Summary: Chapter 12
Note: from “Pleebcrawl” through “Paradice”
Snowman walks along the rampart wall and wonders what Crake needed him for.
The narrative then shifts back in time to Jimmy, who had been feeling depressed and avoiding human contact. One morning, Crake showed up at Jimmy’s building to check in on him after learning about his mother’s death. Crake took Jimmy for a weekend in the pleeblands, and before they left, he gave Jimmy a vaccine to protect him from any diseases he might encounter there. While they were out, Crake offered Jimmy a job at RejoovenEsense, and Jimmy agreed.
When Jimmy returned to AnooYoo the following week, his coworkers already knew about his new job at RejoovenEsense. Crake had already informed everyone who needed to know, and he had also made arrangements for Jimmy’s travel and for his apartment to get packed up and transported to the new Compound.
Upon Jimmy’s arrival, Crake gave him a tour of RejoovenEsense. Jimmy found the new Compound even more impressive than Watson-Crick. When Jimmy asked Crake what paid for everything, Crake responded: “Grief in the face of inevitable death.”
Over lunch, Crake explained to Jimmy that he and his colleagues did research on immortality. Crake further explained that his unit was working on two main initiatives, the first of which was a pill called BlyssPluss. The pill had four functions. First, it protected against all sexually transmitted diseases. Second, it provided an unlimited libido. Third, it prolonged youth. And fourth, it sterilized the user so that they would no longer be capable of producing children. The fourth function was not to be marketed publicly. After discussing some of the moral and financial implications of the new drug, Crake informed Jimmy that his job would be to run the BlyssPluss ad campaign.
After lunch, Crake gave Jimmy a tour of Paradice, the heavily secured facility to which only Crake and his team had access. Each of the employees inside the facility wore a name tag with the name of an extinct animal, and Crake explained that every person working at Paradice was a Grandmaster in the game Extinctathon—that is, they were, collectively, MaddAddam. Crake had tracked each one down and persuaded them that they would be safer working for him than on their own.
