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{{Infobox Book | <!-- See Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Novels or Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Books --> |
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| name = Replicant Night |
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| title_orig = |
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{{R to related topic}} |
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| translator = |
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| image = <!--prefer 1st edition--> |
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| image_caption = |
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| author = ] |
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| cover_artist = |
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| country = ] |
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| language = ] |
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| series = ] #3 |
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| subject = |
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| genre = ] |
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| publisher = ] |
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| release_date = October 1, 1996 |
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| media_type = Print (], ]) |
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| pages = 321 pp |
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| isbn = ISBN 0-553-09983-3 |
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| preceded_by = ] |
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| followed_by = ] |
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'''''Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night''''' (1996) is a ] by ] that continues the story of ]. It is the sequel to '']'', which in turn was itself a sequel to ]'s 1982 film '']'', and the book on which ''Blade Runner'' was based, '']''. |
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== Story == |
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After the events of ], Deckard and Sarah Tyrell (who Deckard believed to be the replicant Rachael) had left to travel to the distant off-world colonies. Deckard has also taken a job as a consultant to a movie company named Speed Death Productions, which is producing a film about his experiences as a Blade Runner - evidently a direct analogue of the real-world movie '']''. However, Deckard is shocked to learn that the replicant character Leon is being played by an actual replicant - who is retired live on camera. Outraged, Deckard goes to find the movie director, a man named Urbenton, and finds that he has been locked in a storage closet; Urbenton tells Deckard that use of replicants in that way is not unusual in films, but that (as part of a promise he made to Deckard) this should indeed not have happened on the set. |
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Meanwhile, Deckard's former partner Dave Holden is sneaking into the movie studio to deliver a package to Deckard. Holden is caught, and tries to bluff the guards by claiming to be an actor, only to be taken into a stage re-enactment of his own interview with Leon - in which Leon is again played by a replicant - and who shoots Holden with live ammo at the end of the scene. Deckard and the director, hearing the shot, rush to investigate, and find that the scene has been arranged by a man named Marley, who kills the Leon replicant on the spot. Deckard tries to attack Marley, but Marley argues that Deckard has no evidence of any wrongdoing: all that Deckard has seen Marley do is to retire a replicant, which isn't illegal, especially when the replicant just murdered a human. |
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Deckard leaves the movie studio, but takes with him the item that Holden had been trying to deliver to him - a suitcase. The suitcase, it turns out, is intelligent and contains a working personality image of Roy Batty, taken from the human Roy Batty that Deckard originally fought in ]. Roy explains to Deckard that a group of replicant sympathisers require Deckard to perform a mission for them. John Isidore (the version of the character present in ] had previously run a business modifying replicants visiting Earth so that they would be able to pass a VK test. As part of the modification, the replicants were made to forget that they even were replicants, but each one was also programmed with a secret code that would re-enable their full knowledge. The briefcase contains an encrypted form of Isidore's list of secret codes. The rep-symps want Deckard to take the package out to the replicants on the distant off-world colonies, and there the information can be decrypted for the rep-symps to use to recruit Earth's replicants for the insurrection. Deckard himself is the key to the encryption: the encryption is based on the Batty personality built into the briefcase, and Deckard's image was imprinted on Batty as the last thing he saw before he died. Deckard is baffled as to why they would insist the data should be decrypted on the far colonies when he and the suitcase are already right there, but Batty replies that Deckard would certainly be killed by government forces if he tried to give the data directly to the rep-symps on Earth, whereas they already have secret communication channels in place to exchange data with the off-world replicants. |
