Recursion

Abstract

The novel follows, firstly, Barry Sutton, who is a detective working for the New York City Police Department in the year 2018. He encounters a woman who is affected by a condition known as False Memory Syndrome, which causes a person to possess memories of lives which are not their own. While investigating this person, who ultimately commits suicide, Sutton is confronted with a strange hotel – Hotel Memory – and his owner, billionaire and businessman Marcus Slade. Slade captures Sutton, and sends him, unwillingly, to the past. This makes Sutton land on an unfortunate day, when his daughter died in an accident eleven years before. However, he is now able to save her, which disrupts order and leads to a lot of people being affected by the False Memory Syndrome, including his daughter, who commits suicide as well, because she is unable to cope with numerous memories which were not of her own life. The novel travels back to 2007, where neuroscientist Helena Smith is conducting research on Alzheimer’s disease, intending to create an instrument (“memory chair”) that would allow one affected by the disease to relive memories of the past. Her project is funded by Slate, who tries to align his interests with Smith’s research, by attempting to make time travel possible. It is then revealed that Slate was Smith’s laboratory assistant in another timeline, but travelled back to the past to become a billionaire. Smith eventually discovers this and what Slate intends to achieve. Sutton and Smith meet and align their interests to prevent Slate from using Smith’s memory chair for time travelling and other nefarious purposes. However, they realise that they need to travel back in time, through multiple timelines, so that they may diminish and/or prevent Slate’s influence and power. Ultimately, Smith ends up travelling to the past several times, so that her memory chair may be used as intended and not apprehended or used by the government or other institutions for equally nefarious purposes. Smith eventually dies, and she is unable to prevent her invention from reaching the wrong hands, as well as eliminating the False Memory Syndrome. Sutton, however, reaches the conclusion that he must travel to what is considered the original timeline, when Slate kills Smith to use her memory chair for his purposes. Sutton is able to kill Slate before he kills Smith; thus, he restores the original timeline and eliminates the problems that arose due to time travel in the first place.