Siberian Experiment and the Creation of Hollowgasts

The Siberian experiment and the creation of Hollowgasts are presented as the disastrous origin of Golan and his allies’ monstrous condition—and as a catastrophe they intend to repeat. In a confrontation over the kidnapped ymbrynes, Golan admits that he wants to finish the experiment; Emma identifies its first attempt as the event that turned them into monsters. His proposed second attempt, powered by the abilities of the world’s best time manipulators, raises the stakes from a blast that devastated part of Siberia to a possible transformation into deathless rulers or destruction on an immense scale.

The First Experiment and Its Failure

Emma names the old experiment as the cause of Golan and his companions’ transformation: they tried it once, and, as she tells him, they turned themselves into monsters. Her accusation gives the experiment a history of failure rather than a merely unfinished scientific ambition. The result is visible in what Golan and the others have become, while the cause and precise mechanics of that first attempt are not described in this exchange.

Golan does not deny Emma’s account. He treats the failure as a reason to try again, joking that it would be an unchallenging life to get everything right on the first attempt. His response exposes the gulf between the two characters’ readings of the same history: Emma sees a warning in the monstrous outcome; Golan sees a problem that persistence and further experimentation can overcome.

Golan’s Proposed Repetition

Golan says that he and his allies only want to finish what they started. This claim makes the new plan a continuation of the original experiment, not a separate undertaking. He says that the wights and hollows have had a hundred years to work out what went wrong, and that the missing ingredient was a bigger reaction.

The proposed experiment would harness the talents of the world’s best time manipulators, including the two ymbrynes held there. Golan insists that with their abilities, the group will not fail again. The captured women are therefore not incidental prisoners: their time-manipulating talents are intended to supply the power or conditions needed to repeat and intensify the experiment. The exchange does not establish exactly how those abilities would be used, but it makes their kidnapping part of the experiment’s practical preparation.

The Scale of the Threat

Jacob challenges Golan’s talk of a bigger reaction by recalling that the first attempt blew up half of Siberia. The prior catastrophe supplies a concrete measure of the danger, while Golan’s grand declaration that failure should be spectacular turns that scale into something he is willing to embrace. His confidence does not remove the risk; it makes the possibility of another failure more alarming.

Jacob connects the plan to Horace’s prophetic dream of ash clouds and scorched earth. In retrospect, he understands the images as a warning of what the wights and hollows might unleash if the experiment fails again. The earlier blast reached across five hundred miles of empty forest; a new failure, Jacob realizes, could destroy far more. The change in scale is central to the scene: what was once a devastating event in an apparently empty landscape now threatens a much broader world.

Immortality and the Experiment’s Meaning

The experiment’s other possible outcome is no less threatening. If Golan’s faction succeeds, they may become the deathless demigods they have long dreamed of becoming. Jacob cannot imagine what life under such beings would be like except as a form of hell. The plan thus presents two catastrophic futures: another experiment that destroys on a vastly larger scale, or one that succeeds by granting overwhelming, deathless power to its architects.

That double possibility clarifies why the experiment matters beyond its origin story. Its first failure produced monsters; its proposed repetition would use the captured ymbrynes’ talents to pursue a state of power Golan describes as attainable after a century of reconsideration. Emma’s refusal to believe the ymbrynes will help him sharply opposes his certainty that their abilities can make the experiment succeed. The confrontation leaves the plan unresolved, but establishes its central danger: Golan regards past catastrophe as an imperfect first attempt, while Jacob sees the prospect of either failure or success as a threat to everyone beyond the original devastation.