How High We Go in the Dark is structured as a series of connected stories that explore people's response to a deadly virus released from the Arctic tundra because of global warming.
🟆 30,000 Years Beneath a Eulogy
In the first story, a scientist named Cliff is going to Siberia to continue the work of his deceased daughter Clara Miyashiro. Clara was studying a mummified Neanderthal girl she called Annie, whose remains were uncovered by the melting ice.
Cliff's wife Miki and granddaughter Yumi are bereft by Cliff's departure, but the researcher feels compelled to go on with Clara's work.
In Siberia Cliff learns that Annie's mummified body contains 'incredibly well-preserved giant viruses' and these and other microbes released from the melting tundra will inevitably make their way to cities, to the ocean, and to our food supply.
A researcher named Dave observes, 'We [must] get the world to wake up and pay attention to the fact that all this ice melting and the millions of years of shit it contains has to go somewhere.'
Of course a virus gets out and causes a horrific global pandemic called the Arctic plague..
🟆 City of Laughter
The entire world is affected by the virus, which has the ability to morph living tissue. For example, liver cells can become brain cells; heart cells can become lung cells; the skin can become transparent and luminescent; etc. The inevitable result is death.
The early victims of the Arctic plague are children, who die en masse. To make the youngsters' deaths more humane, euthanasia theme parks are built, where the kids can have a good time before they board the roller coaster that puts them to sleep forever.
A stand-up comedian named Skip works in one of these euthanasia parks, dressed up as a mouse. Skip's job is to 'prance through the park, taking pictures with families, handing out balloons, and helping children onto rides.'
Outside the park Skip becomes friendly with a woman named Dorrie and her son Fitch, who's infected with the virus. Dorrie is desperate to save Fitch's life, but there's no vaccine and no cure and only one outcome for the unfortunate boy.
Skip feels empathy with all the park's guests, but things are ramped up when the relationship is personal.
🟆 Through the Garden of Memory
Eventually a treatment is found for virus-infected children, but it doesn't work for adults. A young man named Jun goes to a memorial for his deceased cousin, and catches the plague from children who'd supposedly been tested.
Jun falls into a coma and finds himself in a large surreal space with other infected people. The group tries to find a way out while orbs of iridescent light 'descend like a school of jellyfish.' The orbs contain memories - or wishes - of the area's occupants, which they can share with one another.
So, for instance, Jun sees his young self in a T-shirt with Godzilla on it that he could never afford; a man sees himself crying as he puts his son on a roller coaster; a woman sees her late husband; etc.
The people in the surreal space, whose numbers are steadily increasing, make a pyramid to reach the top so they can try to escape....though not everyone is sure they want to leave.
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🟆 Pig Son
Research doctors are using the virus to grow human organs in pigs, to transplant into children who've lost organs to the disease. One research doctor named David - who happens to be Fitch's father - is working with a pig called Snortorious so he can save other children, since he couldn't save his son.
As David is approaching Snortorious one day, the pig says 'Dahktar.' It appears the pig's brain has been changed in a way that makes him capable of speech, and Snortorious quickly learns to talk and ask for things, like an apple.
Before long lab workers are teaching Snortorious with flash cards, cartoons, children's books, TV shows, etc. Snortorious especially likes reruns of Crocodile Hunter, as well as rocket launches and test flights for a mission to Mars.
David and his staff become very fond of Snortorious, and want to give him a good life. However, news about Snortorious inevitably leaks out, and the authorities plan to take him. Thus the pig's fate seems to be either become a 'lab rat' in a government facility, or be an organ donor.
🟆 Elegy Hotel
The huge number of fatalities associated with the virus gives rise to a wide-ranging death industry, including elegy hotels - high rise buildings housing plague victims awaiting cremation. The hotels permit family members to bunk in near their loved ones for a lingering goodbye.
A man called Dennis works as a bereavement coordinator in an elegy hotel, where his job includes concierge duties, room service, mortician work, and 'carting bodies from the California king beds to the oven.'
Dennis's brother Bryan wants Dennis to quit his job and move in with their mother, who's dying of cancer. However Dennis - who had a difficult history with his parents - demurs and avoids his brother's phone calls.
Dennis's co-worker in the elegy hotel, a woman called Val, urges Dennis to make amends with his family. Val feels guilty about something she did in her past, and she wants Dennis to avoid that same fate.
🟆 Speak, Fetch, Say I Love You
To help combat the loneliness that results from the pandemic, some people get robot dogs. Popular features of the robo-dogs include 'facial recognition, voice commands, audio recording and playback, an expandable library of songs, games, and eating a plastic treat.'
Thus, besides being companions, the dogs can learn to speak and sing in the voices of their owners. When the owners die, these remnants of themselves remain behind, which may comfort bereaved loved ones.
A man who repairs broken/worn-out robot dogs is having a hard time. He can no longer find spare parts for the robo-dogs, and since his wife Ayano died, his son Aki - who took care of Ayano during her illness - has been distant and difficult.
Ayano had a robo-dog called Hollywood, which helps connect father and son....but Hollywood is breaking down.
🟆 Songs of Your Decay
When people die from the Arctic plague, their bodies may be donated to science, so researchers can study their decay.
A doctor named Aubrey, who works at a forensic body farm, has worked solely on cadavers until now. Aubrey currently has a special case, a man called Laird, who's dying from the Arctic plague and volunteered to be studied. Aubrey is analyzing Laird's cells from before and after a recent drug trial, and she'll document Laird's decomposition after he dies.
