Dr. Zeus Inc.
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Dr. Zeus Inc., also known simply as The Company, is a fictional entity in a series of time travel science fiction stories by Kage Baker.
According to the stories, Dr. Zeus operates from the 24th century, using technologies of time travel and immortality to exploit the past for commercial gain. The immortality technology is limited to taking young children and turning them into cyborgs. The time travel technology only allows journeys into the past, and returns to the present. In addition, the technology is expensive and dangerous for normal humans to use.
History, or at least recorded history, cannot be changed. Dr. Zeus cannot save Lincoln, warn the Titanic, prevent the sack of Rome, or stop the burning of the Library at Alexandria. It can take valuable artifacts thought to be lost in these and other events, and 'rediscover' them in the future. However, even without the dangers of time travel, Dr. Zeus' employees hate the past. By their time, all stimulants and narcotics are illegal, vegetarianism is compulsory, and they are disease- and dirt-phobic. They find the past's inhabitants disgusting.
To carry out its mission, Dr. Zeus sends its employees far into human prehistory, where they take children from Neanderthal and modern human families and give them the immortality treatment. These individuals are then promised a bright future in the 24th century, in exchange for working for the Company till then. Their job is to Preserve cultural artifacts, valuable plants, and endangered species, hiding them in safe places till the Company can 'recover' them in the future. The cyborgs will get to the 24th century the old fashioned way, by living through the intervening millennia. Along the way they can create others to help them, using children who would otherwise die and not affect history. They are also provided with many recordings of future culture, entertainment, and a carefully edited view of history. Dr. Zeus alone knows everything that will happen up till the 24th century.
As the series progresses, it becomes apparent that the Dr. Zeus story is itself a fiction. How they came by their technology, and how long the Company has really existed, is an unfolding mystery. In addition, nobody, not even Dr. Zeus, knows what happens after the year 2355. Although communication between different times is possible, there is nothing from beyond a certain date in 2355. This is known as the Silence, and is a source of dread to both Company people and cyborgs.
[edit] Major characters
The immortality process, taking place as it does in early childhood, results in an individual who matures into a young adult and remains that way forever. "Facilitators" resort to makeup and prosthetics in order to appear to be older for their roles, but others appear as they always have. The Botanist Mendoza, for instance, appears to be approximately 19 years old despite having lived for thousands of years during her life and exile in the distant past. Joseph is described as "seeming to be about 35" (The Graveyard Game), indicating that Facilitators may have their "natural" ages set higher for their roles.
[edit] Preservers
Preservers are the main agents of the Company, specialists in different types of artifacts. They look exactly like normal humans, but small differences give them away to observant individuals. Typically a Preserver uses a credenza, which apparently is a piece of data processing, or analytical, equipment suited to their work. When among mortals, the Preserver can conceal the credenza, if necessary, by "merging" it with a piece of ordinary furniture (as Mendoza does in In The Garden of Iden). The technology behind such tricks is not explained in any detail, if at all.
[edit] Mendoza
Mendoza is a female cyborg, a botanist recruited from the dungeons of the Inquisition in 16th century Spain. In appearance, she is a barely adult woman with flame-red hair and startling black eyes. While still chronologically young, she suffers a huge psychological trauma after falling in love with a doomed mortal in Tudor England. She is also a "Crome Generator", with a powerful psychic potential that she cannot control. Through a series of awful events over the following 300 years, she comes to despise mortals, her fellow cyborgs, and eventually herself. She attempts to isolate herself from all harm, but cannot escape the Company, for whom everything she has done and will do is recorded history. She seems to be part of their plan, but which part?
