Dr. Haruto Ikeda, an innately benevolent scientist and a premier figure in the world of virology finds himself more at home sitting at his disorderly and shambolic desk than when digitally rummaging around his laptop. When the Japanese scientist, stumbles, purely by dint of accident upon a deadly document containing stunning details of the intentional ‘release’ date of a deadly virus named Tau and the vaccine upon which he is currently working, he knows he is waging a race against time to save the world from the clutches of a handful of wrathful and remorseless barbarians.
Harris Jackson, debaucher extraordinaire, represents an agglomeration of vices masquerading as homo sapiens. Hardened by the loss of his parents in an unfortunate and untimely incident in his childhood days, Jackson is immune to kindness and inured in the capitalist DNA. These attributes make him the right and ripe choice to head the insidious coalition planning the methodical release of a deadly virus that would make the COVID-19 pandemic look like common cold. Jackson also happens to be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and his partners in crime the respective ‘likeminded’ heads of a few nations.
This extraordinarily dystopian scenario sets the stage for Will Carver’s ingenious and imaginative novel with a racy plot and a tight narrative. Taking his cue from the COVID-19 pandemic, Carver parses in a compelling manner the conflicting and contradictory nature of human emotions. Selfishness shares space with selflessness as regret keeps uncomfortable company with remorselessness. The altruism of Dr. Haruto Ikeda and his psychologist wife, Kimiko, stands rock solid in the face of rampaging brutality and unabashed greed.
With a view to outwitting the plotters of doom, Dr. Ikeda embarks on an audacious plan the likes of which has never been envisaged before. He pre-emptively releases his own breed of home grown, in this case laboratory grown, virus, ‘Comp X.’ Possessing features if rapid transmissibility, the only effect that Comp X has on its host is a resurging dose of extreme empathy. People afflicted by Dr. Ikeda’s personalised virus find themselves transformed upon recovery. A rude and expletive mouthing MasterChef spontaneously decides to pull meat off the menu (I will let the reader visualise the mercurial and maverick Gordon Ramsey engaging in this move), while billionaire businesspeople are overcome by an urgent sense to devote attention to philanthropy.
Just as Dr. Ikeda begins to relax in the presumed knowledge that the world is now a tad bit better than what it was prior to the first manifestation of CompX, a series of events jolts his belief and puts the very existence of humanity in a tailspin.
Will Planet Earth survive yet another existential crisis? Will Dr. Ikeda and Kimiko’s faith in humanity be repaid? Or Will the likes of the obnoxious Harris Jackson and his shameless coterie get their way in reducing life to statistical denominations of vote banks and voting constituencies?
Kill them with Kindness is an interesting book that makes the reader sit up and evaluate priorities in life.
