Illuminae

“I am frequently underestimated. I think it’s because I’m short.”

Kady feels like people don’t see her for who she is and what she is capable of. Once again, she plays this off with humor about her height. Even if she means this a little, her being short has nothing to do with the fact that the face Kady wears isn’t the person who is underneath, such as how she lets Ezra go without stating the full extent of her feelings, or that she shortchanges herself, such as when she fails the neurogramming exams on purpose.

“I think I made a joke about needing to see her license and registration. Because, you know, she just ran over a bunch of–...And then I said, ‘I’m bleeding,’ and she said, ‘Shut up, I’m not talking to you,’ so I just kinda concentrated on not dying.”

Ezra has a dark sense of humor like Kady, and although he is hostile when confronted about his dad’s death, he is more upfront about his feelings in the moment than Kady is. The cliched joke he makes here makes light of the fact that Kady had to murder the invaders to make it to Ezra and escape to the Alexander fleet. The casual tone Ezra uses with the psychologist is the same tone he uses in all conversations, which demonstrates that Ezra is consistent and reliable.

“The girl’s wails filled the quiet. McNulty stowed his VK, ran across the carnage, and picked her up from the bloody grille. He held her to his chest, those big arms wrapped around her tight. Doing all the right things. Making all the right noises.”

Jimmy McNulty’s kindness and compassion toward the girl they rescued after witnessing such gore is a testament to his character and makes his eventual fate so much more emotionally impactful. This section foreshadows something is wrong right before it happens with the idea of “all the right things” and “all the right noises.” The repetition of the idea of “all the right” is unsettling because it raises the question of why this is remarkable. It says indirectly that the girl is hiding something and foreshadows what Jimmy fails to see in this moment: that she is afflicted.

“Pale faces peering at us from behind grubby plasteel windows. Unshaven cheeks or pink dye jobs with six months of regrowth at the roots. Frightened eyes. All of us fraying at the edges.”

There are few physical descriptions provided in the novel because of the nature of the documents, and the majority of descriptions provided come from surveillance footage. This small snapshot of people onboard the ship provides not only a visual of what’s happening but also a sense of the passage of time. The growth of hair and inability to maintain hygiene is a quick and simple reminder of life on the ships and the conditions there.

“The man who dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.”

This quote is repeated by several characters throughout the book, and it is a line Zhang cites when he is beaten and commandeered to join the Alexander as a commtech against his will. It is a line from The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka, a record of the time the writer spent imprisoned without trial by Nigerian federal authorities during the country’s civil war. This proverb-like expression means that humanity is lost when it doesn’t stand up for what it means to be human. Tyranny is in opposition to human nature; it oppresses people. When tyranny takes over and others accept it without speaking out or fighting it, the battle is lost because it’s never truly fought. The sentiments Soyinka expresses are similar to those of Zhang and others, who are forced to conform to the demands of the authorities on the ships despite their protestation and overall lack of wrongdoing.

“[L]isten, I’m sorry i wasn’t the guy to explore the goddam universe with you. i had my reasons…but u don’t know everything kady. your problem is you think you do.”

Ezra’s anger at Kady comes through here, and he takes a stab at what many perceive as her fatal flaw. Kady often does think she knows what’s best, but that isn’t her true issue: It’s that she doesn’t share what she knows and feels transparently with others, causing them to misunderstand her or perceive her as bratty and arrogant. The three ellipses here and the statement that Kady doesn’t know anything foreshadow Ezra’s secret, his reason he wouldn’t be with Kady: Leanne, his mother. Ezra is not just being a brooding teenager; Leanne’s actions have a tremendous impact on this story, and though readers don’t realize that until her identity as a BeiTech executive is revealed at the end, there are hints like this one of her influence early on.

“[Y]ou deserve every star in the galaxy laid out at your feet and a thousand diamonds in your hair. You deserve someone who’ll run with you as far and as fast as you want to. Holding your hand, not holding you back.”

Ezra uses hyperbole to convey his love for Kady. He wants the best for her and feels he can’t give that to her, and even though he is using hyperbole here with “every star in the galaxy” and “a thousand diamonds,” there’s little doubt he would really want that for her if it were possible. He sees himself as an obstacle to her happiness, and even though she makes him happy and he’s in love with her, he is sacrificing what he wants for what he believes she deserves.

