Child Garden Read Free

engineering is beginning to be commonplace, despite how little knowledge we have of its potential long-term effects and consequences. At the same time, viruses also infect our computers; these are not the biological viruses of disease mechanism, but they can function in remarkably similar ways, spreading mis-information and disrupting communication. Both of these uses of the ‘virus’ in contemporary society are reasons why Derrida takes the virus as a particularly significant model of undecideability:

If we follow the intersection between AIDS and the computer virus as we now know it, we have the means to comprehend, not only from a theoretical point of view but also from the sociohistorical point of view, what amounts to a disruption of absolutely everything on the planet, including police agencies, commerce, the army, questions of strategy . . . It is as if all that I have been suggesting for the past twenty-five years is prescribed by the idea of destinerrance . . . the supplement, the pharmakon, all the undecidables—it’s the same thing.
(Brunette and Wills 12)

    The Child Garden is at once an allegory about AIDS—the virus that brought incoherence and death to gay male culture in the West throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s and which remains a massive scourge throughout much of Africa, in particular—and a novel about the potential for “disruption of absolutely everything on the planet” not only through transnational corporatism, unbridled capitalism, and the greed of the ‘haves’ transposed against the tragedies of the ‘have nots,’ but also through attempts to do good. Curing cancer should be a good thing. Government by consensus should be a good thing. Creating a happy, honest populace should be a good thing.

    If our good intentions can make so much go wrong, Ryman asks us, what happens when our intentions are not so good? And what can defenses can we muster against well-intentioned mistakes? The answer resides in Milena and her capacity for sheer resistance: her spirit resists incorporation into the singular readings of the Consensus just as her body resists the un-raveling and re-integration of her DNA by the Consensus’s viruses. Because of this, and because of Milena’s extraordinary capacity for love (and Ryman, indeed, suggest that love and resistance to manipulation are one and the same), Milena is able to give the Consensus the gift it desires above all: the cure for the cure for cancer.
    And, having said all of that, I have scarcely touched on so many of the wonders that await readers of this brilliant and complex novel. There is so much more that awaits you, dear reader. 
    Enjoy!

 
    That the future is a faded song,  a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
     Of wistful regret for those who  are not yet here to regret . . .

    T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
     
     
    Introduction

Advances in Medicine
(A Culture of Viruses)
     
    Milena boiled things. She was frightened of disease. She would boil other people's knives and forks before using them. Other people sometimes found this insulting. The cutlery would be made of solidified resin, and it often melted from the heat, curling into unusable shapes. The prongs of the forks would be splayed like scarecrow's fingers, stiffened like dried old gloves.
    Milena wore gloves whenever she went out, and when she got back, she boiled those too. She never used her fingers to clean her ears or pick her nose. In the smelly, crowded omnibuses, Milena sometimes held her breath until she was giddy. Whenever someone coughed or sneezed, Milena would cover her face. People continually sneezed, summer or winter. They were always ill, with virus.
    Belief was a disease. Because of advances in medicine, acceptable patterns of behaviour could be caught or administered.
    Viruses made people cheerful and helpful and honest. Their manners were impeccable, their conversation well-informed, their work speedy and accurate. They believed the same things.
    Some of the