When Laird asks for particulars, Aubrey tells him, 'In the first 24 hours, your body will have reached full rigor mortis; your face will have lost many of it's distinguishing features; your body will start to smell like rotten meat.' And composition continues from there.
While Laird is still alive, he and Aubrey spend a lot of time together, listening to music and talking, and the two become close. At the same time Aubrey's marriage to her husband Tatsu is falling apart.
🟆 Life Around the Event Horizon
Bryan (from the Elegy Hotel story) is a research physicist who lost his wife and daughter to the virus, and has a surviving son named Peter. Bryan is now married to his post-doc assistant Theresa, who's helping create an energy source to for a starship engine. Bryan wants to escape from Earth, but Theresa wants to stay behind.
In the course of Bryan's work he plants a black hole (a tear in the fabric of space-time) inside his own brain. Bryan hopes this brain anomaly will help him and his colleagues find a way to power a long range spaceship.
Bryan's black hole stirs up a lot of conspiracy theorists, some of whom think 'the black hole would expand, tear Bryan apart, and then tear apart the whole damn world.' The anomaly also attracts people seeking seeking Bryan's help, who had loved ones waiting on organ donor lists; who couldn't afford experimental drugs; who were financially ruined; etc.
🟆 A Gallery a Century, a Cry a Millennium
A starship energy source is found, and in 2037 a multi-generation craft is launched.....to search for a distant planet amenable to human life. Several characters from other stories are among the passengers, and they say goodbye to loved ones, board the craft, and get into their hibernation pods.
As an overall plan, 'adult passengers would live through the long, dark years in stasis, emerging from their pods only for weeks at a time when they stopped at a planet worthy of study. Children would not be awakened before colonization, to preserve resources.'
When they're awake, two artists - Miki and Dorrie - paint pictures on the craft's walls, things like a ramshackle bungalow in Santa Monica; a water tower in Iowa; the City of Laughter euthanasia theme park; faces of relatives who were lost; and so on.
It's difficult to find a planet to colonize. One possible candidate already contains abundant life and another harbors deadly creatures, such as 'a meter-long insect that looks like a giant millipede with the wings of a dragonfly and a head like a tunnel-boring machine.' So the expedition keeps searching and searching.....for 6,000 years.
🟆 The Used-to-Be Party
Dan, a lawyer who barely acknowledged his neighbors before the plague - and had little time for his (now deceased) wife and daughter - experiences an epiphany once the virus is under control.
While grocery shopping, without really planning, Dan 'begins loading hamburger buns and patties, and chips and soda, and paper plates and plastic cups, and bags of ice into his cart.'
Dan then invites all his neighbors to a block party because 'he knows he couldn't survive alone.'
🟆 Melancholy Nights in a Tokyo Virtual Cafe
A man named Akira spends his evenings meandering the streets of Tokyo's virtual reality district. In this neighborhood, projectors camouflage old buildings, immersing visitors in a different environment each night - environs like 19th century Paris, the halls of the Louvre, or an anime wonderland filled with creatures from Japanese folklore.
Akira becomes enamored of an arts and crafts vendor called Yoshiko, who has a daughter suffering from the plague. Akira and Yoshiko have a strictly cyberspace relationship consisting of text messages and virtual reality encounters.
When Akira mentions it's difficult to meet people, Yoshiko responds, 'They walk and walk. No one stops. It's like we're all still infected. We choose to be blind to each other's suffering.'
By chance, Akira gets a job with a printer called Seiji, who 'wants to save people, open their eyes, save the rock we live on.' Eventually, Akira comes to suspect a familial connection between Seiji and Yoshiko.
🟆 Before You Melt into the Sea
One of the many funerary enterprises that became popular because of the plague is a facility called Eden Ice, which 'provides artistic alternatives to burial and cremation.'
Eden Ice liquifies its clients, and makes them into ice sculptures of the customer's choosing, such as 'a sailboat fifteen feet long and nine feet high, with a natural oaky appearance.'
The art piece is then displayed at the deceased person's memorial service, where loved ones can say goodbye.
🟆 Grave Friends
After the pandemic abated, a Japanese girl named Rina left her country for America, planning to make the U.S. her permanent home. This upset Rina's parents, who expected their daughter to remain in her home town and - among other things - be part of 'grave friends, the network of five tight-knit families who'd agreed two generations ago to mix their ashes together in a tall urn.'
Rina has now returned to Niigata City for her grandmother's funeral, and must confront the people she deserted, who have different reactions to Rina's visit.
🟆 The Scope of Possibility
A 'woman' on a distant sphere is leaving her 700-year-old daughter (a child by their standards) for a mission to Earth. As the duo walk through fields, the woman thinks 'this is where most of the advanced civilizations in the galaxy are born.' The woman arrives on Earth as a small sea creature that's the ancestor of starfish. After this we follow the woman's progress over the millennia.
The woman eventually becomes a Neanderthal, and observes that a virus - for which she blames herself - is killing her cave mates. The woman's beloved daughter perishes, and the woman 'etches memories and songs and science of her world into the floors of the cave.'
The woman goes on to become a 'human' (Homo sapiens), and she helps Galileo map the stars; corrects Isaac Newton's math; attends an 1820 convention for women's rights in Virginia, and moves on from human life to human life.....eventually becoming Clara Miyashiro (from the first story) and other characters in the book.
Clara goes to the Arctic to do research.....and this book begins.
This whimsical narrative ties the previous tales together and is a good finale to the novel.
****
I chose this novel because it's on a list of 'the best science fiction books of 2022.' I'm not sure I agree, but Sequoia Nagamatsu is a good writer and the stories are imaginative and interesting.
Rating: 3.5 stars
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