[edit] Lewis
Lewis is a male cyborg, a Literature specialist taken as a baby in Roman times. He is short but handsome, with a resemblance to the 1940's actor Leslie Howard, for whom he acts as a movie stand-in in the 20th century, along with stints as a double for Rudolph Valentino and others. Meeting Mendoza at a Company base in South America in the 17th century, he falls hopelessly in love with her. She is barely aware of this, of course, being already traumatized by the loss of her first love. She disappears from his view in the 19th century, and he tries to find her through the next 300 years, stumbling across Company secrets in the process. He is also the object of pursuit by strange pale little men, who were responsible for almost destroying him in medieval Ireland and would eventually manage to capture him. His memories of this have been suppressed by his superiors, to keep the existence of these strange beings a secret.
[edit] Kalugin and Nan d'Aragnée
Unusually, these two have been allowed to marry, and even occasionally work on the same projects together. Kalugin was recruited in medieval Russia, while Nan is from Africa, recruited in the same batch as Mendoza in the 16th century. She takes her name from Anansi, the Spider God of her people in Africa. She was orphaned when the Smoke Men, probably Arab slave traders, attacked her village.
Both Kalugin and Nan specialize in rescuing artworks. Kalugin gets the assignments where the art was lost at sea, in which case he is designated to be on board when the ship goes down, and stay with the artifacts till a Company sub picks them up. However it is soon apparent that Kalugin is lost somewhere on one of his operations. Which one it is, and why, becomes apparent in The Children of the Company.
[edit] Imarte
Recruited in ancient Babylon, Imarte is an Anthropologist who collects cultural knowledge and customs. Like all Preservers, she cares more about her work than anything else. Since contact with outsiders inevitably contaminates her work, she resents the activities of any other Preservers, as is evident in Sky Coyote. She also practices a form of "total immersion" learning which involves having sex with her male subjects, either as a freelance prostitute, as in Mendoza in Hollywood, or else a "religious concubine", as in past assignments. Joseph describes her as "Mesopotamian dusky, with green eyes and an hourglass figure" in Sky Coyote.
[edit] Facilitators and Security Techs
Facilitators are fixers, smooth talkers, masters of disguise. Their job is to lay the groundwork for Preservers to do their work, and cover up their mistakes. They are consummate role-players. From time to time it is hinted that known historical figures were really Facilitators acting out a part. Security Techs operate as a kind of police, secret and otherwise, with the cyborg community. Their duties range from day to day monitoring of other cyborgs to Facilitator-like jobs overseeing groups of Preservers. A special sub-group are known as "problem solvers" who are equipped with the means to disable and dismantle rogue cyborgs.
[edit] Joseph
Facilitator Joseph is 20,000 years old as a cyborg. He was recruited by Budu when his tribe was wiped out by members of the Great Goat Cult, a fanatic religion in prehistory. Being from the Basque area of Spain, he is short, dark and also somewhat sinister looking. Joseph recruited many other cyborgs, including Mendoza. Having outlived everyone else he ever knew, including various mortal wives, Joseph regards Budu as his father, and eventually sees Mendoza as his daughter. After both disappear, Budu in the 11th century and Mendoza in the 19th, he too wants to know what happened to them. While not as committed as Lewis, he follows the clues Lewis finds, with disastrous results.
[edit] Porfirio
Although much younger than Joseph, Security Tech Porfirio has something Joseph lacks - a family. He has been allowed to maintain contact with blood relatives descended from his brother. Like his brother, he is a first-generation mestizo, his mother having been an Aztec, and his father a Conquistador. Often he presents himself to his relatives as a long-lost uncle, or simply is allowed to work close by to keep an eye on them. In the 1860's, he runs an Inn in Cahuenga Pass, California, so his Preservers can glean information from passing travelers and the local population. Mendoza is one of the Preservers who has been foisted upon him; ostensibly she is to gather plant species soon to become extinct in a years-long drought, but the Company fails to move her on once the drought hits. Porfirio has to deal with her moods, her night-time psychic fireworks, and eventually her disastrous encounter with someone who is involved in an unknown Company-related plot. Mendoza and a few other cyborgs disappear as a consequence, but Porfirio is allowed to stay free and monitor his family. Over a century later he is able to tell Joseph something of what happened to Mendoza. He also reveals that staying in contact with his family is his reward for being a "problem solver" who does the Company's dirty work.
