43 pages • 1 hour read
Recursion
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Book 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 3
Chapter Summary: “BARRY - November 6, 2018”
Helena demonstrates she knows Barry, referencing his feelings for his family. She tells him about building the chair and says his apartment isn't safe—Slade knows where it is. She tells him about her years in hiding. When the timelines converged, Slade gained enough memories of the chair to rebuild it himself, and Helena came to New York to find him. She brings Barry to the warehouse where she’s been living and rebuilding her own chair.
She explains that if Barry storms the hotel, his team will kill Slade, and the media will report that Slade was distributing a virus responsible for FMS. Government agents will take the remaining pieces of the chair and start rebuilding it, leading to further confusion and destruction. She knows this because it has already happened—she has come from another timeline where she and Barry were working together. She proposes that they take over Slade’s lab and destroy all the equipment and software, making the chair impossible to rebuild.
Barry stays at Helena’s warehouse that night. Helena tells Barry that his future self taught her how to shoot, and she is prepared to give her life to destroy the chair.
Chapter Summary: “HELENA - November 7, 2018”
Helena wakes up to hear Barry crying in bed. She wishes she could join him in bed and comfort him. She remembers the future, in which Barry kissed her goodbye as she got in the deprivation tank.
That evening, they head to Hotel Memory. Helena tells Barry the story of working for ION, explaining that Slade murdered her before traveling back in time.
Near the hotel, they go into a bar. Barry uses his badge to get access to the cellar. The bar cellar connects to a corridor, which opens onto Hotel Memory’s boiler room. They plan to go up to Slade’s penthouse on floor 24, kill Slade, and then go destroy the equipment. They start walking up the stairs, but Barry hears something and pulls them onto the hotel hallway on the eighth floor.
A middle-aged woman comes out of her room. They push her back into her room at gunpoint and tie her up. Helena borrows Barry’s knife to “make a save point”: she cuts her arm so she will have a strong memory to return to if they fail.
Chapter Summary: “BARRY - November 7, 2018”
Helena checks her watch and hugs Barry in relief. She says she had to return to the save point. Slade knew they were coming and immediately shot and killed Barry. Helena escaped and used the hotel’s chair to return to this moment. She found Jee-woon in the lab, but she doesn’t know where Sergei is. This timeline lasted 12 minutes, meaning that’s how long they have before Slade and Jee-woon remember what happened.
This time, they head to the lab. Jee-woon appears and shoots Barry in the stomach. Barry hears Helena shouting at Sergei, and then gunshots and screaming. The 12 minutes are up. Barry remembers dying in the previous timeline just as Helena gets into the deprivation tank.
The timeline resets. They run for the lab, trying to move faster. Slade is waiting for them. Barry shoots Slade in the shoulder. Helena pulls Jee-woon out of the tank. Jee-woon runs for Slade’s gun, but Barry and Helena both shoot him.
Chapter Summary: “HELENA - November 5, 2018”
Helena points her gun at Slade. He says he’s lived many lives. He has so many fractured memories, he can’t map them anymore. Helena tells him that humanity can’t be trusted with the chair. He insists she can’t understand what he knows from living multiple lives. The quantum processors switch off, and all the lights go out.
Chapter Summary: “BARRY - November 7, 2018”
Barry hears Slade scrambling away. Helena shoots, illuminating Slade crawling from the lab. Barry follows, and he runs directly into Slade, who is clearly dying.
A SWAT team appears, including Gwen. Barry tells Gwen the team needs to leave, but she says it’s not her team. Barry screams for Helena to run. He runs around the corner and shoots at the ceiling. Someone rolls a bomb toward him, and he is riddled with bullets.
Book 3 Analysis
In Book Three, Barry and Helena finally join forces. The romantic aspects of the novel begin to take form with Helena remembering kissing Barry in a previous timeline. Very quickly, Barry begins to experience romantic feelings toward Helena. When they break into Hotel Memory, Barry is alarmed to discover that he already feels very protective toward her. Barry and Helena’s feelings for each other are juxtaposed with Barry’s relationship with Julia, which has fully run its course and no longer contains any romantic spark.
After failing to take over Hotel Memory, Helena repeatedly returns to a memory of cutting her arm in order to try again. This is the first time a character restarts a timeline from the same moment repeatedly to accomplish a specific goal. Later in the novel, Helena will be repeat her life numerous times, starting each timeline from the same memory. This moment in Hotel Memory is important, as it introduces the concept of marking a specific moment as a “save point,” where a character can return if their plan goes poorly.
When Helena and Barry corner Slade, he gives them multiple pieces of information that will become important later in the book. Slade mentions that he can no longer travel through time, because he has overused the chair and his memories are now too fractured to map. Eventually, this will happen to Helena as well, meaning that Barry will be the only character who can go back in time to change the past. Slade also alludes to the possibility of erasing dead memories, which is precisely the work Barry and Helena will soon dedicate themselves to accomplishing. Barry will remember this conversation after years of unsuccessful attempts to undo the alternate timelines, and the recollection is what will enable him to eventually restart a single, unbroken timeline.
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