Character · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin
Asher
Carl's half-brother, six years old, found on the eighth floor in a memory spliced in from what looks like summer, at a trailer in Dallas County, Iowa: his father's nose and eyes and untameable hair, a matchbox car run up a wall, crayon storms destroying cities, a candy box with a shiny rock, two dollars and a plastic cowboy, a birthday party promised for tomorrow. 'Am I going to get a bike?' Carl never knew he existed; Bea did. His head, on a stalk, is the Reminiscence Hydra's lightning; a spider's eye muffles his echo. 'I wish I'd known you, too.'
Segment appearances
Arc
Carl thinks of him when Kiwi refuses to send Tina (ch. 30) and when Katia touches heads with him over a baby she never had (ch. 69).