Father Lawrence

**Overview** Dialogue

**Father Lawrence**, also known as **W.A. Lawrence** is an important character in *Who's Lila?*. He was the leader of The Lawrence Fraternity and professor who researched the power of memes.

## Backstory

### Developing the Fraternity

Lawrence was originally a professor whose area of study is unclear. He was a colleague of Fedor I. Ryibkin, although the nature of their relationship and the story of how they met is unknown. At some point he developed an interest in researching memetic agents and their possible applications for improving the state of the world. He and Ryibkin conducted research on how memes obtain their power and how they could artificially created and utilized for their own goals. They wrote a paper on the subject and devised a plan to create a cult, through which they could create an artificial noosphere dweller (known as L) that they could then control and use to power their own memes (also known as UIW-AMs). Lawrence also stated that he was willing to transcend humanity in order to achieve his goals.

The Lawrence Fraternity was then created to carry out Lawrence's plan, a group of people who were not aware of Lawrence's ulterior motives and simply knew him as their leader, Father Lawrence. They were gathered and told to manifest a tulpa with a predetermined appearance, name, and personality. This concentration of psychic energy created L, an ever-changing but powerful noosphere dweller that was able to continue persisting even beyond the minds of the individual people that manifested her.

Lawrence stated that they were careful not to invoke any of the existing archetypes when determining L's characteristics, since the archetypes are the most powerful and least controllable noosphere dwellers. However it seems that they inadvertently failed at this, given that the password used to lock the document that contained instructions on how to kill Lila (who is implied to be L) was "FIRSTGOLD", which is a phrase from a sonnet by Dante Gabriel Rossetti about Lilith (who is considered one of the archetypes). Lawrence likely did not realize this mistake until much later, if at all, and remained confident that Lila would not need to be subdued, and that she would not be as powerful and uncontrollable as she ended up being.

### William and the Fraternity's Demise

Eventually a young man named William Clarke became close with Lawrence and started helping out with the fraternity in an unofficial capacity, mostly at the farm that was used to produce animal sacrifices for Lila. He was then officially initiated on June 11, and began communicating with Lila directly. Lawrence never told William about any sort of ulterior motive for the Fraternity, just that they all communed with a shared tulpa known as Lila. Lawrence had however told William that he should not write down Lila's name anywhere, although he did so anyway in his diary.

On November 12, a gathering of the fraternity was taking place at Lawrence's apartment as usual, though William and Strupnev were not in attendance. During the gathering, a fire started by the FBI ravaged the building and killed every member of the fraternity, including Lawrence. Four days later, William went to the apartment in order to try to learn about what had happened.