Recursion
By Blake Crouch
Rating 4/5
Genres : Science Fiction, Time Travel, 2022-read
This is a good book. Its thought provoking. Very very scary to being a real plausibility. Its confusing to say the least. I definitely had some doubts reading the book and still have them left unclarified. I have read Blake Crouch's Dark Matter in the past and absolutely loved it. He takes popular contemplative concepts from physics and builds these extensive stories around them - which can only pique general interest and stimulate thought. Like in Dark Matter where a machine/room is constructed that makes travel between the multiverse worlds possible - in this one, a 'memory chair' is invented that allows for travel across time and space - like someone could move to a time in the past and alter reality/the chain of events that follow. As a stand alone book its great but in comparison, it falls short of Dark Matter - which was much more engaging and mysterious. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the ride of the recursion and the endlessness to the love between Barry and Helena.
From the author's note, this story is inspired by a real life event that occurred in 2012. A mouse in MIT is imprinted with a false memory successfully. Going into the plot, Helena is a scientist who is hired by a rich entrepreneur Marcus Slade to work on 'Memory Immersion/Reimagining' - where a person can remember past events by activating a set of known neurons. She takes it a step further and builds a chair that is attached to a deprivation tank - the test subject is given a dose of paralyzing drug and his heart is forcefully stopped to trigger a release of DMT in brain. This DMT is responsible for dreams, memories etc. So when the chemical is released, the subject dies in this reality and travels to the memory sparking another thread of reality. Only he can remember this false/dead memory and others in the past don't know it - until the time approaches where he did the time travel experiment. Then everyone associated with him remembers the first life and become catatonic. Many commit suicides and becomes unhinged from reality. Learning this, Helena wants to destroy the chair but Marcus has other sinister plans to use it.
Barry is a cop with NYPD who is researching the suicide of a woman with this FMS - False Memory Syndrome. He is forcefully sent back to his past to change the death of his daughter. His paths cross with Helena - who is also time traveling - but how their threads match i didn't understand?? Then they kill Marcus, Barry gets killed and Helena is held captive by DARPA who also seize the technology. They use it to alter the accidents and disasters from the past..but it works only for a short while. Soon other countries, labs and wiki leaks possess the technology and push the world into a turmoil with everyone using it to shift reality and destroy their foes.
Helena and Barry set up a recursive loop to find a solution to this problem. And how do they manage to stop the world going to destruct itself? Carrying the burden of the fruits of her work, Helena and Barry move through life time after life time to stop the unstoppable.
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