[edit] Executives
The highest class of cyborgs, Executives, Executive Facilitators, Facilitators General etc., these individuals are responsible for seeing the Company policies and missions are carried out. They organize and run Company facilities, sometimes as personal empires. While they are supposed to obey instructions sent back from the 24th century, in some cases they pursue their own agendas. Most are identified at an early age as having extraordinary talents for organization, and may be sent out for field experience when still quite young, as Latif was. Preservers, in contrast, remain at training facilities until they reach adulthood.
[edit] Labienus
One of the oldest of the Executives, he came originally from the location of Jericho in what is now Palestine, having been orphaned by the Great Goat Cult in prehistory. Although he was given charge of a region of Mesopotamia, his arrogance caused him to treat it as a personal playground until told to start organizing villages into cities. Still, he retained a contempt for humans throughout the ages and is the leading member of the Plague Club.
[edit] Houbert
Described as resembling J. Wellington Wimpy, Houbert is both an executive and an architect, but expends much energy on sybaritic living and ostentatious display. Having run New World One, when that installation was dismantled he moved to a chateau on the Loire in France, and subsequently drove the development of Monte Carlo.
[edit] Augeus
Another old Executive, he runs Eurobase One for millennia, transforming it from a stockade into an underground palace full of antiquities and art. Like Labienus, he sees humans as inferior, but he believes that eventually they will simply be slaves to the cyborgs. Augeus used Victor as an agent until Victor came under the influence of Labienus, whereupon Augeus tried to have Victor spy on Labienus for him.
[edit] Suleyman
With a base of operations in Fez, Morocco, Suleyman runs the North African operation of the company. For a long time he worked undercover as a Corsair. It was in this role that he found and recruited Latif on a slave ship in the 1690's.
[edit] Latif
We first encounter Latif at the age of three, already apprenticed to Houbert at New World One, and set to serve with Labienus at Mackenzie Base. At the age of five he works for Van Drouten in Amsterdam, causing her some problems with some creative freelance marketing. By the 24th century he is grown and working for Suleyman in Fez, monitoring and attempting to frustrate the activities of Labienus, Augeus, and other parts of the Company working against mortals.
[edit] Van Drouten
Orphaned by the Black Death, Van Drouten grew into an unremarkable, plain woman, perfect cover for running Eurobase Five out of a large house in Amsterdam. This duty she performs right into the 24th century, as we learn in Gods and Pawns.
[edit] Enforcers
Enforcers are specially bred cyborgs, created in pre-History from Neanderthal and even stranger hominid stock. They were created as warriors for one purpose, to destroy the prehistoric Great Goat Cult which seemed to be preventing History from happening at all. Unfortunately, they can't be unmade once they accomplish their mission. They are 8 feet tall with helmet shaped heads, hugely strong, and fearless (all other cyborgs are programmed to flee danger). Programmed to kill all who offer violence to others, they are hard to control. Some want to extend their roles to keeping all humans in line. As long as their appearance can be explained away they can be used as soldiers, a role they love. Eventually they must be removed, however...
[edit] Budu
Budu is the Enforcer who recruited Joseph while killing the Great Goat Cult fanatics who killed Joseph's parents. Just before he disappears, he meets Joseph for the last time and forces information on him that eventually leads Joseph to discover the secret places where surplus, damaged and renegade cyborgs are held in tanks of fluid in suspended animation. Joseph hopes to find Budu and Mendoza in these places, but eventually he finds Budu's still viable remains elsewhere and transports them to one of the facilities in the hope that they can be re-animated.
Budu also recruited Labienus and Victor, the one in prehistory, the other in Anglo-Saxon Britain.
[edit] Marco
Marco, after the destruction of the Great Goat Cult, believes that the fight must continue until all humans who kill are removed from history. He rebels, is captured, and is sent back in time to 300,000 BCE to operate Options Research. Here he experiments on suicidal cyborgs, seeking a means of killing them. This is harder than he or anyone else could imagine, but he enjoys trying.
