History, old wounds, and how we handle them: Regenesis, by CJ Cherryh

 Recently, I have been thinking about CJ Cherryh's Regenesis.  (Yes, that is how she spells her name.)  I did not actually like this book, but I find myself thinking about one of the few redeeming points in the novel, and some of the insights that come from it.  So let's revisit it.

History.  Wounds.  Damage.  Unhealed wounds.  Lingering damage.  How you read that string of not-quite sentences may depend on your perspective, and that is rather the point, isn't it?  Yet as I think through all of the many interpretations of these sentiments, and their implications, I come back to the character of Jordan Warrick.  Jordan Warrick is first introduced in CJ Cherryh's Cyteen trilogy, and then we see the completion of his journey, such as it is, in Regenesis.  There are many lessons to be taken from Jordan Warrick, particularly in contrast with his clone-son.  That'll make more sense shortly, for those who have not read the books.  How does one deal with history and old wounds?

OK.  Let's get into this.  Regenesis was the eventual sequel to the Cyteen "trilogy," with quotation marks around "trilogy" because it was really one book, broken up into three smaller books because in the late 1980s, editors didn't think audiences would read a long book.  The whole trilogy was still shorter than the typical Neal Stephenson book.  Whatever.  Anyway, Cyteen was brilliant, and Regenesis kind of sucked, but it is Regenesis that informs us today.  In order to explain why, we need to go through the main arc of Cyteen.  So here it is.

Basically, it is a dystopian Galt's Gulch, in the distant future.  Space exploration leads to various factions going to war with each other, and Earth tries to clamp down on its scientists.  The scientists tell Earth to fuck off, and Go Galt, off to a planet called, "Cyteen," from which the first novel gets its name.  They set up a scientist's research utopia, where if you are super-smart, you are labeled, "Special," and functionally above the law.  It's the special people who make everything work anyway, right?  Yeah, can't see how that could go wrong...

Anyway, such expats from Earth create Union, ruled from Cyteen, which is itself run from the Reseune Institute by Ariane Emory, and if that name sounds a bit like Ayn Rand... gee...  Anyway, Emory is a sociopath.  A genius, but a sociopath.  Her foil, at the beginning of the book, is another "Special," named Jordan Warrick.  Jordan used to work for her, was exploited by her, and has some unspecified trauma from whatever the fuck that sociopathic monster did to him.  He tries to break away, and take Emory down.  As that plays out, Jordan's clone-son, Justin, and adopted "azi" (complicated*), Grant, get into a mess.  Emory swoops in, "saves" them, and then shows what true evil is.  She has her henchpeople roofie and gang-rape Justin, as a manipulative game.  She's basically one of the most evil characters I have ever read.  And yay, she gets fucking murdered like she deserves.

Whodunnit?  The thing is, in the first book/trilogy, you don't find out.  That's not the point.  However, Jordan is the main suspect.  In order to protect his kids from the New Boss, kinda the same as the Old Boss, Jordan takes a deal to go off to an isolated research facility that's not quite prison, but not quite freedom.  Jordan then spends a lotta years functionally locked up in Club Fed.

But here's the thing.  Jordan was innocent.  Jordan was a fucking asshole, but he was innocent.

You don't get confirmation of that until Regenesis, and we're not there yet, but let's just let that dangle there for a bit.

Anyway, after Ariane Emory gets offed in a less painful and horrific way than she deserves (remember:  monster), Reseune clones her, and tries to put the clone through the formative events of the original Emory's life, in order to combine nature and nurture and get back something like the original Emory's genius.  Meet the new Emory.  Not the same as the Old Emory, but kinda similar.

And years later, in Regenesis, Jordan gets out of Club Fed, and meets the New Emory.

So here's the thing.  The New Emory, at this point, is an adolescent.  She isn't the one who raped his son, nor did any of the horrific things that the original Emory did to Jordan years earlier.  A different person.  A clone.  Put through similar formative experiences, but not the same person, and not the one whodunnit.  Not the one who put him in lockup.  Not the one who took away his freedom.  Not the one who cost him those decades of his life.

But Jordan is still fucking pissed.  And he directs that anger at... the New Ariane Emory.  Ari.  Whatever we want to call her.

Suppose you are exploited.  Abused.  Tortured.  Falsely imprisoned.  Your child is raped.  Keep going.  What happens to Jordan Warrick... it's bad.  How would you feel?

And then you get out of prison.  And Ariane Emory is dead.  Those who falsely imprisoned you for her murder rightful execution are dead.  And here's this... clone.  Ari 2.  So much like Ariane Emory.  Genetically identical, and socially programmed, to the degree possible, to take on as many of Ari 1's traits as possible.

How do you feel towards Ari 2?

