Motif · from book 1
Carl's family
'After a stint in the US Coast Guard, I ended up working as a marine tech.' What Carl says of himself in the first chapter, and what leaks out after: a mother who locked him in the basement with his father's Frogger machine whenever his father's friends came over, and who left; a heavily tattooed father who laughed at him, broke his slingshot and never replaced it, and drove on past a wrecked moving truck saying it was a shame.
First appears: Book 1 · Seen for what it is: Book 6
Series arc
In hindsight, after book 6
Five books of asides — a stint in the Coast Guard, a circus on a fourth birthday, a belt, a fish tank, a mother found in a basement, a hand at the Grand Canyon as the river runs — turn out to be the eighth floor's raw material. The AI splices a summer trailer into a Christmas town so that Carl can watch his father die of a stepmother's morphine and discover a six-year-old brother, then builds a boss out of everyone he knew. The lines from books 1–5 read differently afterwards: the 'a shadow so thick, you can drown in it' was a real man in a hospital bed, and the thing that finally makes Carl angry at Bea is not the cheating but a photograph of Asher on her phone.
As of book 6. A thread of asides across five books — the Coast Guard, a circus on a fourth birthday, a belt, a hand at the Grand Canyon, a fish tank, a mother found in a basement — and then the eighth floor's key: a summer trailer in Iowa, his father dying in a hospital bed, a brother named Asher, a stepmother's morphine, a hydra of everyone he knew, Bea's phone, his father's Panhead ridden to a shelter, a crayon airplane on his wall, and an oath as the sky opens. The Trace has the lines.
Through book 1
What Carl says of himself in the first chapter and in three asides — the basement and the Frogger machine (B1 ch. 6), the moving truck his father drove past (B1 ch. 26), the slingshot his father broke (B1 ch. 32): 'After a stint in the US Coast Guard, I ended up working as a marine tech' (B1 ch. 1); a coast guardsman aboard a cutter as a technician, never face-to-face with real law enforcement and not in a physical fight in years (B1 ch. 2); Bea's father a lawyer out of Yakima (B1 ch. 8).
Through book 2
Through book 3
Through book 4
A sudden memory of his father angry, soon after his mother left them and a month before his father left him: a fish tank smashed, mollies on the floor (B4 ch. 11).
Through book 5
Through book 6
The eighth floor's key is in a summer trailer in Iowa: his father dying in a hospital bed, a brother named Asher, a stepmother's morphine (B6 ch. 44, B6 ch. 45); the hydra of everyone he knew (B6 ch. 46); Bea's phone (B6 ch. 47); his father's Panhead ridden to a shelter, a crayon airplane on his wall (B6 ch. 49, B6 ch. 50); the oath as the sky opens (B6 ch. 72).
Trace
The thread line by line, in reading order: its presence before anyone could see it, and the lines that made it legible. Each line is verbatim from the cited book.
| Where | The line | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Book 1, Ch. 1 | My name is Carl. I am twenty-seven years old. After a stint in the US Coast Guard, I ended up working as a marine tech, […] I, up until a few days before this started, lived with my girlfriend in our apartment in Seattle. | The first thing Carl tells us about himself; the navy Donut will never believe. |
| Book 2, Ch. 10 | As a kid, one of my earliest memories was going to the circus with my mom […] She’d temporarily left my dad and run away to her parent’s’ house all the way down in the middle-of-nowhere southern Texas, | His mother's brief flight, the circus, the shoebox under the bed: the family's first crack, shown as a smell. |
| Book 3, Ch. 7 | My father had never been physically abusive, except that day. […] thinking back now, that’s exactly what it was. He’d spanked me so hard with a belt that my underwear had soaked through with blood. […] My mother had cried, told him we were going back to Texas, but we never did. | The one day; 'thinking back now, that's exactly what it was'. |
| Book 3, Ch. 15 | I had a memory, of standing on the precipice of the Grand Canyon. It was just my mom and me […] My father was there in the car, waiting. […] my mom clutching tightly onto my wrist. | The image the river will return to: his mother's hand at the edge, his father in the car. |
| Book 4, Ch. 11 | It was soon after mom had left us, a month before he, in turn, left me to fend for myself. […] smashed my fish tank, spilling my mollies everywhere. […] I’m never getting a pet again. All they do is die. | The order of leaving: his mother, then his father, a month apart. |