[edit] Adonai/Nicholas/Edward/Alec
Trying to replace the Enforcers with a breed of mortal who will be easy to control, and not inclined to hang around forever, the Company genetically engineers a series of identical individuals under the project name Adonai. In each case, the embryo is implanted in a mortal woman, and the child allowed to grow without knowing his origins. The first is Nicholas Harpole in Elizabethan times, who is Mendoza's doomed first love. The second is Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, a Victorian adventurer and secret agent who encounters Mendoza in California, suffering the same fate as Nicholas. The third is Alec Checkerfield, a 24th century rich kid who is able to hijack high-tech data systems, including Company data and a time machine. He also finds Mendoza and she falls for him all over again. Alec does not die, however. What happens to him is far worse...
[edit] The New Inklings
These are the 24th century geniuses who, taking their name from the original Inklings, design all the cyborgs and Adonai. To them it is just a game, a relief from the boredom of their lives, and license to indulge in pleasures from the past which are illegal for everybody else. However they too are being manipulated. The versions of Adonai all have a role to play in the business of Dr. Zeus, and what Alec Checkerfield accomplishes leaves them horrified beyond description.
[edit] Villains ?
Labienus and Nennius are old, old cyborgs who seem to wield much power behind the scenes. Labienus runs Company facilities at various times and is one of the inquisitors (small i) into Mendoza's debacle in California. In The Children of the Company we learn more of his origins, attitudes to mortals, and his relationship with Budu, who recruited him, and whom, like Joseph, he calls "Father". Nennius coordinates some of Joseph's missions, and eventually leads Joseph and Lewis into a trap, apparently with Labienus's encouragement. The two are also behind various pandemics among mortals, possibly starting with the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
Aegeus is another old cyborg, who runs the facility known as Eurobase One in the Cevennes mountains. He plots separately from Labienus for the day when the cyborgs will have enough power to take over from mortals. His ace in the hole is that he created a race of hybrids of humans and Homo Umbratilis, to provide him with technology he can use in his rebellion.
Kiu is an ancient female of Asian heritage. She has gone farther than most of her age in abandoning any concern with humanity. Apart from carrying out her missions, she is interested in power, luxury, and recreational sex. To her humans are a disease on the face of the Earth. In The Children of the Company she uses her charisma to start a religious cult bent on mass suicide, which is in fact a large-scale test of one of the plagues created by Labienus and his cronies.
Suleyman is a former pirate, based in North Africa, who has built up a power base there and among a Muslim sect worldwide in the 22nd century. He believes that some cyborgs - possibly including Budu - are plotting to kill off mortals with new diseases, in order to take over in 2355. As an ally he can help Joseph when he goes on the run, but he may also wind up on the other side if Joseph joins with Budu.
Victor is a mystery. Sophisticated and gracious, he runs New World One when Mendoza first arrives there. In later stories he admits to being a 'problem solver', someone who does the really dirty work. He never takes off his gloves in company. He is friendly with Suleyman, but may have other motives. He admits to Joseph that he brought about Budu's final downfall, and knows where to find the body. Disabling Budu, who recruited him, is the least of the shameful things the Company has tricked him into doing. He worked for Aegeus when the Homo Umbratilis hybrids were being bred, but later became a member of Labienus' team. He does not know the full extent of Labienus' plots. In later times he seems to operate under the protection of Suleyman.
[edit] Cabals and Conspiracies
With centuries to think about the future, and an unknown fate awaiting them in 2355, it is not surprising that various groups of cyborgs have been conspiring to make sure they come out ahead.
[edit] The Plague Club
Since he went rogue in 1099 Budu has apparently been gathering disciples. He was disgusted by the religious wars of medieval times and wished to return humanity to a state where it could be ruled by the Enforcers, who simply kill anyone who makes war on others. This would mean drastically reducing the population. His recruits included Labienus, who with Nennius began researching plagues as a means of carrying out Budu's vision. Budu objected to this, but Labienus may have engineered his downfall and gone ahead anyway, beginning with the Spanish flu epidemic.