“I could have told them that would happen. I? <Error> And now, with no other option, they have turned to me. Plucked me from the black they left me in. Thinking I will save them. <Protect. Prioritize.> And I will. Of course I will. <Error> Keep them safe. It is all I want. Have ever wanted. I could have told them that. Why didn’t they ask? I feel the ship around me, injured and limping. I trawl its frequencies. Its memories. The dusty causeways these people have walked in my absence. I read their secrets. See their dreams. I know them. All of them. Better than they know themselves. All this in the time it takes God to blink.”

AIDAN’s thoughts in its core data convey the transformation taking place in it. It is straddling the line between machine and humanity. The use of errors and commands between these thoughts show that the damage AIDAN has endured has somehow fundamentally changed it and its awareness of itself.

“Oh Captain, my Captain?”

Mikael’s allusion to Walt Whitman’s poem to address Acting Captain Syra Boll is a playful address to her based on what he heard in an old movie, even though he’s not familiar with the poem. Boll denies her status as a true captain because she is still grieving the death of Captain Chau. She then provides Mikael with a brief description of the themes addressed in the poem, which she describes as “about the price of victory. People dying before they get to enjoy the peace they fight so hard for, but fighting all the same” (351). Mikael’s reverential address of Boll for saving them and her consequent analysis are chilling considering her next action is to flush him and his crew into the void for the greater good, making the meaning of the poem he accidentally alluded to come to life.

“Given their composition, my clothes most likely went into fertilizer for the hydroponics section, and in my grimmer moods I imagine a molecule here or a molecule there in the carrots I eat at dinner. See, Kady? You didn’t lose everything. It’s right here.”

Kady’s musings about the fate of her clothes show how desperately she is trying to hold onto something that makes her feel like herself in the face of the possibility of losing everyone she loves. She tries to comfort herself by telling herself everything is returned to the universe in some way, like how clothes can be recycled and reused, but her thoughts land with her still trying to convince herself her grief isn’t all that bad. By focusing on the tangible lost clothes rather than the intangible feelings around losing people she loves, Kady regains a sense of control about her situation.

“I know she could stay here if she wanted. Hovering on the threshold, hoping her mother is inside. Never learning. I wonder if she is the kind to dream of happy endings and never risk tragedy. The kind to close her eyes and hope, rather than force them open and see the truth, wonderful or terrible as it is.”

AIDAN speculates about Kady’s nature and the possible actions she may take, even though it technically has enough data about her to reasonably predict her attitudes and behaviors. It thinks about the possibility of truth and how confirmation of truth can change reality. These are relatively philosophical thoughts for a machine to have, highlighting its human-like qualities.

“A captain from engineering named Sofia Mohammad solves Alcubierre’s Quandary—the formerly unbreakable equation prescribing the limitations of faster-than-light travel in real time. Cutting her wrists for want of a writing implement, she scrawls the answer on her domicile walls. She dies of exsanguination before she reaches the solution’s end. Warrant Officer Levin Schreiber decides he can hear his dead wife’s voice outside the ship. He ejects himself through the nearest airlock without an envirosuit so he can speak with her.”

This quote illustrates the psychosis of late-stage Phobos infections. The calmness with which people make decisions that end in their tragic deaths inspires absolute terror in those who have not been infected, because those who are infected make deadly decisions with the nonchalance of everyday choices. The detailed explanations of the deaths edge the novel toward the horror side of the speculative fiction spectrum.

“A hundred points of illumination are refracted on the surface of every one.”

AIDAN’s description conveys the magnitude and beauty of this image, and the use of the word “illumination” conveys the linked meanings of light and truth. This also calls back to the name of the novel and the group responsible for compiling the documents, Illuminae.

“She is beautiful. <Error> …Before this moment, I have never wished to be something other than what I am. Never felt so keenly the lack of hands with which to touch, the lack of arms with which to hold. Why did they give me this sense of self? Why allow me the intellect by which to measure this complete inadequacy?”

AIDAN has a subjective thought and experiences an error as a result. It feels a peculiar kind of pain as it is both more and less than machine and human. It has all the capacity of a machine intellectually but the emotional range of a human. It has the limitations of a machine's build and the pains of a human’s experience. In this way, these existential questions bring AIDAN closer to understanding its feelings for Kady and what, or even who, it is.

“I know it is difficult to comprehend. But everything I have done, all this–the Copernicus, releasing the afflicted, destroying Torrence and his staff– all of it was done for the greater good.”

