Recursion by Blake Crouch schedule. May 3rd Book Two

 Helena pg 101

Holy crap I was right.

Slade is from the future.  There was an accident when someone died in the tank and he figured out it was time travel.  Then he commited suicide in the tank with the chair on and made it back ro when he was in his 20s and did all this.

Barry pg 109

Barry is overwhelmed by all this.  He feels like he should just be overjoyed, but he's super worried that this isn't real.  Or even worse, that it is real but somehow Slade will see what he's doing and disapprove and take it away.

Helena 114

Slade tried to send Reed (the addict they're experimenting on) back to a memory from another timeline and it didn't work.  He just died.  So he sent himself back to stop Reed from doing the experiment.   When it catches up to them, Reed says he remembers dying and it was beautiful. He recalled a childhood memory that was awesome and he could have stayed in it forever.  He says they should have left him dead so he could.

Barry 119

He loves this life sooooo much.  He periodically finds himself overcome with emotion.

Helena pg 120 2009 July 5th

Reed enjoyed the experience of dying so much that he hangs himself. 

Slade says he's gonna time travel back and save him.  Helena says he made the choice to kill himself and he should let it be.  She suddenly realizes that she wants to escape and can't cause even if she did, Slade would go back in time and stop her.

Barry 122

Barry is better at life than last time.  Some because he remembers stuff from his previous life.   But mostly cause he cares a lot more.

Helena 124 2007 October 22nd

She goes back in time to escape Slade.

The memory is when jee-woon comes and offers her all of Slade's money to continue her research. She says yes.  I'm real curious to see where this is going.

Barry 126 2008 January - May

Barry just living his life.

Helena pg 127 2007 Oct- 2010 August

Even though she said yes to Jee-Woon, she didn't mean it.  She cashes out her savings and goes on the run.  The last sad thing she does in this chapter is goes to see her mom.  There's one moment of clarity but then she's back to being fully stricken with altzheimers. 

Barry pg 135 2010 June- 2018 November 

I don't care for the inconsistent chapter lengths. We got 1 page chapters and then this 22 page whopper.  Barry has a good second life.  His daughter graduates from college and he's so proud and he loves her so much.  He and his wife get a divorce. It's amicable and Barry realizes that in his previous life he blamed his divorce on his daughters death.  Now he realizes it wasn't meant to last.  Maybe in his next life they'll get divorced even earlier and be even happier. 

Then they get to the fateful day when he went back.  Everyone remembers his previous life.  His daughter commits suicide cause she can't get over the memory of her death.

Barry should have been prepared for this.  He should have had a plan to tell his daughter and wife.  But now he's divorced with a dead daughter again.  What a piece of shit.

Barry finds his way back to the memory building and he's real tempted to break in and go on a killing spree.  Then he has a better idea, he's gonna call Gwen and have her bring the while NYPD down on these Mother Fulkersons. But then he hears a lady tell him not to make that phone call.  It's Helena. 

Really looking forward to book 3.  I gotta remember to go to the library and pick up guardians of the galaxy.

Recursion by Blake Crouch schedule. April 19: Book One

 Barry pg 1

Barry is a cop and he's trying to stop a building jump suicide attempt.  Ann has FMS (False Memory Syndrome)  she remembers a life with a husband and son in Vermont along with her real life.  This life feels hollow and meaningless by comparison.   Barry tries to talk her down by telling her about how his daughter died and he felt similar but got better.  She ends up jumping. 

Helena pG 8

Helena is a memory scientist and she's applying for more funding.  Her main motivation is her mother's altzheimers.  A mystery man shows up in her lab and offers her unlimited funding for her work if she's OK with complete secrecy.  She accepts .

Barry pg 13

Barry is "celebrating " his dead daughters birthday by having brunch with his ex wife.  It's nice, he gets a text from a female cop that's currently a friend but was previously a drunken hookup asking if he needs company.  He gets disastrously drunk and comes to on her couch at 4 am.

Helena pg 24

Helena is transported via helicopter to meet her new boss Marcus Slade.  Billionaire philanthropy type.  He's psyched about how much money they'll make if they can cure altzheimers. 

Barry pg 28

One of the things the suicide told Barry was that her husband from her other life has a 0revious wife that committed suicide by jumping off the same building.  Barry gets the police report and in this world she didn't jump.  He knows he should let it go.  But he's too curious.  He's gonna get on a train to long Island to harass these people that don't really have any relationship to his suicide.

Helena pg 30

The whole oil rig r and d thing Slade has is awesome.  But shit get real when he brings in a couple quantum processors.  Then they've got all the processing power they need to map the human brain and isolate specific memories.  The memory chair that was just a private idea a year ago is now a reality.  Helena is gonna be the first experiment.

Barry 41

Barry goes out to Lon Giland to harass the guy that was married to his suicide in another life.  He feels firmly harassed.  Barry is sure even though he harassed the guy but good, he was lying to him.  Barry has FMS in a coffee shop.  Maybe he got it from the suicide.

Helena pg 47

They can now do a thing where they stimulate certain parts of your brain and you remember a specific memory super vividly.  Slade says it's not emersive enough.  The next step is to put it in a sensory deprivation chamber and stop your heart for a second so you get that whole life flashing thing.

Helena is now a little worried about her safety.

Barry pg 55

He wakes up on the train.  Old man asks for his ticket.  He has missed calls from Joe the lon Giland harassed. He calls back and Joe tells him all about a building he went to that messed up his brain.  Barry goes there.  There's a bar.  He is drugged. He wakes up strapped into one of Helena's chairs and also tunes are in him.  Crazy bearded guy (I'm assuming this is Slade and the 10 years since Helena invented this thing have not gone as planned ) says tell me about when you last saw your daughter alive 

Helena pg 67

Nobody liked Slade's stop someone's heart idea.  Pretty much everyone has left.  Slade is trying to convince Helena to keep going. 

Barry pg 71

He is telling Slade about the last time he saw his daughter.  

Helena pg 73

Slade has found a heroine addict to do the experiment on.  They do it and the man dies and they're all screaming at Slade to bring him back.  At the current moment he's been dead for 304 seconds.

Barry pg 80

I am never getting into a sensory deprivation chamber.   Barry is killed via chemicals and then he's in the memory of the last time he saw his daughter.  But it's more than that.  He can control his former self.  He goes running down the street after his daughter.

Helena pg 88

This chapter starts like chapter starting 0age 67.  But after a page it's different. Slade isn't telling Helena to come to the experiment.  He's popping champaign  and telling her they're celebrating their success.  He show her a video of the heroine addict telling him his mother is named Susan.  Helena has never seem this man before so she doesn't know what's going on.  But then at 10:15 ish the memory of what happened in the previous chapter floods through her.  Slade tells her that her chair doesn't let people relive their memories,  it actually returns them to the moment of that memory. 

Barry pg 92

It's all real.  Barry saves his daughter.  Vince shows up and verifies that it's all real.  He gives him some ground rules and says goodbye 👋 forever.