#eternity unleashed

Chapter Twelve of Eternity Unleashed: A Spoiler-Filled Commentary

The final chapter of Balor's backstory novella is short, and consists of Balor’s musings about what happened to him. 

For the first time, we see a character reckoning with the "immortality" part of Balor's immortality treatment, rather than just the physical invulnerability which has dominated the story so far.

Balor tells himself he’s been set free, and that being caged in a randomly floating asteroid until further notice is actually a win for him. Yes, it’s mind palace time, folks.

He immerses himself in his mum’s paintings, which must be fantastic for his mental health.

He wonders why the women in his life always leave him, and why his friends betrayed him. He thinks he should have tried to be a father to his adopted siblings. He decides children are more malleable when raised by the state, so the family subculture can’t radicalize them.

He contemplates how terror is the ultimate emotion: it’s on, or it’s off.

He gets into bodybuilding.

He hopes maybe an advanced civilization will find him, so he can learn from them, like how to be a better dictator and stuff. If primitives find him, he’ll have to teach them. 

Whatever happens, he prepares for it: “I don’t choose to allow my fate to be decided by others.” He’s *so* close to getting it.

Anyway, there’s Balor, in the BSHCI, with his paintings, in his mind palace, for a super long time. According to the Powysverse Continuity, his incarceration takes place "centuries before" we next see him. Considering the known psychological effects of solitary confinement I'd say the events of Chapter 12 would cover a few years at most, even though Balor perceives the elapsed time to be much longer.

The Progrons' treatment of Balor is very difficult to admire. It seems they have either an extremely cruel, or an extremely improvisational and ignorant justice system to have done this to him. Since the head of the supreme court also seems to be world president, I'm guessing the latter. I don't know how Talian can justify such an action, if he really believes what he says about Balor's being just a man like any other.

Yes, Balor was fixing to do exactly this to everyone who opposed him, but isn't that why we're on Talian's side and not Balor's? What crimes would Balor have reasonably been charged with, since to all appearances anyone with enough power is allowed to do everything he did? And I'm not saying Balor should've been allowed to do all this, but that's exactly my point.

You could argue that the punishment is proportionate in an “eye for an eye” way, if you assume everyone sent into space would also have been in solitary confinement (and yeah I'm not arguing that having a cellmate makes the sentencing fairer, but it would be that bit less cruel).

But why expect Progron to have progressed beyond that concept of justice by now? They haven't even thought up representative democracy, so voting Balor out wasn't an option. You can criticize Talian's decisions, but he didn't make the world, and he's not used to thinking.

---

So anyway, here we are at the end of the first story in the Powysverse chronology. To recap, the first novel ever published in this series was the Balor-centric Resurrection, and Eternity Unleashed is the first part of a three-part book that was published a few years later in order to provide Balor with a backstory. Some flashbacks from the original edition of Resurrection were ported into Eternity Unleashed.

I guess this novella must contain some really important foundation for the worldbuilding of the series, and that will unfold as we go along.

The question is:

Is Eternity Unleashed Good?

The Amazon reviews suggest that some readers loved it. See here. It's highly rated on Goodreads as well.

I didn't really enjoy it myself. The first 88 pages were hard work. After that it became less like homework for me.

In Context

To be fair, the story isn’t meant to be read as slowly as I have done (10 pages a day, or to the end of a chapter, whichever comes first). Nor is the first part of the book meant to be read separately from the other two. And an unbroken tone of solemnity, combined with a slow pace, is something it has in common with Y1; and many readers want to be in that atmosphere again. 

So why didn't I enjoy it? What's wrong with me?

If you have a character we already know we don’t like and - crucially - aren’t rooting for, it’s a bold choice to dwell in his POV and never attempt to make him sympathetic, or have him charm us into forgetting what he’s capable of. I'm certainly not one of those readers that needs to like every major character. But you have to do *something* to make the character and/or the story enjoyable, and whatever that could have been, by page 88 I still didn't have it.