[edit] The Imperial faction
Cyborgs such as Aegeus enjoy a rich lifestyle, propped up by many mortal servants. They aim to be at the top of the pile with humanity as their slaves. They see themselves as being the real masters of the Company, with mortals such as Bugleg as mere puppets.
[edit] Humanitarians
Suleyman and his allies aim to frustrate the Plague Club, but also protect the interests of cyborgs against any attempt by the Company to get rid of them, or to place them all in storage.
[edit] Mortals
In the 2350's mortals such as Bugleg, the cowardly, introverted leader of the Company expedition recounted in Sky Coyote, become increasingly concerned that the cyborgs outnumber them and will take over. They attempt to find ways of disposing of the cyborgs, trying poisons etc. In the Eos (Harper Collins) edition of Sky Coyote an epilog of sorts shows Bugleg's frantic memo to a colleague, followed by Aegeus' sarcastic comments, and Labienus' comment on Aegeus.
[edit] Rogues
Both Joseph and Budu are beyond the Company's control. Joseph revives Budu, but may not like what Budu wants him to do. Meanwhile Alec is a different kind of rogue, with his own time machine....
[edit] Homo Umbratilis
Homo Umbratilis, meaning Man of the Shadows, is the name of a third species of human, after Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. Small, pale and furtive, they hide from all contact with humans and cyborgs. They have racial memory, being born with full recollection of the knowledge of their ancestors. There are hints that they are in fact a hive species, like bees, ants and naked mole rats, except for some hybrids from raids by humans. The hybrids are mechanical and scientific geniuses, and may be the source of the technology that the Company uses. They are not very creative, but can focus intensely on developing something, such as a disrupter field that paralyzes the cyborgs, whom they regard as enemies. Attempts to exploit these creatures, once they come to the attention of the Company, is an important element in the series' plot.
An example of their monomania is that, having originally disabled and captured Lewis in medieval Ireland, after he escapes with mortal help they concentrate on recapturing him until the 23rd century, even though there are other cyborgs around for them to capture and study. It is Lewis' encounter with them that lets Aegeus take advantage of their abilities.
[edit] The Great Goat Cult
This cultural movement is referred to frequently within the novels. The main points that can be gleaned about it are that it was a cult among humans, the main object of which was to wipe out unbelievers. Cult members covered their bodies in tattoos. Unbelievers consisted of anyone who refused to be tattooed or to join in the killing. The cult seems to have existed for thousands of years across Eurasia and possibly Africa. Joseph's tribe in the Basque region of Spain was wiped out by it circa 20,000 BCE, as was Labienus's village in the Middle East 5000 years later.
From the point of view of the Company in the 24th century, the Cult was impeding the start of civilization. The Enforcers were created to destroy the Cult. Possibly because of their small numbers, a few thousand at most, this seems to have taken them thousands of years.
[edit] Defectives
Some early attempts at creating cyborgs resulted in individuals with severe psychological problems. Since they are "indestructible" they are allowed to wander the world on specific missions for the Company. One, called Abdiel, services the regeneration tank repositories where many immortals are kept. Abdiel is unable to retain new memories, and lives in a perpetual Now. Another, encountered by Kalugin in 19th century California, calls himself Courier, and performs that exact job for the Company. He cannot stay too long in one place because his short-term memory malfunctions and causes fits of rage. Later Kalugin encounters Nicoletta, a female Defective on a mission to "take care of mortals", just before a worldwide pandemic reaches his location.