| Book 5, Ch. 5 | I can’t tell the orange pet dots apart, I thought. […] I remembered the day I found my mother in the basement. I thought I was going to get a bike that day, and I never did. | What he found; said once, in passing, in a fight. |
| Book 5, Ch. 12 | that ceaseless river within my mind, roared. The water is running. […] I thought of my mother, holding my hand as we stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon. I thought of my father in the car, behind us, waiting. | The river's first roar is his mother at the canyon. |
| Book 6, Ch. 45 | It was him. My father. I hadn’t seen him in over twelve years, not since that day, and there he was. | Twelve years on, in a hospital bed in a recorded summer. |
| Book 6, Ch. 45 | » Carl: Be nice. I think that’s my stepmom. | In nurse's scrubs, Katia's age by Donut's guess, with morphine in the flower pots. |
| Book 6, Ch. 45 | My brother. | Asher. |
| Book 6, Ch. 45 | “If your intention was to hurt me, you fucked it all up. This was pretty much exactly what I needed to see.” | What the floor was built to do, and what it did instead. |
| Book 6, Ch. 47 | I’ve seen him a bunch of times, but I still don’t really know who he is. Miss Beatrice had his picture on her phone, […] His name is Asher. I think he was her nephew or something. | Bea knew. |
Where they appear
| Book | Chapters they are in (of the book's) | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Dungeon Crawler Carl | 7/48 | Ch. 2, Ch. 3, Ch. 6, Ch. 26, Ch. 32, Ch. 41, Ch. 42 · the book's own page |
| 2 — Carl's Doomsday Scenario | 12/26 | 4–12, 17, 19, 23 · the book's own page |
| 3 — The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook | 4/35 | Ch. 2, Ch. 4, Ch. 15, Ch. 25 · the book's own page |
| 4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods | 7/35 | Ch. 2, Ch. 5, Ch. 11, Ch. 16, Ch. 17, Ch. 33, Ch. 34 · the book's own page |
| 5 — The Butcher's Masquerade | 11/78 | 6–7, 12, 14–15, 25, 29, 31, 39, 47, 71 · the book's own page |
| 6 — The Eye of the Bedlam Bride | 11/74 | 7, 13, 26, 30, 34, 44–47, 53, 63 · the book's own page |
By book
Carl's family in book 1 — Dungeon Crawler Carl
'After a stint in the US Coast Guard, I ended up working as a marine tech' (ch. 1); a coast guardsman aboard a cutter as a technician, never face-to-face with real law enforcement but trained in hand-to-hand combat (ch. 2); Bea's dad a lawyer out of Yakima (ch. 8). Of his parents: a mother who locked him in the basement with his father's Frogger cabinet while his father's friends drank (ch. 6); a mother who left, and a father last seen laughing at him over 12 years ago — 'Not since he'd abandoned me that day' (ch. 13, ch. 21); a father who drove on past a wrecked Penske truck (ch. 26); his mother's promise the day she left that it would be okay — 'It had been a lie then' (ch. 41). What Carl says of himself, and no more.
Carl's family in book 2 — Carl's Doomsday Scenario
The circus on his fourth birthday, when his mother had briefly left his father and run to her parents' in southern Texas — peanuts and cotton candy and hay, a memory recovered years later from a shoebox of photographs hidden under his parents' bed (ch. 10); a father with a shelf of Louis L'Amour westerns Carl read in secret (ch. 5).
Carl's family in book 3 — The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook
Carl's family in book 4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods
A sudden memory of his father angry, soon after his mother left them and a month before his father left him to fend for himself: a helmet ripped off, a fish tank smashed, mollies on the floor (ch. 11).
Carl's family in book 5 — The Butcher's Masquerade
The day he found his mother in the basement (ch. 5); riding in the cart, Carl thinks of the back of his parents' car (ch. 6); his mother's hand at the edge of the Grand Canyon, his father waiting in the car behind them, as the water runs (ch. 12); his father's voice, scolding him for watching the news, because knowing all that stuff rots you from the inside and does not affect people like them (ch. 39).
Carl's family in book 6 — The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
The floor's memory is built to be personal. Carl thinks of his mother at the Grand Canyon when a spider's closed eye looks at him (ch. 26), of his father when Katia detoxes (ch. 30), of the motorcycle he once knocked over when he sees it in a yard (ch. 44). The trailer gives him the father small, a brother, and a stepmother who kills for the boy's sake (ch. 45); the hydra gives him everyone he knew as heads (ch. 46); Donut gives him Bea reading his messages and hiding Asher (ch. 47). He rides the Panhead, tapes a crayon airplane to his wall, plugs in the Centipede cabinet (ch. 49), and swears at the sky's opening to a brother he never met (ch. 72). 'I'm not scared of shadows anymore.'