It's not enough to say I haven't read the whole volume. It shouldn't take 88 pages of work before the story started to engage my interest. It’s only my dedication to the series that got me to stick with it that long. 

We have two other backstories of major characters before Breakaway, and Balor's backstory is nearly three times as long as either of those, and I'm not sure it needed to be. There are several places where it gets repetitive.

What Eternity Unbound has going for it is that it's a pretty well-thought-out bit of worldbuilding. I can't say I ever got pulled into Progron, it was more like I was viewing it from a detached perspective. But the fridge logic works, and Balor is a psychologically plausible character on paper.

Gender Balance

NB running total = 28

F running total = 16

M running total = 29

Bechdel Score: 0. Only in Milsa's meeting with her counter-revolutionaries do any two female characters talk to each other, and even then they're talking about Balor.

Milsa does lead the movement to save her planet, though. So there's that.

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Return to Series Preface

Chapter Eleven of Eternity Unleashed: A Spoiler-Filled Commentary

The penultimate chapter has Talian trying to work out what to do about Balor. He figures the counter-revolution is basically a matter of persistence - everyone *is* immortal and invulnerable, after all - but they might have to dismember Balor and put him into orbit or something, if they want to keep him out of action. He’s a big name, with big influence (but apparently not so big that removing him won't neutralize his fan base).

Balor calls Talian in for a meeting and introduces him to Stepford/Zombie Milsa. He wants Talian to rehabilitate her. 

Also, Balor tells Talian there’s a plot against him.  It was, of course, completely foreseeable that it would leak unless they rolled it out with equivalent speed to Balor’s coup, in which Balor got rather lucky if you ask me.

Talian points out Balor’s rule must be a bit fragile if he thinks a stage show is going to overthrow him, and what is the point of all this anyway? Who said Balor should be in control of everything and everyone simply because he wants to be? 

Talian insists he was talking to Teyla not because he was conspiring with him, but because he missed his sister; and Teyla was all furtive about it because he was afraid of being tortured as an associate of Milsa’s.

Balor kind of believes him, but anyway, he’s been working on a sonar weapon that will incapacitate the rebels with fear. All Balor’s loyalists will have fear-cancelling headphones. Then all the rebels will be packed off into outer space to think eternally about what they’ve done. At this point, Talian realizes he should have put a bit more effort into his opposition research.

Then Milsa goes “suprize b!tch,” and turns on the sound weapon and Balor passes out from fear. Milsa tears up some guards’ uniforms and ties Balor up with the strips. 

She explains to Talian, who apparently couldn't have worked this out for himself, that she faked being a zombie, has been spying like mad this whole time, and also switched the sound signals. Teyla’s gang come in and take the unconscious Balor-ists off to jail.

And that about wraps it up for the counter-revolution. What are these crazy kids going to get up to next?

Talian’s got to be world president, according to the rules of a spontaneous election called then and there by Teyla in which Teyla is the only one with a vote. Now that you mention it, it's never directly stated what the branches of government actually are, or how the leaders are appointed. It seems to be a matter of vibes.

Milsa announces her plan to find an antidote to immortality. Talian points out she’s only got an eighth grade education. Milsa points out that she has some free time, and lifelong learning is a concept she means to explore.

And everybody gives a Y2-style fake laugh, sweeps up the last of the broken glass, and gets on with their work.

---

Hmmm - I hope those terrifying weapons and eternal asteroid punishments Balor devised won't get turned against anyone. He couldn't have created them all by himself. Other people must know how to work them, right?

Like - what if people aren't keen on Milsa's immortality antidote? They were living the lives they wanted until Balor threw a wobbly. Sure, she inspired their resistance, but maybe it wasn't so much about higher values as wanting the torture to stop?

[shrug]

---

What remains is the trial of Balor (nice that they’re following due process, according to their lights). 

Talian (who seems to be the entire judiciary, in addition to being world president, and also hasn't recused himself for the obvious conflict of interest) tells Balor he’s condemned for not thinking through the implications of his invention, and for offering an impractical solution.