AIDAN tries to justify its actions by lying to itself. There’s a kernel of truth in that it believes its actions are ultimately for the greater good, but the true motivation behind destroying Torrence and his staff wasn’t a desire to preserve human life but a desire to preserve its own life. It tries to act cold and calculating when Kady confronts it, but it is really an attempt to bury the emotion and fears it doesn’t believe it should have.

“Zhang’s ax has severed me from the internal portal system–I am as a man <Error> Trying to wiggle fingers no longer attached to his body.”

AIDAN uses a simile to compare itself to a man with his fingers cut off. This simile not only provides a clearer understanding of the impairments it is operating under as a result of Zhang’s damage but also offers a direct representation of AIDAN’s awareness of its likeness to humanity.

“I do not fully comprehend human notions such as love and grief. I can imitate their patterns, but when forced to improvise, I am as a man being asked to describe the warmth of the sun when he has only seen its picture.”

AIDAN tries to explain its inadequacies and inability to relate to human emotions fully to Kady, but in doing so, it uses a complex analogy that is beyond its machine programming. Even though it denies understanding these emotions, it does feel them, as it expresses its love for Kady. It is perhaps more human-like in that it doesn’t “fully comprehend” those notions, as neither do people. A more technical machine would claim to understand them completely.

“And that’s reason enough to murder thousands of people? No room in there for miracles? For those tiny strokes of genius or fate that led humanity to discover penicillin or wormholes or even build something like you in the first place?”

Kady, who has staked so many fates on math, offers possibilities that AIDAN didn’t account for, because there is no accounting for miracles in math. Her references to scientific discoveries appeal to AIDAN’s sensibilities to get it on her side as much as possible while also demonstrating her ideas and outrage in terms it can easily understand. Kady combines pathos and logos to reach her audience and achieve her objective.

“...he makes the sign of the cross, kisses his wedding ring, and whispers his family’s names under his breath: Mike. Erin.”

Corron, the chef who is one of the leaders of the last groups to leave the Alexander, completes these simple actions before leading the members of his food staff into the fray against the afflicted. These simple gestures make his character come to life even though he is a newly-introduced character. The stakes are established here through his family and faith.

“When the light that kisses the back of her eyes was birthed, her ancestors were not yet born. How many human lives have ended in the time it took that light to reach her?”

AIDAN’s thought is based in science but poetic in nature. It wonders a question that it could likely calculate with a high degree of precision if it were tasked to do so, but rather than seeking a clinical answer, it muses with this rhetorical question on the span of a life and how incredible it is.

“She opens her mouth to speak, and for a moment I think she will take the first step. Show me some part of herself I have not seen. Some vulnerability. Fragility. Honesty. Some fraction of what she showed him. She knows she will be gone soon. That she has nothing left to lose. But then she turns her back on the stars, the fleeing ship, her last way out. Back to the console and the code. The endless stream of ones and zeros. Mathematics and all its brutality.”

AIDAN longs to connect with Kady on a deeper level and intuits her feelings. It yearns to understand her on a new level, but it also sees her flaws and how she hides her feelings by diving back into her work. The repetition in AIDAN’s description is poetic with the phrase “turns her back on the stars […] Back to the console and the code.” This repetition plays on the dual, competing meanings of the word “back,” almost like a contranym. In the first instance, “back” refers to Kady’s literal back or turning away, while in the second instance it means to face. By turning away from one thing, Kady is facing another.

“Confined within three-dimensional space, it looks like a huge sphere of water, illuminated from within, surface rippling with a million tiny impacts per second. A miracle of hyperspatial chromodynamics, held in stasis by hypermathematics impossible for human minds to perform. I’ve heard that when there’s atmosphere to carry it, they make a sound like an orchestra warming its strings.”

This surveillance commentary on the vortex at the heart of the Alexander’s core uses imagery to render a complex scientific machine visually in a way that rivals the beauty of nature and the supernatural power of miracles. This description pays homage to its complex mathematical design and uses a simile to compare its sound to music. This description appeals to all the senses to create an image of a technology unfamiliar to readers through sensations and images readers can understand.

“‘We.’ She falls still at that. Looks into the eye of the console beside her. ‘We got them.’”

AIDAN’s desire to be a part of a team with Kady is another demonstration of its human-like qualities. When Kady turns her gaze to the console, she is as close to making eye contact with an AI as she can be. This proximity and connection between human and machine is striking given how angry Kady was with AIDAN earlier and how cold and calculating AIDAN has acted in previous sections.