A perfect setting for enviro-thriller: B.R.
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WATERMIND
By M.M. Buckner
Tor, $24.95
If you wanted to choose a setting where a witch’s brew of pollutants could wash up and evolve into a blob-like new lifeform, what place in the whole world would you choose? Baton Rouge, of course. Buckner has set this science fiction/environmental boogey man story right here in Red Stick. She knows, as does anyone with access to popular media, that the stick is probably red because some caustic pollutant has befouled it.
The evolution of the “watermind” begins in Canada where a group of scientists rig up some weather sensors using “mote” computers — tiny micro-engineered devices that can gather and transmit weather information. Each of the motes is as small as a “diamond chip.” When a big rainstorm washes the mote computers away, they wind up in the Mississippi River drainage system where they pick up all sorts of pollutants: “fertilizer, engine oil, and genetically modified wheat germ.” As they traverse the river system heading south, they encounter “fragments of eggshells, coffee grounds, old desktop computers, and human estrogen. One full week, they rumbled with a Game Boy.” The farther the motes travel, the more technojunk they meet, “pacemakers, depth-finders, baby monitors, and electronic car keys.”
Solar-powered, the motes continue to function. “As they snapped up data, their shared memory burgeoned.” Finally, 117 of the motes wind up in a swamp near Baton Rouge, “a foul riverside marsh of petrochemicals, burned out cars, trashed appliances, and mud. Within this addled broth, frogs grew humps and appendages, bacteria colonized battery cells, and active chips migrated from motherboards to populate clouds of algae. The water stirred with signals and ring tones. And the motes formed new bonds.”
What results is a new lifeform, a cyborg. It’s just born and doesn’t know how to communicate with the world around it. It’s sitting there in the swamp processing energy, alternately freezing over the water and thawing it out.
It’s the frozen water that CJ Reilly and her boyfriend Max Pottevents stumble across. CJ is a vagabond, but an unusual one. She began MIT at 14, but quit working on an advanced degree in chemistry when her father committed suicide. Left with a trust fund, she wanders around trying to reconcile her conflicting feelings about her father and his death. She has come south to Louisiana to work for Quimicrom, a giant multi-national company cleaning up the pollution in the swamp. She isn’t working as a chemist, however, she is just a shovel operator. She meets Max on the job. He is a Creole from West Baton Rouge Parish who speaks a French dialect and talks about voudoun. His real passion is his young daughter and his music — zydeco.
When CJ and Max find the watermind, she recognizes it as something new and, as a scientist, is fascinated. Her quest to identify it attracts the attention of Quimicrom’s CEO, Roman Sacony. His main concern is that the thing may be dangerous and could be a fiscal liability for his company — it is on the company property after all.
As the plot evolves, CJ becomes convinced that the substance is a new life form that has to be protected: it can make pure water from the polluted stuff in the swamp. Roman decides to destroy the stuff before it can get any bigger. Of course the thing has a mind of its own, and it takes off. Roman chases it like a riverine Ahab. CJ chases too, trying to protect it. Max chases CJ. There are romantic complications.
Buckner is a skillful writer who evokes her Louisiana setting nicely. Of her characters, only Max is really likable. Even CJ, the main voice, does irrational, amoral things. She’s hard to like. But they are all believable enough.
The real complication here is the watermind itself. Will it survive? Will it escape Roman? What is it? Can it really think and reason?
Buckner keeps you guessing to the end. That’s how a thriller should work, and Buckner does it well.
By M.M. Buckner
Tor, $24.95
If you wanted to choose a setting where a witch’s brew of pollutants could wash up and evolve into a blob-like new lifeform, what place in the whole world would you choose? Baton Rouge, of course. Buckner has set this science fiction/environmental boogey man story right here in Red Stick. She knows, as does anyone with access to popular media, that the stick is probably red because some caustic pollutant has befouled it.
The evolution of the “watermind” begins in Canada where a group of scientists rig up some weather sensors using “mote” computers — tiny micro-engineered devices that can gather and transmit weather information. Each of the motes is as small as a “diamond chip.” When a big rainstorm washes the mote computers away, they wind up in the Mississippi River drainage system where they pick up all sorts of pollutants: “fertilizer, engine oil, and genetically modified wheat germ.” As they traverse the river system heading south, they encounter “fragments of eggshells, coffee grounds, old desktop computers, and human estrogen. One full week, they rumbled with a Game Boy.” The farther the motes travel, the more technojunk they meet, “pacemakers, depth-finders, baby monitors, and electronic car keys.”
Solar-powered, the motes continue to function. “As they snapped up data, their shared memory burgeoned.” Finally, 117 of the motes wind up in a swamp near Baton Rouge, “a foul riverside marsh of petrochemicals, burned out cars, trashed appliances, and mud. Within this addled broth, frogs grew humps and appendages, bacteria colonized battery cells, and active chips migrated from motherboards to populate clouds of algae. The water stirred with signals and ring tones. And the motes formed new bonds.”
What results is a new lifeform, a cyborg. It’s just born and doesn’t know how to communicate with the world around it. It’s sitting there in the swamp processing energy, alternately freezing over the water and thawing it out.
It’s the frozen water that CJ Reilly and her boyfriend Max Pottevents stumble across. CJ is a vagabond, but an unusual one. She began MIT at 14, but quit working on an advanced degree in chemistry when her father committed suicide. Left with a trust fund, she wanders around trying to reconcile her conflicting feelings about her father and his death. She has come south to Louisiana to work for Quimicrom, a giant multi-national company cleaning up the pollution in the swamp. She isn’t working as a chemist, however, she is just a shovel operator. She meets Max on the job. He is a Creole from West Baton Rouge Parish who speaks a French dialect and talks about voudoun. His real passion is his young daughter and his music — zydeco.
When CJ and Max find the watermind, she recognizes it as something new and, as a scientist, is fascinated. Her quest to identify it attracts the attention of Quimicrom’s CEO, Roman Sacony. His main concern is that the thing may be dangerous and could be a fiscal liability for his company — it is on the company property after all.
As the plot evolves, CJ becomes convinced that the substance is a new life form that has to be protected: it can make pure water from the polluted stuff in the swamp. Roman decides to destroy the stuff before it can get any bigger. Of course the thing has a mind of its own, and it takes off. Roman chases it like a riverine Ahab. CJ chases too, trying to protect it. Max chases CJ. There are romantic complications.
Buckner is a skillful writer who evokes her Louisiana setting nicely. Of her characters, only Max is really likable. Even CJ, the main voice, does irrational, amoral things. She’s hard to like. But they are all believable enough.
The real complication here is the watermind itself. Will it survive? Will it escape Roman? What is it? Can it really think and reason?
Buckner keeps you guessing to the end. That’s how a thriller should work, and Buckner does it well.
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