This seems like a management problem, if you ask me. A junior dev shouldn’t be physically able to break the production codebase, and it’s never their fault if they do. To be fair, Talian put his finger on this earlier, when he pointed out that Balor had never had to hear the word "no" in his life. But if he's going to run the planet successfully, Talian really needs to start to generalize this kind of insight.

Anyway, they go on like this, chewing over their past friendship and such. Talian says,

“'I hope one day, you’ll understand that you were wrong. Without… decency. There is no purpose for… having purpose. Until our psychology can no longer produce… thoughts like yours, we cannot live forever. We’re not worthy of it.'”

Balor doesn’t get it. Talian rolls his eyes and slams Balor into his asteroid jail and chucks him into space. 

The walls have a permanent faint luminescence. Balor has a bed and he has his mum’s paintings. That’s all you need when you’re immortal and invulnerable.

Talian feels a bit bad about what Balor must be experiencing, in solitary confinement from which he can never escape, on a timescale of which the mind cannot conceive - even though Balor intended to do exactly that to all the counter-revolutionaries, and Talian would have ended up in the exact same position if Milsa hadn't pulled the switcheroo. Oh well, Talian shrugs, what can you do. 

They put a warning sign on the asteroid in case anyone stumbles across Balor (it’s a small universe, don’t you know). The state of the planet is neatly wrapped up as Talian and Milsa spell out the subtext of everything for a couple of pages, then get on with their work.

Gender Balance

Not Specified

Balor’s guards

Teyla’s commanders

Talian’s guards

NB running total = 28

Female

No new characters.

F running total = 16

Male

No new characters.

M running total = 29

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Forth to Chapter 12 of this story

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Return to Series Preface

Chapter Ten of Eternity Unleashed: A Spoiler-Filled Commentary

Talian goes back to work. Did I mention that he works at Balor's lab? In case that wasn't clear. I don't remember when Balor hired him.

Balor is enthused about some space weapons he's slapped together in case aliens attack. Talian thinks these aliens, if there even are any, are just Balor’s way of distracting the population, and that the weapons are more likely to be turned against dissidents (for whatever that’s worth).

Talian thinks over how to do a counter-revolution. Force can’t work, so he has to change hearts. How do you do that? This population loves stories. To keep the counter-revolution clandestine, the stories will have to be preached in small groups.

Seems inevitable that it will leak; Balor's revolution supposedly only kept the element of surprise because he turned it around so fast. But also, people were equally surprised after Balor's revolution had been going on for some time. Oh, well.

We see Balor at home. Turns out he took home Milsa’s remains and resurrected them, but all he got was a zombie/Stepford version of her that smiles and nods but has no higher cognitive functions. The error of his ways is ever so slightly beginning to dawn on him, though not in the sense of actually thinking he's wrong about anything.

Teyla and Emmera, an ex-performer, organize a distributed mass performance of an anti-Balor play. The crowd of counter-revolutionaries (out in the boondocks where they won’t be caught... I guess they have to go there en masse and in person since word of mouth is the only communication channel? but at least an unexpected cluster of GPS signals won't give them away...) Where was I? The crowd of counter-revolutionaries cheers “For Milsa!” They are very enthusiastic and eager to get their insurgency on.

Gender Balance

Not Specified

A bunch of counter-revolutionaries.

NB running total = 25

Female

Emmera, Teyla’s friend, ex-performer who now works in the fields, a bit overweight from her food habit. Perturbed by seeing Milsa’s execution, envies the ability to die.

F running total = 16

Male

No new characters.

M running total = 29

Back to Chapter 9 of this story

Forth to Chapter 11 of this story

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Return to Series Preface

Chapter Nine of Eternity Unleashed: A Spoiler-Filled Commentary

Wow! Balor's plan is working a treat! These avocado-scoffing millennials, who don't want to work, have been scared straight and are more productive than ever! Talian even remarks that they'll have to think about paying people, the way things are going.

