but the Rev had started dissolving into bloody foam. Zeb was stunned by this overkill. The girls were wearing full-body prophylactics and would be fine. Then, Adam called: He knew the Rev had just died in the club. He had been alerted of the Rev’s booking and expected Zeb to have taken the actions he did, though he would have preferred a more subtle tactic. Zeb was indignant but pleased about Adam’s trust and that the Rev was no longer a threat. Now, the cleaning crew would vacuum the Rev into a CryoJeenyus cryogenic Frasket under the pretense that he’d had a stroke or heart attack. Posing as CryoJeenyus employees, Zeb and Adam would bring the Frasket to Pilar, who would analyze the remains to determine what was in the pills. After a microbial shower, Zeb stood by Katrina, who informed the OilCorps execs of the Rev’s supposed stroke and Frasket internment, promising the services of their PR team to create an adequate story for the Rev’s death. Zeb tells Toby that he never slept with Katrina because Adam loved her. Katrina was Eve One.

Zeb continues, describing the sealed bullet train trip with Adam as they impersonated CryoJeenyus employees. CryoJeenyus offered locked train cars for security from DNA and body theft. Mordis, the Scales manager, posed as their armed guard. The brothers wrote notes to each other to avoid the bugs in the car, and Adam become angry when Zeb pried for details about Adam sleeping with Katrina and whether he paid her to do it. Zeb backed off, and Adam calmed down, flushing the notes. Pilar met them on the east coast, and Mordis went to manage the local Scales. Adam changed into “increasingly bizarre streetwear” (317), gave the chess piece to Pilar, and went off into the deep pleeblands. With a new identity, Zeb was going to HelthWyzer Central. Before parting ways, Zeb asked Pilar to run his DNA against the Rev’s. Later, in his HelthWyzer bed, Zeb wondered if he really wanted to know if Adam might not be his brother.

At HelthWyzer Central, Zeb became Horatio and cleaned offices. Pilar communicated that the Rev wasn’t Zeb’s father. He decided not to tell Adam because they were brothers regardless of biology. Zeb interrupts his story to warn Toby that she won’t like the next part, which Toby knows means it’s about Lucerne, Zeb’s beautiful but obnoxious girlfriend and Ren’s neglectful mother. Lucerne loved bragging about Zeb ravishing her on the AnooYoo lawn, and Toby wants to hear Zeb’s side, even if she’s jealous of the passion Lucerne described. Zeb met Lucerne at HelthWyzer. She walked into the women’s bathroom he was cleaning on the night shift. She was likely having sex with an executive, and she had a wedding ring, but she flirted and called him by name, which impressed him. He saw her again after relocating to AnooYoo as a Gardener. She recognized him, but before she could point out that his name tag was wrong, Zeb kissed her. The affair kept her quiet until she demanded that they elope. He took her to the pleeblands, a romantic adventure for Lucerne, and had planned to leave her but she had brought Ren. Little girls were trafficked there, so he stayed to protect her. Toby remembers their arrival at the Gardener rooftop, as Zeb didn’t seem the type to be there. Zeb agrees, adding, “But Adam had to put up with me anyway, didn’t he? I was his brother” (327).

Zeb calls the Gardeners an “ecofreakshow” (328), and Toby points out that they saved her life. Pilar was there, having faked her death to escape HelthWyzer, and Toby became her protégé. Pilar kept the pills in the bishop of her own chess set and decided that analyzing the pills was too dangerous. When she died, she bequeathed the chess set to Glenn along with a sealed letter. Toby is aghast at giving deadly pills to a teenager. Zeb had argued against it, but Adam wanted to honor Pilar’s wishes. The pills were certainly the basis for BlyssPluss, the virus-vector pleasure pills that killed humanity, but Toby wonders if Pilar knew what Glenn would do. Zeb replies, “Let me put it this way. […] All the real Gardeners believed the human race was overdue for a population crash. It would happen anyways, and maybe sooner was better” (330). Zeb didn’t consider himself a “real Gardener” (331), but Adam One insisted that he become an Adam. In the mandatory vision quest, he hallucinated the bear, which lived peacefully inside him.

Lucerne complained about Zeb’s refusal to perform the Gardener marriage ceremony, which Zeb considered meaningless. Toby asks why he didn’t just placate her. Zeb admits, “I hated being pushed” (332). Lucerne left, and then Toby had to leave, and the Gardener’s deteriorated. They were growing, and the CorpSeCorp took notice by sending attackers, but Adam refused to listen to Zeb and arm the Gardeners. Then, Katrina was killed in the Corps takeover of the sex market, which devastated Adam. Zeb tells Toby that he regrets fighting rather than supporting Adam, and he especially regrets when he once got angry and blurted that they aren’t biological brothers. Adam was shattered, and Zeb couldn’t repair their relationship. Zeb left the Gardeners, followed by several MaddAddamites. Crake was supposedly their inside informant. But he was only using their connection in Extinctathon to kidnap them and force them to be his scientific team. Crake created the virus himself, a “reboot” (335) of humanity, not anticipating the Painballers, though Zeb states, “He should have” (334). Zeb then tells Toby that if they survive they ought to do the Gardener marriage ritual. Toby wants that, but she doesn’t know if he’s serious. Sighing, Zeb says good night.