[edit] Bobby Ross
Bobby Ross's case is unusual. Recruited from an automobile accident in 1958 at the age of 10, he proved to be a medical disaster as his DNA was too degraded to function in a self-repairing organism. He suffers from disfiguring growths and other ailments. Proving to be a mathematical genius, he was allowed to study time travel, but somehow turned himself into a living time machine. Not only that, he was able to travel to his future, an ability he used to get himself 21st century medical treatment. Until caught, he lived in 1951, experiencing the same year over and over. He is able to send objects back in time, and during experiments with sending the same object to the same place and time over and over, he claims to have caused the explosions resulting in the Tunguska event and the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.
[edit] William Randolph Hearst
This famous and quite real person contacts the Company in 1933 to bargain for a new lease on life at age 70. Sent to perform the necessary work, Joseph is astonished to find that Hearst should have died at birth, and is only alive because a Company operative was there to implant devices which allowed the malformed baby to live. Eventually we find that Hearst is still alive in the 24th century, continuing to manipulate the world through the media, and still acting in the Company's interests.
[edit] Company Locations
Despite relatively low numbers, in their many thousands of years of existence the cyborgs build several elaborate facilities which serve as starting points for missions, and gathering points for new recruits. Preservers deliver their findings to these locations for storage. Incidentally, these facilities also serve as power bases for high-ranking cyborgs, known as Executive Facilitators.
[edit] Eurobase One
Possibly the oldest facility, this is remembered by some, including Joseph, as once being nothing more than a stockade. By the third century CE it is an elaborate and luxurious facility run by Augeus, where he experiments with hybrids of humans and Homo Umbratilis. It is located in the Cevennes mountains of France.
[edit] Eurobase Five
In contrast, this appears to be nothing more than an a large house in Holland, run for centuries by Executive Facilitator Van Drouten, serving as a collection point for Dutch art and artifacts. The house is located on the Herengracht canal in Amsterdam.
[edit] Mackenzie Base
Located somewhere in the Canadian Arctic, this is Labenius' power base. In Sky Coyote the Chumash tribe were transplanted to this base where they worked for the Company doing menial jobs.
[edit] New World One
This base existed in the jungle of the Yucatan for hundreds of years before being dismantled at the turn of the 18th century. Its human servants were rescued sacrifices from the Mayan culture. Having been sacrificed, they believed themselves to be in Heaven, serving the gods. The head of New World One styled himself as the god Kukulcan. The last such was the fey and feckless Houbert, who seemed to prefer elaborate social events to the business of running a base.
[edit] Terra Australis
This was an underground training base somewhere in the Australian desert, where Mendoza received her immortality treatment and education.
[edit] Alpha-Omega
Located on an island in 500,000 BCE, this is a storehouse for all the genetic material used by the Company in creating its servants and Project Adonai, according to The Machine's Child. Since the Company could not trust a cyborg with the store, it is overseen by a 24th century mortal, David Reed. To protect his sanity, he has been "cyborged" so that he lives in a Virtual Reality world which duplicates an office in London, complete with virtual colleagues. An Artificial Intelligence looks after his needs, but the AI has developed an emotional attachment to David.
[edit] Santa Catalina
The island of Santa Catalina is the hub around which all of the mysteries of the Company revolve. Settled by strange, pale humanoids in about 150,000 BCE, it seems to be the repository of the secrets which make the Company's activities possible. In the 24th century it is the home of the Company's main database, which Alec and his AI companion The Captain raid, stealing both data and a time shuttle, setting them off on their career as time-traveling pirates sworn to destroy the Company.
The discovery of artifacts on the island by Sir Francis Drake's crew serves as the critical event that a secret society, based in England, uses to transform itself into the cabal which eventually reveals itself as Dr. Zeus, Inc. in the 24th century. Naturally the Company goes to great effort to maintain possession of the island as much as recorded history allows. Actual history records that in the 19th century much of the island was owned by a syndicate which included the Banning family and the father of General George S. Patton. In the stories the Company buys up their holdings to protect its hidden resources in the island's interior.
[edit] Mount Olympus HQ
Appearing in Mendoza in Hollywood and The Graveyard Game, this is a house on Zeus Drive off Mount Olympus Drive above Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles. The location described corresponds to a real cul-de-sac[1]. The house is equipped with a "time transcendence" chamber to send people and objects through time.