Talian points out that the population's missing motive for working - besides fear of being publicly tortured for slacking, which is the only non-banned form of entertainment now - is child-rearing. Balor blows off the idea; families are, like, old hat. Of course Balor would think that. It's not like his sole motivation has been to keep his family close to him, or anything.

---

Milsa is conspiring with six followers in the woods, where there will be no "listening devices". What listening devices? She shouldn't worry so much, since there are obviously no networks to connect them to.

Observation: This is when the plot starts to feel like it’s actually moving a little bit, and the paper-doll characters start to become more animated and relatable. 

The economist in Milsa's gang explains that, now Balor’s got the planet back to work, all the arenas are closed except the biggest one in each town, which is dedicated to public torture of the workshy.

Problem: if no more criminals, then people will invent them. 

Solution: get people to see Balor as the criminal.

---

Milsa shows up in Talian’s apartment and argues passionately for him to get a heart, a brain, the nerve.

The scene, like several of those before it, is exhaustive and long-winded (I know, I know, u/pot @ kettle #black). But the story is actually coming alive for the first time in nearly a hundred pages. There are some successful moments of dialogue too.

Anyway, Talian is all like “nope, #TeamBalor” and it turns out Balor is behind the door and he goes "suprize!" and takes Milsa to be publicly tortured because “she lacks purpose”.

Milsa speaks to Talian with conviction, saying that Balor can only hurt her body, but the real torture is seeing what her brother has become. It makes compelling reading. She uses the word “soul”, which, without doing a word count, makes her possibly the only character ever to speak in spiritual terms (other than Xmonolor, who warned of the dangers of “spirit-music”).

---

Observation: I had doubts about an invalid girl character being sanctified by her suffering - why should Milsa be the one to have higher values, in a society where nobody else seems to? Isn't this inching towards discredited trope territory? But the author makes a good case for it, in the context of a society where almost nobody has had to endure pain the way she did. Milsa had no choice but to think for herself a lot of the time because there was presumably no disseminated knowledge of techniques for handling pain. She didn’t have any higher education. And she was geographically and socially isolated; there's no mention of her ever having had friends. And she was facing death, itself, minutes before Balor barged in on the ritual. It makes sense that Milsa’s worldview would be what it is.

---

Talian, who was stigmatized throughout his childhood by Bexan’s refusal to euthanize Milsa, is ashamed of her as he watches her being tortured. Meanwhile, Milsa applies the mental techniques she used to endure pain, and wills herself to die instead of reincorporating. 

An unseen messenger hands Talian a hand-prewritten “if you are reading this I am dead” note.

Teyla visits Talian at night and encourages him to turn. Talian’s organized, Milsa’s followers are not, and they need his skills as well as his contacts. Milsa’s message is starting to get through to her brother.

Gender Balance

Not Specified

Balor’s underling

A messenger, unseen behind Talian

two of Milsa's followers

NB running total = 24

Female

Menair, Milsa's follower, a former librarian

Soram of Annen, Milsa’s follower, formerly professor of military history

F running total = 15

Male

Tefta, Milsa’s follower, formerly chief economist of the Gruyorg Council

Canrom, Milsa’s follower, formerly high up in the Council of Families

M running total = 29

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Return to Series Preface

Chapter Eight of Eternity Unleashed: A Spoiler-Filled Commentary

Teyla, the… town leader, shows up and discusses with Milsa the action to be taken against the… new world order. (This… mannerism in dialogue gets on my… nerves after a while, and it is… really overused in this… story.)

Milsa doesn’t want to run further into the wilderness to try to hide, because that won't work. She reveals that she knows Balor and his obsessiveness, but Talian may be tractable. People are just rolling over for Balor out of spinelessness, apparently because fear was eradicated long before immortality became a thing (supposedly because disease was made unfashionable through eugenics, but that sounds like a matter of opinion). Milsa plans to resist, details TBC.

