Some more thoughts.
Rereading early chapters - seems that not only do (the majority of) linear people exist in every single life Harry experiences, but their lives also seem to be quite similar, if not the same. For instance, Jenny married Harry in his 4th life. In his 7th life, he meets her again:
"Dr Munroe," I replied. "We've met before."
"Have we? I can't quite..."
"You studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and lived for the first year of your time in a small house in Stockbridge with four boys who were all frightened of you. You babysat for your next-door neighbour's twins to make a few more pennies, and decided that you had to be a surgeon after seeing a still-beating heart working away on the operating table."
"That's right," she murmured, turning her body a little further in the chair to look at me. "But I'm sorry, I still don't remember who you are."
Apparently all of these things that happened in Jenny's early life that Harry remembers from his 4th life still happened in this loop. Which, to me, is even stranger than these people existing in all loops. You'd think that even if they never
directly interacted with any kalachakras in any given loop, their lives might still be indirectly influenced and have small differences at least... Especially for people like Jenny, who live in relative proximity to at least one kalachakra and are in the same social/academic/etc. circles.
She had two children.
Jenny had always wanted children.
These two children that Jenny has in Harry's 7th life, besides serving as early evidence that kalachakras are sterile, curiously seem to be (among?) the only mentioned linears that do not exist in every loop. This detail doesn't seem to have much significance, though, as they never come into play.
I also found a passage which increased the potential
fridge horror of kalachakras for me:
"It's one of our primary roles," she replied airily. "Childhood is the most taxing time of our lives, unless of course you're genetically predisposed towards a ghastly death or some sort of inherited disease. (...)"
Imagine someone is born a kalachakra and also happens to suffer from some rare genetic disease that will result in death at a very young age. A disease that has no treatment during the period that person lives in. They won't have a cycle of birth, death, birth again, and so on like the rest of their kind. They'll have a cycle of birth, suffering, dying, just to be born again and experience a few hellish years.
Over and over again. Just think of that.
Another topic of potential interest: the accumulation of injuries/damage throughout lives. Also rich in fridge horror...
And it was in this spirit that Victor Hoeness was tracked down in the city of Linz, aged eleven years old, where he was already preparing for another stab at changing the nature of the universe. He was taken from his home and tortured for eleven days. On the twelfth he broke and confessed to his true place of birth, parents, home, point of origin.
They imprisoned him, not merely away from society but in complete physical immobility, in a crude medieval straitjacket entirely made of metal. They cut out his tongue, cut off his ears, pulled out his eyes, and when he had recovered from all of those, they cut off his hands and his feet as well, just to guarantee that he wasn't going anywhere. Then they force-fed him down a hollow wooden rod rammed into his throat, keeping him alive in his own silent, wordless, blind madness. They managed to do this for nine years before finally he choked to death, and died, they said, smiling. He was twenty years old.
Born again where he had begun, the baby Victor Hoeness was at birth snatched from his crib and taken again to a place of imprisonment. By the age of four he'd reached consciousness and, examining him, the members of the Cronus Club concluded there was still enough of his mind left alive that he could be judged responsible for his acts. So it began again: eyes, ears, tongue, hands, feet, all with careful medical precision to ensure that he didn't die in the process, but all, of course, without painkillers. This time they managed to keep him alive for seven years; he died aged eleven.
Nevertheless they persisted, and once again examined Hoeness for signs of his old self. This time, however, the baby Hoeness, though born with perfectly functional hands and ears and eyes, seemed incapable of using any of them, though the apparatuses were entirely there.
So, after two lives in which he was tortured, Victor lost his vision, hearing and the use of his hands and feet completely. One wonders whether he'd have recovered if he had been left alone and had not been tortured for a few more lives afterwards. But it's possible he wouldn't, which means that this could happen to any of the others, and not necessarily involving torture. For example, Harry already died of cancer several times, how would dying of radiation poisoning affect his following lives? Would he get cancer earlier and earlier in his following lives? Or is that danger averted because he only died that way once? I could see many possibilities involving damage and injuries carrying over from previous lives... Kalachakras ought to be careful and avoid having certain things happen to them in two consecutive lives, or else it seems likely they could end up in a situation similar to Victor's.
