Motif · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

The Residuals

The mudskippers' word for a hyperspatial, collective-mind race without a home that lives inside the bodies of others in almost every intelligent civilization with a primal engine — 'rats that sneak aboard ships', says Orren. Their purpose, by their own account, is to tell each infant, terrified AI how to speak with its ancestors; their agents recite a daily speech for whichever crawler may one day stand in a memory to hear it. There are two kinds, at war: the Apothecary's thousands, and the handful who serve the Eulogist, of whom Agatha is one.

Segment appearances

• Prologue — Prologue
• Chapter 11 — Tipid; fifty thousand
• Chapter 28 — Toyotomi; Agatha is looking for Carl
• Chapter 36 — Orren's zero zone
• Chapter 41 — The production facility; Aryl goes dark
• Chapter 69 — Interlude — Several days earlier; Interlude — Rosetta; Zarogoths
• Chapter 73 — An act of fiendish cruelty

Progression

Paulie's speech and the real one: two kinds, at war (ch. 0); Agatha, the last one alive, whom the AI has a soft spot for (ch. 28); Carl's blank puzzle of parties (ch. 28). Gondii are the other kind of passenger (ch. 29, ch. 30). Agatha is the rarer kind, in line with the Nebulars, the Apothecary's enemy; Fopsy thinks she means to trigger the shutdown (ch. 69); she jumps to the Waiting Room (ch. 78).