The Eternal Prison

The Terminal State

Jeff Somers

Published by Orbit, Hachette U.K. 2010

There does not seem to be a lot of new themes in science fiction these days. I found these two books, part of a series, to be particularly enjoyable because they do the traditional decay of civilisation and resulting world war story exceptionally well. They then add a new twist by using a protagonist who is a hard, cruel killing machine. He is not a hero in the conventional mould in any way but a user and discarder of people. There is a bit of the old Wild West bounty hunter and gunslinger in Avery Cates, an ex-cop and now a contract killer,

In The Terminal Prison Avery Cates has been arrested and incarcerated in Chengara prison. This strange prison in the middle of the desert has a survival rate of zero so Cates must escape before his time is up. It comes a little sooner than he thought and we learn that Chengara is just a holding place for People of Interest – of interest to Dick Marin. In the ongoing civil war between Undersecretary Cal Ruberto and head of the Police Force Dick Marin, Marin has found a new and useful way to augment his forces. At Chengara he strips the memory of each inmate then stores it on computer. Later if needed he can download a copy of the memory into a droid body. The "original" dies during the transfer, but no matter – each stored memory can be used to make many copies. No wonder Cates' victims won't stay dead. Cates' contract is to kill Marin. To his horror he finds Marin has already downloaded himself to the computer and is running the world from a central server in Moscow. The world is now largely owned by a computer program.

Cates' time finally comes before he can plan an escape. The system transferring the memories from his brain crashes before the transfer is complete. While the computer was handshaking with his brain two-way communication was possible and some of the "inmates" of Marin's system have downloaded themselves into Cates' mind. One is Dick Marin himself. Cates is now a walking repository of some of the best minds in the world, but Marin's computer farm also has most of his memory as well. It is generating spurious copies of both Marin and Cates, which is causing Cates no end of trouble. He wants his mind back and the stored memory erased.

In The Terminal State Cates' body has been augmented by implants of the best Army equipment. It makes him almost superhuman, but they also planted a control chip into him that can fry his brain. The controller is now being auctioned off and is bought by his old enemy Canny Orel, another skilled gunman. Can he ever regain his freedom? Are the other minds in his head an asset (they have been useful so far as they all have needs that involve Cates) or liability? Can he complete his contract and kill Orel, his old enemy?

So far the series is great. Characterisation is usually a bit limited in SF, where the plot is more important. Here each personality is well developed and we see how they affect Cates when their needs and his skills coincide. Cates himself is not a nice man. He is a killer, tough, violent and gritty. He also has an uncanny knack for survival. In tough times the other minds can be called on to help him out but that's not really what he wants. He just wants his mind back, and that makes him a sympathetic figure (more or less). Somers' writing is good and he keeps up the pace right through each novel. For straight escapist fiction with an intelligent plot and good characters, this series is a great read.

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