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Meanwhile, Sarah Tyrell is living on Mars. Although Deckard and Sarah had planned to travel to the far colonies, in fact, there were no ships available going there; there had not really been any for years. Would-be colonists were transported to a holding facility on Mars and left to live there indefinately. The level of available activity and stimulus on Mars is so low that it inevitably drives humans insane, and the cable TV provider (as the only provider of stimuli) holds massive economic power. Sarah also now knows that Deckard has realised she is not really Rachael (after she tried to masquerade as her in ], and he does not love her. Sarah's only remaining ambition is to kill Deckard, and then kill herself. She is visited by two agents of the Tyrell Corporation. Sarah is surprised, since she believed that she destroyed the Tyrell Corporation, but the agents explain that they work for the "shadow corporation", and they need Sarah to return with them to help discover an artefact from the Tyrell Corporation's past - the "Salander 3". |
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The Salander 3 was the last ship to travel from Earth to the far worlds. Two people travelled on it: Ruth and Anson Tyrell. Sarah is their daughter, born on board the Salander 3. What exactly happened on board the Salander 3 has never been known, other than that the ship did not complete its voyage and ended up returning to Earth, and the only living person on it after it arrived was Sarah; Anson and Ruth were both dead. Nobody knows why this happened, or what occured on board, but it is also the reason why no colony ships ever leave for the far colonies any more. The Salander 3 has been buried in a secret dump site on Earth; it is in a state of suspended animation as a result of leakage from the ship's warp engines, which can damage time in the local area, creating fields of statis and inducing hallucinations of past events. Reluctantly, Sarah goes with the two men, and descends into the wreckage of the Salander 3. There, she sees her own name written on a wall in blood, and meets a young ten-year-old girl, identical to herself, who claims that her name is Rachael. |
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Sarah believes that the girl is a hallucination, an image of her own younger self. Exploring further, she finds whole areas of the ship are covered in blood and the remains of humans and animals, and is nearly herself attacked by a stumbling, severely wounded image of her father. Sarah flees the Salander 3 and is rescued by the two Tyrell agents, but is shocked when they claim that they can also see the little girl; they rescue her too. Sarah remains convinced that they cannot really see Rachael and are pretending to be able to in order to drive her mad, or to force her to remain bound to the Tyrell Corporation. Sarah, "Rachael" and the two agents talk about what they saw. It appears that what truly happened on the Salander 3 was that Anson Tyrell went psychopathically insane and attempted to murder Sarah, but murdered Ruth instead and then killed himself upon realising what he had done. However, there is still no clue as to ''why'' Anson Tyrell would go insane, other than that it was something out in the deep stars; however, this would certainly explain the justification for sending no further ships there. The two Tyrell agents ask Sarah to return to the Salander 3 to find out more information, and she agrees as long as she is given a gun to defend herself with; after receiving the gun, Sarah shoots both the agents and leaves with Rachael. |
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Meanwhile, the Batty personality embedded in the suitcase instructs Deckard that the rep-symps provided something else for Deckard, which is inside the suitcase. Inside, he finds a packet of powder, marked "Sebastian". The replicant sympathisers have transformed Sebastian into a "dehydrated deity" - actually, his personality has been embedded in an array of microscopic sensory override capsules. By ingesting the capsules with proper preparation, Deckard can meet with Sebastian's personality, in an artificial world that Sebastian controls. Deckard takes the powder and appears in a clone of the Bradbury Building, where Sebastian had previously lived, and where he now lives again. |
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Sebastian has been able to rebuild the building and area he previously loved, and has restored the replicant-like toys he built, but he is upset that he has been unable to bring Pris back. Sebastian tells Deckard that the image of Batty inside the box is not lying, and that the U.N. will completely wipe out the replicants on the colonies unless the insurgency can stop them. Sebastian then admits that there is some information that the rep-symps did not want him to give Deckard, but that he will do so anyway because Deckard has given him hope: he says that the mission is far more important that Deckard realises, as it is to do with humans as well, and the difference between humans and replicants. Sebastian gives Deckard a box, and then Deckard awakens from the artifical world. Examining the box, it appears to be an ordinary, ancient first-aid kit. Deckard thinks of throwing it away, but decides to keep it, since it was important enough that Sebastian gave it to him. |