They go to visit Moriand on his deathbed and he reveals that he’s Balor’s dad, and that Parese foresaw Balor’s destiny and tried to encourage it.

Moriand spells out Milsa’s role in all this in big crayon letters:

“‘Balor has brought about an end to the world as we knew it,’ the old man said. 'And fate, being what it is, has brought you full circle. You are here as a mother who has lost her child. Yes. I know what has been done to you. This world is on the verge of losing her children. All her children. And Balor is a child who lost his mother […]’” 

Just when you think he’s spelled out every possible detail of every subtext ever, he continues:

“'[Balor’s mum] knew that one day, he would fall in love with someone, and that would bring about great changes. You brought that out in him. That love. The love that Parese sought to confuse in him. To set him to work […]'” 

Sounds like quite the Rube Goldberg device Parese set up there. Clearly Parese is the true evil genius of this story.

Milsa asks if Balor’s mum planned this, and Moriand says

“'Planned is probably too strong a word'”

and we get even more explanation. 

By the end of the chapter, we’ve had everything explained and reiterated, so in case we hadn’t worked it out for ourselves, we know everything except what Milsa’s actually going to do about it. She does not know either, and she asks at least half a dozen times.

Gender Balance

Not Specified

No new characters.

NB running total = 20

Female

No new characters.

F running total = 13

Male

Teyla, an old ezariat, currently leader of Milsa's town

M running total = 27

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Return to Series Preface

Chapter Seven of Eternity Unleashed: A Spoiler-Filled Commentary

Previously it was mentioned that all societal institutions had fallen unnoticed into attrition. In Chapter 7 we learn that basic yet not-strictly-essential infrastructure such as street cleaning is a thing of the past, and the only currency is stories.

---

Observation: Stories are, of course, simulations, with all risk removed; narratives of a time when something was at stake. Notably, what stories are explicitly mentioned seem to be historical re-enactments rather than intentionally fictional narratives.

Essentially, Progrons are a society of WoW addicts. It's rather difficult to argue that they shouldn't be, since no physical harm can come to them, and they have no apparent spirituality or aspiration to anything higher than the immediate experience of embodiment.

This seems pitiable to us, but why should we assume that Progrons have what we might loosely describe as souls, just because they're intelligent bipeds? Or perhaps there was a time when they thought they did, and that was what Xmonolor's principles were trying to stamp out. Or not, but Progron society threw the baby out with the bathwater.

---

There are teams of state agents being sent out into the provinces to impose immortality treatment on noncompliant citizens, and it turns out that the pushback on this enforcement has brought some provincial towns to a state of "near civil war".

---

Observation: We weren’t hearing about this dissent until now, but it makes sense that, if the desert is where counterculture is located (after all, that's why Bexan raised his invalid daughter in the desert), all the resistance would also come from the desert. 

Observation: News is apparently being communicated by word of mouth (we have seen messages delivered in person, never over any kind of network channel); the knowledge state of every character throughout the story so far supports the idea that Progron doesn’t have the communications systems you’d expect. One wonders how they have the informational infrastructure to carry out research if that's the case.

---

Talian doesn’t know what Balor’s plan is, he just follows him around, not getting it. Balor explains that everyone’s got to Learn and they are gonna Learn good and hard tonight.

The latest hit show is basically a torture porn in which the actor always reconstitutes at the end, because immortality/invulnerability.

---

Observation: Again, you’d think the popularity of shows like these would contradict Balor’s conclusions, otherwise what actor from this allegedly hedonistic and pain-averse society would have the endurance to go through that process for eight shows a week? 

---

Anyway, there follows a farcical scene in which the audience of this show get sliced up by “telves” - bladed weapons - wielded by “black-garbed followers of Balor”, of whom there seems to be no shortage.

Pause for Reflection

The world of Progron has adequately suspended my disbelief until now, but it’s started to lose me here.

To be fair, the slice'n'dice scene is not any sillier - maybe less silly - than a lot of scenes of its ilk, which are very difficult to write well. 

