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Cousin Eliza, previously known as Christine Summerfield, was a member of Faction Paradox who aided Cousin Justine in saving the universe from Lolita. She was born as Christine Summerfield in a bottle universe as part of a ritual sacrifice to be conducted by Chris Cwej. She ultimately sacrificed herself to allow Osiris to be reborn as Horus and to help defeat Sutekh.
Biography
Memories of a young blonde
- Main article: Blonde girl (Dead Romance)
A blonde girl born on 15 August 1948 was seduced by Chris Cwej when he arrived on the Earth of a bottle universe having been sent by his employers to prepare it for their colonisation. His mission was to open the bottle and allow for their invasion, Chris needed to ritually murder three people at specific times and places within the bottle London. However, he could not bring himself to kill the bottle's intelligent inhabitants, so he created three separate clones with a cloning tank and provided them with extracted copies of the blonde girl's memories.
These clones were made on the basis of a human prisoner from Dellah who, according to Chris, was a standard human template. When pressed on the matter, however, he was unwilling to elaborate. (PROSE: Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"]) According to one account, however, these were clones of Chris's own biodata. (PROSE: The Five Christinas [+]Loading...["The Five Christinas (short story)"])
One of the clones grew independence as Christine Summerfield, she and the blonde girl's lives overlapped for a short while until the "end of the world" when the Great Houses invaded the bottle Earth. Christine never bothered to investigate what happened to the blonde girl, claiming in her autobiography that she "felt no sympathy for her at all". (PROSE: Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"])
Christine Summerfield
The ritual required named individuals as sacrifices, therefore Chris named each of the clones Christine Summerfield after himself and his close friend Bernice Summerfield. While he was able to kill the first and second clones as planned, the third Christine managed to escape after becoming fully aware of his intent to kill her. She was picked up by the police after being found babbling and screaming in an abandoned building site just before midnight on 27 September 1970. After being taken to the local police station, Christine met Cwej and started sleeping with him before discovering the truth about the universe she inhabited and her creation. Eventually, Cwej spared this Christine by creating and sacrificing a fourth Christine, allowing the Great Houses' invasion of the Earth in the bottle.
Christine escaped the bottle and entered Cwej's "real" universe; after being dropped off on Ordifica, she visited colony worlds including Shristostophon, Gardener's World, Hai Dow Seven, Lubellin, Shatner's Climax and Ultra Caprisis. Christine eventually visited the ruins of the Homeworld, where she wrote most of her autobiography before heading towards Dellah. At the time, she believed she was 23 years old. (PROSE: Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"]) Christine later sent a letter to Bernice Summerfield, which she received when she took a post at a university on the planet Vremnya. (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods [+]Loading...["Twilight of the Gods (BNA novel)"])
Wondering what she would do next, Christine speculated that she could ask the Gods of Dellah if they would help her up into the "next universe up", reasoning that she had "done it before" with Cwje's employers. Indeed, Christine, now called Eliza, would appear to be in the main universe by the War's fiftieth year. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire [+]Loading...["The Eleven Day Empire (audio story)"])
When still in the bottle universe, Christine had recurring nightmares about being trapped in an old house, filled with shadow, which was populated and maintained by a family of dusty skeletons. Though she always tried to escape at the start, she would consistently become lost in the shadows, and by the end of the dream she would have forgotten why she wanted to leave, having become one of the family herself. She always woke up with her fingers in her mouth, checking if she still had lips. (PROSE: Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"])
As Cousin Eliza
Joining the Faction
At some point, she joined Faction Paradox and took on the name Eliza in homage to one of Jack the Ripper's victims, as she described herself as a "born victim". (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire [+]Loading...["The Eleven Day Empire (audio story)"]) Little Sister Eliza was in the Eleven-Day Empire when Little Brother Porsena joined, and she explained to him that it was only blackened by soot because the original London was. (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved... [+]Loading...["Of the City of the Saved... (novel)"])
Eliza had attained the rank of Cousin by the time that The Book of the War was published in the War's fiftieth year. (PROSE: "Faction Paradox" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"namedep":"Faction Paradox","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"})
Eliza once attended a meeting with four other versions of herself: Tina, Kirstine, a labcoat-wearing Christina and another version who wore glasses. During the meeting it transpired that each alternate version of Christina was holding the universe together and that CERN had been involved in hunting them down and stealing their biodata which threatened to recombine them. (PROSE: The Five Christinas [+]Loading...["The Five Christinas (short story)"])
Adventures with Justine
Information from the middle chunk of The Faction Paradox Protocols and the first stories of The True History of Faction Paradox needs to be added.