Ariane Emory's clone has issues.  As one would expect.  But she is nowhere near as evil as Ariane The First.  She tries to be good.  Does she make mistakes?  Of course.  But she tries.  And she didn't fucking do what Jordan hates her for doing.  She is not the same person.

Justin Warrick, Jordan's clone-son, has at least as much reason, if not more, to have issues.  In fact, he is so traumatized by what Ariane The First did to him that it really does take him a long time to be around Ari 2 at all, and when she makes a pass at him...  yeah, that ain't good.  But Justin sees her as a different person.

Jordan has trouble doing that.  And he can't adjust.  He can't figure out how to manage his anger and his wounds without directing it at someone.  And as he does that, he fails to move on with his life.  Jordan is a Special.  Among the smartest people alive.  But a disaster, because all he can do is not only dwell on that anger, but direct it at a dead person, imagining the living adolescent in front of him as the same one who did it.

Oh, according to testing, Justin wasn't quite as smart as dear, old Dad.  Yet one self-destructs.  The other lives and builds a life.

Justin's path to "moving on," whatever the fuck that means, is far from easy.  He faces institutional hurdles, and working through everything that happened to him.  Just finding a job is hard.  Finding someone who will give him a real shot is hard.  He keeps being told, basically, that he's wrong, full of shit, out of his depth, and he just keeps at it.  The only one who really, truly gives him a shot is... Ari 2, and for that, he has to deal with all of the issues that come with the backstory.  Yeah, he "moves on," so to speak, with all of the shit associated with that phrase, but to say it was easy when everything was against him... no.  But he did it.

Jordan didn't.  Once he got out of the pokey, he had more working for him than his son did, but he could not get himself into a directed headspace.  Self-sabotage.  And he looked like an asshole in the process, even though he really did have some bad shit happen to him.  He spent decades functionally locked up for a crime he didn't commit, and that's just for starters.

Old wounds.  Moving on.

Justin's path works.  Jordan's path doesn't.  Jordan wants revenge on and restitution from dead people.  We can observe this externally, and note how stupid it is, but regardless of how intelligent Jordan is-- clearly smarter than any of us-- one's imagination is not at all stretched by Jordan thinking or behaving in this way.  Even though it is self-sabotage in the extreme.  At the same time, the pain and frustration of watching what Justin has to endure, not just from Emory, but afterwards, at every step of the way, building something back for himself, shows the reader struggles that he should not have to endure.  Yet he does, and had he not, had he allowed himself even a fraction of the self-sabotage and wallowing that consumed his father later, his life would have been destroyed.  We can observe the injustice not only of what Emory does to Justin, but of what Denys & Giraud Nye (Emory's successors in an interregnum) and everyone else in Reseune do to him, and still be aware that had he put himself in Jordan's mindset-- consumed by a need for vengeance against the dead Emory, or the expectation of what he wasn't going to get-- he would have wound up finishing the job that Ariane started.

Justin Warrick is a remarkable character, for what he manages to overcome, both in terms of the institutional obstacles and the personal trauma.  Yet what were his alternatives?  When the reader gets to Regenesis, we see the alternative.  His father, Jordan.  For all of Jordan's formidable intelligence, giving him the special status of "Special," he could not do what needed to be done.

What I often do in these posts is say, "hey, look!  Here's a novel, and here's some political connection."  I'm going to refrain from that second part.  This is a generalizable insight, yet fraught when applied to any specific circumstance.  The basic point is as follows:  OK, bad shit happened.  Instead of casting about to direct your anger or seek vengeance, form a plan of action.  Set goals.  Realistic goals.  When you achieve realistic goals, set new realistic goals, and keep moving.  If you become consumed by the need for vengeance that you won't get, that's Jordan's path.

These generalizable insights are unassailable in the abstract, yet as soon as we find a specific case, the pushback becomes, "this case is different," and the very sentiments that consumed Jordan consume the discussion.  Hence, I'm not going to apply these arguments.  You can apply them yourself.  You know how.

Politics ain't beanbag, as they say.

Regenesis was not a good book, but the cautionary tale of Jordan Warrick really is one of the more interesting cases of the downfall of a character who could not move on.

And it was better than fucking Melville.  I hate Melville.

You know what was worse than Moby DickBilly Fucking Budd.  Worst book I ever read.

Fuck high school, and fuck high school lit classes.  Me... moving on...

Music is a twofer today.  As I wrote the post, I had Hank Garland in my head, doing "I'm Moving On," so that's going up today.  Then somehow, I ended with that damned Melville thing.  This put Derek Trucks in my head, playing "Sailing On," and Derek is... beyond words.  So, Hank, and Derek.



*Azi are genetically engineered and psychologically programed slaves, yet because of the genetic engineering and psychological programming, they are committed their roles.  It is very, very creepy, as is the entire series.

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