A novel by R.M. Dolin
The Book of Darwin – SYNOPSIS
Marquez Mountain is a New Mexico wilderness north of Taos that holds its history with reoccurring certainty. No one takes the road-weary Harley rider’s offer to buy the mountain seriously until he plops down the requisite cash. What they don’t know, because Darwin doesn’t say, is he’s a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur who made a mistake and now must serve his penance in wilderness isolation away from technology’s dangerous temptations.
For years, Darwin, along with other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs calling themselves Shadow Dancers, in reference to Plato’s allegory of the cave, have been meeting to share concerns about technology’s impact on society. When Darwin hosts an investor’s forum at the Berkeley Faculty Club, he’s given an offer for his company that so exceeds expectations he fails to scrutinize the buyer’s background and only later learns the capability he developed to help humanity has become the missing element of China’s autonomous nonhuman solider.
Overwrought with guilt Darwin flees California taking refuge with his brother Vincent in Chicago whose wife Ilene is expecting. Darwin confesses his conflicted uncertainty about what to do now but stops short of telling Vincent what happened. While at Murphy’s Northshore Bar for a Cubs game, Darwin wagers Vincent for who gets to name his son who’s supposed to be Joesph, after the Polish writer Joesph Conrad. When Darwin wins the wager and Joesph becomes Issac, based on Darwin’s belief he’ll have a better life as an engineer.
After Issac’s baptism Darwin ride his Harley to New Mexico to buy a wilderness property but decides after inspecting the hacienda he’ll pass. When Victor, the realtor’s assistant, takes Darwin to the high mountain meadow, it seals the deal. With winter coming, Darwin gets busy acquiring everything needed to survive, relying on Victor to teach him what he needs to know. He returns to Chicago for Thanksgiving where Gwen, Ilene’s sister, is the unfortunate soul Darwin unloads what happened at Berkeley on and the raw intensity of his darkness terrifies her.
After four winters on Marquez Mountain the hacienda renovations are nearly complete, and Darwin’s learned how to live a comfortable off-grid self-sustaining life. Murphy, his two-year-old German Shorthair and constant companion enjoys playing with the wild mustangs in the high mountain meadow as much as Darwin likes listening to Cub’s games there. Murphy has Darwin’s back the afternoon in Red River when he rescues Anna from drunk Texans taking too many liberties. After Anna helps Darwin gets prized landowner elk permits that he distributes to local Hispanic families, his status within the community is elevated to sainthood.
Darwin’s mostly put Berkeley behind him when Tien arrives unannounced needing help fixing the mess she made trying to fix the mess he made. While reluctant to get back into technology, how can he not help his former protege. For months Darwin wrestles with the implications and hopes while Vincent and Ilene visit, he can lean on them for advice. Before that happens though, Vincent reveals the difficulties he and Ilene are going through and when she suddenly returns to Chicago, Vincent insists on flying his private plane back unaware an early fall storm is forming over the Rockies.
When informed of Vincent’s crash, Darwin immediately goes to Chicago to be with Ilene and Issac. It’s hard for him to get on with life afterwards but he finds peace focusing on helping Issac with his loss. While the tragedy draws Darwin and Anna closer, she senses he’s in crisis but won’t tell her what’s wrong. Eventually Darwin reveals that Ilene doesn’t want him spending time with Issac anymore.
As a necessary step to helping Tien, Darwin constructs a subterranean command center beneath the massive solar farm he builds on a flat section of his property. Tien recruits Alfonso, Darwin’s former hardware engineer, to build the required computing infrastructure. As she recruits more members of Darwin’s former team and the frequency of her visits increases, gossip weaves its way through Darwin’s world building toward a showdown between Anna and Tien that ends with them finding common ground.
At the kickoff meeting of the reconstituted Shadow Dancers, Darwin defines the dangers posed by Information Oligarchs having access to Artificial Intelligence and the equally worrisome way humanity willfully trades their souls for convenience and constant stimulation. To Darwin’s surprise, Basia brings her daughter, Camille, to their meeting. She’s not only a talented technologist but part of a fringe French movement having Darwin’s same concerns and aspirations. The plan Darwin proposes is fraught with uncertainties, but the team tacitly agrees it could possibly work.
A week after the Shadow Dancer’s rendezvous, Darwin ventures up to his high mountain meadow where the fate foretold in the novel’s title and its opening paragraph balances with the ledger of life. The story doesn’t end there though, it continues in the follow-on novel, “AN UNSUSTAINABLE LIFE – THE BOOK OF ISSAC.”
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