Eliza and Justine fought the Sontarans during their invasion of the Eleven-Day Empire. Later, when the Great Houses arrived to offer reconciliation with House Paradox, Eliza greeted Lord Ruthven on behalf of Godfather Morlock. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire [+]Loading...["The Eleven Day Empire (audio story)"]) Eliza and Justine survived the destruction of the Eleven-Day Empire, and they planned to save the surviving members of the Faction from Lolita. (AUDIO: The Shadow Play [+]Loading...["The Shadow Play (audio story)"]) Eliza broke Justine out of the Great Houses' prison planet with the help of criminals and newly freed members of Faction Paradox. (AUDIO: A Labyrinth of Histories [+]Loading...["A Labyrinth of Histories (audio story)"])
Horus and death
- Main article: Horus
To prevent Sutekh from gaining control of the Osirian Court, and for lack of a better option, Eliza offered herself up to Anubis to become a vessel for the salvaged biodata of the dead Osiris. Lolita added a drop of her own biodata to the mixture, (AUDIO: Ozymandias [+]Loading...["Ozymandias (audio story)"]) hoping to take over the resurrected Osiris from the inside and control him, intending to use him as a puppet ruler. (AUDIO: Words from Nine Divinities [+]Loading...["Words from Nine Divinities (audio story)"]) The process of Osiris taking over Eliza was gradual, with them being stuck in a merged identity with a gradually shifting balance — first Eliza gaining access to Osiris's knowledge and feelings, then becoming an entity who thought of himself as Osiris but still had remnants of Eliza's demeanour and opinions. Recognising that this new being was not quite their former king, the Osirians named the merged entity Horus, a name which, in their tongue, signified the idea of being "between two spheres". (AUDIO: Words from Nine Divinities [+]Loading...["Words from Nine Divinities (audio story)"], The Judgment of Sutekh [+]Loading...["The Judgment of Sutekh (audio story)"])
Eventually Sutekh proposed a fight to the death with Horus to settle the claim to the throne. Osiris allowed Sutekh to kill him, setting up a time travel trap that ended with both Sutekh and Lolita defeated. To achieve this, Osiris released his hold from "Horus", allowing Eliza to once more be herself in her final moments, and therefore mortal. After saying goodbye to Justine, Eliza walked to her death at the Temple of Geb, posing as Horus and goading Sutekh into permanently killing her; she knew that this was unavoidable, having already witnessed the consequences of this event. (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh [+]Loading...["The Judgment of Sutekh (audio story)"])
Legacy
When inducting his earlier self into Faction Paradox, Richard Francis Burton made himself swear by "Horus, the reborn child from whose sacrifice our Faction owes its own rebirth". (PROSE: Head of State [+]Loading...["Head of State (novel)"]) Eliza was represented by the character Kishijoten in Faction Hollywood's film Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom. (PROSE: The Book of the War [+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"])
Personality
Born and raised in the twentieth century, Eliza was a relaxed, albeit troubled, Londoner with little faith in the Faction's methods. While she had a noticeable cynical streak, she was generally risk-averse and worried about stepping out of line. (AUDIO: The Eleven-Day Empire [+]Loading...["The Eleven-Day Empire (audio story)"]) Her corollary within Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom, Kishijoten, was described as a "wisecracking, unsophisticated peasant girl who, as a lower class member, [did not have] 'the blood' to understand the society politics' ways." (PROSE: The Book of the War [+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"])
Despite knowing better, she smoked cigarettes. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years [+]Loading...["The Ship of a Billion Years (audio story)"])
Physical appearance
Eliza had dark ruffled hair and dark eyes. She was slightly shorter than the blonde girl whose memories were used in her creation. When she saw her reflection shortly after being created, she had "bad skin" and cheeks that looked "much too narrow" for her head. She described herself as "skinny" and "badly dressed". When she saw her reflection in the following days, she noted that she was pale and had acne. (PROSE: Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"])
During her short life on the bottle universe Earth, Christine wore a T-Shirt, jeans, an belt, and plimsoles. When visiting the planet Simia-KK98, Christine donned a secondhand duffel coat and pair of thick trousers. (PROSE: Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"])
Behind the scenes
- Christine Summerfield was unique amongst the main characters of the New Adventures following the release of Lungbarrow, as she did not meet Bernice Summerfield within the story where she served as the main point of view. While Deadfall, The Mary-Sue Extrusion, and Return to the Fractured Planet were all told almost entirely from the point of view of somebody other than Bernice Summerfield, Benny was still a central character within the stories.
- Upon her introduction in Dead Romance, Christine Summerfield was identified as a cloned human with dark hair based on the genetics of a human prisoner from Dellah. While never expressly identified, the prisoner was implied to be the absent protagonist of the series, Bernice Summerfield, who was under the influence of the All-High Gods while on a mission to rescue her cat. Much was made of the connection between Christine and her seeming namesake, Bernice Summerfield. Throughout the novel, she speculated as to her seemingly unwarranted attachment to the Summerfield bloodline, once remarking that she felt an "urge to go looking for the remains of Bernice Summerfield", whom she later described as "the closest thing [she has] got to family." Likewise, Christine speculated that "when the sphinxes had made everyone inside the bottle, [she] had been inspired by this Bernice person." This speculation was summarily rejected by Chris, who denied any similarity between the two Summerfields. When Christine discovered that she was a clone, Chris responded aggressively before telling her that she was simply "a standard human template."
- While Barnyard of the Cyberons introduced Christina Cwej with the understanding that she was the first female Cwej, The Five Christinas later asserted that Eliza was another, despite Dead Romance stating she was a clone of "a standard human template", a Cwejen with the imprint of "someone else". By that account, this would make Christine Summerfield the first female Cwejen to appear.
Character notes by Lawrence Miles
Another twentysomething Faction recruit. Born and raised in the twentieth century, so more relaxed than Justine (but probably just as messed-up). London girl. Closer to Justine than anyone else, although that isn't saying much. Seems to have very little faith in the Faction's methods. Goes along with them anyway. Unwilling to risk stepping out of line, despite a noticeable cynical streak.[1]