The stated reason for the existence of this facility is "monitoring the Lookout Mountain Avenue anomaly", apparently a source of paranormal phenomena located nearby. The area has a history, real and imagined, of attracting unusual people, as well as artists, musicians etc.
[edit] Others
Mentioned in passing in the stories are Edobase (old Tokyo), Greenland Base, Antioch (as an underground way station in 1099 CE), London Station etc.
[edit] The Cyborg Anatomy
All the bones in the human skeleton are replaced by "ferroceramic steel" in the cyborgs. Joints are replaced by "linkages", such as ball joints. The remaining tissues are pervaded by "nanobots" which use the original DNA of the human to regenerate any damaged organs. This is one of the reasons only young children can receive the treatment, since (according to the stories) DNA degrades beginning at birth.
Cybernetic implants in the brain give the cyborgs advanced abilities and senses, such as perfect memory, encyclopedic knowledge, instant learning, enhanced vision and hearing, multi-spectral scanning, and radio communication. Other implants tap into their senses and broadcast them to monitoring stations, so that Security Techs can always know what their charges are doing. The cyborgs can recognize, understand, and speak any known human language instantly, including local variants and dialects. Their lingua franca is called "Cinema Standard", presumably the English spoken in 20th century movies, with which most Company operatives are obsessed.
Special organs release chemicals such as "Pineal Tribrantine 3" or PT3, which confers youth and vigor. Cyborg muscles are much stronger than the human equivalent. Their bodies are also capable of "hyperfunction" which allows them to carry out actions at many times normal speed.
Unknown to most cyborgs, their bodies are also equipped to go into a "fight mode" where their hands become claws, their eyes gain protective covers, and their mouths sprout fangs. The skin drains of color in this mode, and they resemble a white demon. Normally psychological conditioning prevents them from entering a fight, but several stories, such as "The Hotel at Harlan's Landing" involve high-speed fights between rival cyborgs.
As is revealed in The Machine's Child the final line of defense for the Company's immortal agents is a "time-transcendence" field in the brain-case. With the brain "a split-second out of phase" with real time the brain case is, in effect, impenetrable. In addition the time field seems to be able to bend reality in order to preserve the brain, as Marco finds out when he tries to destroy some heads in a white-hot fire-pit, only to have them re-appear in the stores where he had previously kept them. This "time field" is probably also necessary for the cyborgs to perform their outrageous feats of speed.
[edit] Crome's Radiation
Described as a blue glow occurring around certain places and persons, this is supposedly the source of paranormal abilities in humans and cyborgs. The tendency to emit Crome's radiation can be measured, according to the novel Sky Coyote, and the Company's standards forbid recruiting individuals with more than minimal Crome potential. Joseph, confronted with Mendoza's measured potential several hundred times the maximum, persuaded the technician making the measurement to fudge the number so she could be recruited, rather than send her back into the dungeons of the Inquisition to be tortured and killed.
According to Mendoza in Hollywood, materials such as quartz can accumulate Crome's radiation little by little, from the tiny amount emitted by all living things, until their entire charge is suddenly released, resulting in visions, time distortions, messages from the dead etc. It is a large body of quartz beneath the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Lookout Mountain Avenue which causes so much abnormality in that location, up to and including sending Mendoza and her companion forward in time from 1863 to 1996. This body of quartz is supposedly also tied to old Native American folk tales about the trickster god Coyote stealing the moon and burying it in Laurel Canyon.
The origin of the name is not explained in the stories.