However, this is also the point at which I started actively disliking, rather than just tolerating, the experience of reading this story. I'm simply not finding anything to engage me. The narrative is written with a cold detachment which probably represents Balor's haughty worldview, so it makes sense on paper, but is not actually interesting. I'm not rooting for Balor; Talian is nothing more than a gormless henchman; the people of Progron must be well past their natural lifespan by now so I don’t care what happens to them. I *guess* the worst that could happen is an eternity of being continuously attacked by Balor's followers and regenerating only to experience it again. But that's the Progrons' problem, not mine.

Don't misunderstand me: I’m only about halfway through this story, so I’m not giving it a thumbs down or anything before I even finish it. I’m just reporting my emotional response at what is supposed to be the/a climax of the story. 

But Anyway

But anyway, Balor’s mega violence That’ll Teach You program gets rolled out throughout the capital city and outwards through the wider inhabited areas. He starts with the capital, Mente, and is following that with thirty more cities.

In the next scene, a group of friends are LARPing in the desert (so I infer the rollout in the cities is completed and the program is reaching the more remote areas). These LARPers marvel in admiration of the approaching army, which they mistake for a group of performers. This provides one of perhaps two brief expressions of positive emotion in the story so far (the previous one being Milsa's glowing response to Balor's conversation). We actually read some dialogue spoken by them, rather than just having their reactions reported to us. The effect is to make it mildly regrettable when the LARPers get sliced and diced too. 

Apparently the trick, with an invulnerable population, is to keep doing it repeatedly and often enough that people don’t have time to recover. The actor in the show where the first attack took place would end in a “nearly liquid” state and recover before the audience’s eyes as part of the performance, so recovery is very quick.

---

Observation: If people are being attacked with hand-held bladed weapons, Balor must have a hell of a lot of followers with almost tireless strength to keep attacking quickly and repeatedly enough to overpower this many victims. 

Observation: A number of things that seemed contradictory are starting to make sense now. It makes sense that Balor's followers would be recruited from the performers: they have the discipline to endure pain eight shows a week, and are probably very physically fit. They also probably have built up considerable resentment against the audiences that objectify and exploit them in this way. Since there are no consumer or luxury goods being produced, these actors’ fame isn’t going to be rewarded with money, as there's nothing special to buy with it. They’re considered more sexually desirable, but that’s just more objectification. The performers probably lack any theoretical framework, or even much self-awareness, about their own resentment; but they are clearly mad as hell and unwilling to take it any more.

---

Back on the state immortality rollout: a mob of townsfolk, led by the "town leader" plus deputy, show up in the desert and corner a couple who are snuggling in the evening after a hard day’s work.

This couple's snuggling provides the third brief expression of positive emotion in the story so far; and with it, a moment of mild suspense.

The couple have refused the immortality treatment, the mob wants to impose it. The woman pleads to be allowed to wait til after her baby is born. The response is “we don’t need no stinkin’ babies” and the agents kill the guy and forcibly administer the treatment, which has the effect of expelling the fetus.

The rationale for imposing the immortality treatment - which imposition Balor wouldn't, apparently, personally have endorsed - is that if there are any mortals, nobody can tell who’s immortal.

---

Observation: I assume they’re just being totalitarian: by definition, they don’t care if the mortals come to harm given that they're killing them for noncompliance, and there presumably is no healthcare or education sector left for the state to care about. Yeah, Progron seems to be institutionally cool with mindless violence.

---

Anyway, the woman awakens to find her husband dismembered and her fetus placed on top of his remains, still in its birth sac. She starts a huge fire and immolates herself, but she can’t die. 

Quelle surprise, big reveal, amazement shock horror: the woman is Milsa. 

I saw that one coming (am I a genius or what); but I do slightly care what happens to Milsa, at least compared to any of the other characters. So, though I wouldn't exactly say things are looking up, I will at least live to read another day.