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Deckard returns to the colony on Mars, where he meets up with Sarah and Rachael again. Sarah still insists that Rachael is a hallucination, and when Deckard is able to converse with the girl, Sarah insists that Deckard is in league with the Tyrell agents and is conspiring to drive her insane. When Deckard hears that the girl's name is Rachael, he asks her directly about Ruth Tyrell and the Salander 3, and she answers positively. Sarah is about to shoot Deckard, but Deckard manages to trick her and escape, taking Rachael with him. After Deckard leaves, Sarah becomes enraged; and at that moment, Urbenton - the movie director - visits the apartment, explaining that he has an interest in arranging Deckard's death, which he has learned that she shares.. |
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Deckard goes with Rachael to a bar on the colony, to hide out and plan his next move. The bouncer directs him to a secluded booth, but shortly after getting there, he is ambushed by Marley. Marley shows no desire to fight with Deckard, instead asking him to watch the TV. The "Blade Runner" film that was being shot at the beginning of the book appears on TV, and Deckard realises he has been trapped. When his image is shown on the film, everyone on Earth and the colonies will know who he is, and any attempt at passing undercover with the suitcase will be impossible. However, when the film actually starts, the face imaged onto the actor is not Deckard's (as he was told it would be), not does it even resemble him. Deckard is amazed, and Marley explains that this has happened because the film has been edited by the cable company at the government's orders. The UN ''wants'' Deckard to get through with the briefcase; it has not been sent by the rep-symps at all. The truth that the government is afraid of is that, out on the far colonies, replicants are able to live more than four years. Not only that, but they are able to ''breed'' - and, they show clear empathy. Humans, on the other hand, age and deteriorate more quickly, and universally become sterile. In other words, on the far colonies, humans become replicants, and replicants become humans. |
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When Eldon Tyrell designed the original replicants, he included a failsafe mechanism to prevent replicants from breeding: male replicants suffer from an amplified, modified version of "stepfather syndrome", the animal instinct to kill the children of other males. Male replicants, however, have an instinct to kill their ''own'' children. In most replicants, this instinct is suppressed unless activated; the information in the briefcase is the trigger signal that will activate this, wiping out the replicant families forming on the far colonies. Finally, Marley takes out the first-aid kit that Sebastian gave Deckard, and reveals that a photograph is hidden in one of the compartments; but before Deckard can see the photograph, UN troopers burst in with guns. Deckard moves to shoot at them, but his gun is snatched by Marley, who uses it to shoot at and destroy the briefcase before Marley himself is shot dead by the troopers. The troopers sieze Rachael, and take her away, leaving behind a business card for Speed Death Productions. |
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In pursuit of Rachael, Deckard returns to the film studio, where the director has set up a series of scenes intended to climax with Sarah killing Deckard live on camera. Deckard finds the Rachael child in a replica of the Bradbury building; he encounters Sarah on the roof. Sarah explains that this will be the final scene of a new version of the film, a version that will be shown on Earth as a documentary; a version where Deckard dies at the end of the film, increasing the anti-replicant sentiment on Earth to fever pitch. Deckard challenges Sarah, showing her the photo from the first-aid kit. It shows Anson and Ruth Tyrell, in uniforms from the Salander 3 - cradling two infants. |
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Rachael is Sarah's twin sister. Sarah protests that if they were sisters, they would be the same age now. But Deckard replies that they are not, because Rachael was held in a sleep capsule, hidden there by Ruth to save her from Anson's rampage. The purpose of the Salander 3 mission was not to visit the far colonies at all. The purpose of the Salander 3 was to fly ''towards'' the far colonies and then return, to see what effects occured in their vicinity. Anson and Ruth Tyrell were replicants, specially engineered to be unaware of that fact; and when the ship got far enough away from Earth, they became able to breed, and gave birth to Rachael and Sarah. But then, as a male experimental replicant, the modified stepfather syndrome programmed into Anson activated: he was able to murder Ruth before his new-found empathy overrode his programming and he killed himself, and the two children returned to Earth. Rachael was hidden in a sleep capsule, but Sarah remained exposed. When the ship returned to Earth, Sarah stepped off it. She is the first replicant child. |
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Even Eldon Tyrell could not simply order the destruction of a child, especially given that she was unaware that she was a replicant, so he did the best he could to cover up the entire incident. Sarah is deeply shocked, and finally admits that she could only deny that Rachael truly existed because she had known, even since she first saw her, that Rachael was truly her sister. Sarah finally knows what she had always wanted to know. Distraught, she asks Deckard to kiss her, the way he kissed Rachael, and finally commits suicide in Deckard's arms. Deckard and the child Rachael leave the movie studio, unsure of where they are going. |
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{{Blade Runner}} |
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