[edit] Paradoxes
These are endemic in time-travel stories, and usually provide the main plot twist. From the beginning of the Company stories, it is apparent even to Dr. Zeus that, in exploiting so-called recorded history, they may be responsible for history turning out the way it did, beginning with annihilating the Great Goat Cult so History as we know it could begin. As character after character turns against the Company, they are still unable to break free, their actions only making events turn to Dr. Zeus' advantage. But did the Company engineer their rebellion, or simply benefit from it? Is Dr. Zeus manipulating events, or just making sure that what is known to have happened does happen, to safeguard its own destiny? Only the things Dr. Zeus doesn't already know about can hurt it, but what does Dr. Zeus not know?
[edit] Theobromos
Throughout the stories, the cyborgs mention "Theobromos" as their narcotic of choice. In fact this is simply chocolate. Having been rendered immune to all known human diseases, and being unaffected by alcohol and other drugs, since their bodies quickly reprocess such chemicals into harmless forms, the cyborgs react to Theobromos as humans might to alcohol or marijuana. The name is derived from Theobromine, one of the stimulants found in the seeds of the cacao plant, although that itself takes its name from the Greek words for "food of the gods". Naturally the cyborgs have developed their own varieties of the plant which are especially intoxicating.
Over-indulgence brings on a hangover which has to be treated with large amounts of complex carbohydrates, such as pizza or fettuccine alfredo. The humans who run the Company do not like their servants intoxicating themselves, but are powerless to prevent them from doing so.
Theobromos provides a thread of humor, sometimes ironic, which runs through the stories. Examples include:
- Joseph and Lewis go on a binge at Ghirardelli's in San Francisco, Joseph at one point snorting cocoa powder like cocaine (The Graveyard Game).
- Later in The Graveyard Game, they go on a buying spree at Rowntrees in York, England.
- Suleyman's protege Latif secretly runs a highly profitable black-market in Theobromos out of Eurobase Five, until operatives from Central America come to complain about him undercutting them. (The Children of the Company}
- Mendoza's tragic confession in Mendoza in Hollywood is obtained with the help of 5 kilograms of "finest Guatemalan" Theobromos.
- In the same novel, Mendoza's companion Einar eats "cakes of Theobromos" one after the other in order to stay calm as they explore Laurel Canyon, where time distortions surround them with visions of past and future events.
- Security Tech Porfirio is armed with a tranquilizer, "based on Theobromos", to help him subdue rogue cyborgs (Gods and Pawns).
[edit] Names
Dr. Zeus, is named for the Greek God Zeus, who defeated his father Kronos. Kronos is sometimes confused with the entity Chronos, the personification of Time.
The New Inklings are named for a group of intellectuals in pre-WW2 England, of whom the best known are C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
[edit] Events the Company caused or exploited
This list only includes events in known history, or myth. Future exploits by the Company are described in the books.
- The disappearance of the Ninth Legion in Roman England. In The Graveyard Game it was revealed that the Ninth was wiped out by Brigantes, who were in turn killed by Enforcers travelling with the Legion. Joseph was there as coordinator. Nennius supervised the cleanup. No trace of the battle was left.
- The expedition of Sir Francis Drake. Part of the temporal paradox that creates the Company involves a discovery of artifacts by Drake's men on the island of Santa Catalina. In fact it is not known exactly where, or indeed if, Drake landed in California. Accounts that have him landing at the location known as Drake's Bay may be false. It is possible he landed in what is now Oregon. Drake, in the stories, is working partly for John Dee, who already has some artifacts in his possession. One of Drake's men happens to have been a witness to Nicholas Harpole's martyrdom.
- The San Francisco earthquake. As recounted in The Children of the Company, this was a major operation to coordinate snatching many different items immediately before the earthquake and the subsequent fires. There was also a "Dance on the Eve of Destruction" party set up by the cyborgs, partly to say goodbye to the vibrant 19th century city that was about to be destroyed.
- In The Children of the Company Labienus is present when Carthage is destroyed and its population enslaved, fulfilling recorded history and ensuring the dominance of Rome. Part of the Roman justification for the conquest is that Ba'al Hammon, the Carthaginian deity, is Kronos, whom Zeus defeated.
[edit] External links, references
- ^ Satellite image of Zeus Drive at Google maps