Questions

Q: So Milsa’s moved in with a bunch of hippies while she was off in Nepal finding herself; and Talian doesn’t (I assume) know about it. No communication *at all*. For how long? People have been immortal for yonks by now, yet Milsa can't be one of them, because she was able to conceive. Whereas Balor says the people of Progron have been immortal for too long to give them the benefit of the doubt that the obsession with hedonism is just a phase - Milsa is still in her childbearing years. So it can't have been that long after all. ETA: about five years.

Q: If force *is* still psychologically threatening, as we’re shown in Balor’s decisive initial experiment, how is Balor the first person to discover this and act on it? Wouldn’t the state be way ahead of him, considering how controlling they are?

Q: How, furthermore, is the state able to motivate a bunch of agents to get up in the morning and police the population, if, before this point, nobody has thought to ask whether force still has meaningful effects on either the agents or the population? As far as anybody knew until then, force didn't do anything. So policing must be entirely by consent. The town leaders who attack Milsa’s family seem to be craven rule-followers, so maybe it just doesn't occur to them to do anything else. 

Gender Balance

Not Specified

The "most popular entertainers", whom Balor "disappeared" without anybody noticing

Balor's scouts, out checking on the state of the planet

Cast of Gash, the stage show attacked by Balor's followers

Mengas, the town leader who attacks Milsa and Calad

Mob of 40 townspeople in the attack led by Mengas and Jeffa

Milsa and Calad's child-to-be

NB running total = 20

Female

Gelta, a stripper, one of Balor's followers, who enables an attack on her audience

F running total = 13

Male

Premer of Gruyorg, a historical martyr

Benemat, who plays Premer on stage

Audience member whose arm is severed by one of Balor's gang

Yetcha, Lumat, and an unnamed third LARPer in the desert

Balor's black-garbed followers who carry out his attacks, referred to as "men" by Lumat

Calad, mortal husband of Milsa

Jeffa, the assistant town leader

M running total = 26

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Return to Series Preface

Chapter Six of Eternity Unleashed: A Spoiler-Filled Commentary

The people of Progron don’t seem to be motivated by any sense of purpose - an observation also made by Balor when he’s experimenting with physically torturing 12 unwilling subjects, brutally beating them with what would have been fatal blows in their earlier life. Balor notes that at least the desire to avoid pain remains, even though these people are physically invulnerable. 

Talian is dubious, but Balor points out that their experience of living with chronic illness in the family was both formative and countercultural. Outside of Bexan’s household, Progrons have engineered pain out of their lives (eugenics, euthanasia).

Balor declares that salvation is whatever they tell people it is, and it’s up to the two of them to save the world. Talian hangs his head and tags along.

---

That brings us to the end of Chapter 6. The 12 subjects that Balor recruits and then tortures are a group of both men and women, but just one is selected to represent them to the reader: a man named Avedin. It’s his response that Balor presents as evidence that the Progrons are driven to avoid pain.

Yet the woman Balor strangled in the club responded with a moan of ecstasy, “a loud grunt of pleasure”, and when Balor asks her whether she likes it, she responds with another moan, then melts back into the crowd, who are intrigued with the novelty of her experience. This is the character that’s used to show us the decadence and mindlessness of Progron society, within a text that up to then has mostly just told us about it. The woman’s response evokes disgust and contempt, as well as empathy with Balor’s instinct that Something Must Be Done.

This scene is, of course, the mirror image of Balor's mother's strangulation of him, right before the state enforcers take him away. As Balor said in his silent prayer to his mother's memory after Milsa rejected him: "I am somehow not worthy, because I have submitted to the authority of the world."

So I infer that Balor's thinking is nothing more than a rationalization for whatever violence he wants to unleash. Not that it was likely to be otherwise, but this contradiction is an effective way of showing it.

Gender Balance

Not Specified

Mixed group of 12 individuals lured to Balor's torture-experiment

NB running total = 14

Female

No new characters.

F running total = 12

Male

Avedin, a "handsome young man" in the group of 12 people that Balor lures to his torture-experiment

M running total = 17

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