“People brought for labor, or come for refuge, or who were here before the first neoliberal surveyed this land and thought to build a paradise”. It is no coincidence that the original inhabitants of Wiley are pale-skinned and fair-haired, and the Ashtowners are black and brown. The space between worlds isn’t just the space between the 380 worlds that Cara traverses, it’s also the space between Wiley, where she maintains a precarious existence, and Ashtown, her birthplace. And in a world where merely surviving is the main aim, or (in Wiley), maintaining or improving one’s position, she is willing to act to improve things. She is brutalised by her upbringing, but she’s still human. It’s full-on science fiction, exploring that most fundamental question: “What might be changed?” Cara is a thoroughly believable character: bolshy, rough-edged, insecure. And it’s from these interactions with the alternates of people in her own world, with lives and relationships slightly shifted, that she starts to put together a very different picture of what is happening on her own world, and what Adam Bosch really wants. She isn’t supposed to interact with the inhabitants of those worlds, or get involved in their local disputes, but she does.
She isn’t supposed to bring back trophies from her visits to other worlds, but she does.
But her time is running out, as the Institute is expecting an imminent breakthrough that will make traversers redundant.īut Cara has secrets. Because she is so rare she is valuable, in that the Institute doesn’t have to employ so many other traversers. What is going to happen in the future? Go to a world which is slightly ahead in development. What needs to be changed to achieve a particular effect? Go to the world where it has changed. Cara’s job is data mining on the different worlds. Alone of his alternates, Bosch discovered the technology for travelling between the worlds. Cara is employed by the Eldridge Institute, headed by the charismatic Adam Bosch.
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