My mother said people feared the Divergent because we couldn’t be controlled. That may be true, but fear of the uncontrollable is not a concrete enough reason to give Jack Kang for the Erudite wanting us dead. My heart races as I realize that I can’t answer his question.

…

…

So! At some point, we have switched into a very similar sounding alternate Insurgent written in an alternate universe.
It’d be cleaner if we could simply assume that the switch took place at the start of this book, but mere chapters ago we had Tobias’ mom explaining that the problem with using the factionless as a backup army is there’s even more divergents there, so it’s never been about fearing the uncontrolled in principle but about the practical fact you can’t control them so they’re a spanner in the works of any mass zombification attempts. Therefore, that conversation must not have happened or else Tris would’ve said that’s why the Erudite are killing divergents.

Instead, I postulate that it’s been a piecemeal transition, possibly starting as soon as the end of Divergent, when the characters flee for no reason. That makes it much more difficult to tell what I’m supposed to know, so I’ll just begin reading as if I came in here.

So, apparently this story is about people fearing divergent because they can’t be controlled! I wonder if it’ll ultimately be about how the government is evil and big-brotherish.

Someone named Tobias says he may not know for sure, but there are nearly a dozen mysterious deaths recorded among the Dauntless from the past six years, and there is a correlation between those people and irregular aptitude test results or initiation simulation results.”

So that’s just two people a year. “Mysterious deaths” doesn’t really cut it. We need to know how suspicious these have been. After all, it could just be that people with weird aptitude tests tend to do weird, risk-takey things. I mean, plenty of mentally ill people die and it’s mostly not a conspiracy there. What percentage of the weird aptitude test people die? More numbers are needed!

Jack agrees that correlation is not causation, especially when you’ve got incomplete statistics.

“A Dauntless leader shot a Candor child in the head,” I snap. “Did you get a report of that? Did it seem ‘worthy of investigation’?”
“In fact I did,” he says. “And shooting a child in cold blood is a terrible crime that cannot go unpunished. Fortunately, we have the perpetrator in custody and will be able to put him on trial. However, we must keep in mind that the Dauntless soldiers did not give any evidence of wanting to harm the majority of us, or they would have killed us while we were unconscious.”

Wow, so I guess even truth serum is no longer a factor in the alternate storyline. That, or in the current version they weren’t loudly talking about how they planned to kill all Dauntless, so the only evidence of murderous intent is the one person killed.

I hear irritated murmurs all around me.

Meanwhile, this is not effected by the transition – it’s not like the previous stuff gave us any damn idea how “leaders” worked, so does it matter if people disagree? Does it not? WHO KNOWS.

“Their peaceful invasion suggests to me that it may be possible to negotiate a peace treaty with the Erudite and the other Dauntless,” he continues. “So I will arrange a meeting with Jeanine Matthews to discuss that possibility as soon as possible.”

How interesting. You’d think a faction system would heavily support concepts of collective responsibility, but apparently it doesn’t. The fact someone shot a kid in the way has no bearing on the person who gave the orders to do that.

Tris, whoever that is now, argues that merely not killing everyone is a poor standard of peaceful, and also, they obviously had some goal.

“I assume they came here for people like you,” says Jack. “And while I am concerned for your safety, I don’t think we can attack them just because they wanted to kill a fraction of our population.”

Huh. Alternate reality Insurgent appears to have factions mean nothing at all. Everyone is an independent agent who happens to align with a particular mindset, but a faction has no responsibility for its members – not for what they do, not for what might be done to them.

“Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you,” I say. “Controlling you is.”
Jack’s lips curl with amusement. Amusement. “Oh? And how will they manage that?”
“They shot you with needles,” Tobias says. “Needles full of simulation transmitters. Simulations control you. That’s how.”
“We know how simulations work,” says Jack. “The transmitter is not a permanent implant. If they intended to control us, they would have done it right away.”

Going by Tris’ words, it would seem the control the Dauntless thing of last book still happened. But, perhaps it was merely a threat. After all, if Erudite just demonstrated they have transmitters that last an unknown length of time, this would be really dumb. But if that’s merely a concern Tris and Tobias have, then Jack could reject it as having no evidence it’s truly possible.

I suppose it’s irrelevant, though – the Erudite don’t need to because they just demonstrated they can waltz in and shoot everyone with transmitters any time they feel like.

He then tells her she’s a dumb little girl. Presumably Tris’ speech about how great it is to be underestimated as a dumb little girl never happened in this story, because instead of referencing in any way that she’s just humiliated and furious.

Also, I guess alternate Divergent is pretty different, as the whole choosing thing doesn’t happen because it makes no sense to say 16 is the age of majority then refer to someone who’s chosen and completed initiation as a “little girl”. And perhaps in this story she hid the fact she murdered her friend, because ditto.

Tobias doesn’t like plan let Erudite kill us all, and the Dauntless are always up for a fight.

“That is true. If you want to, you can feel free to storm the Erudite compound by yourselves. But you will do so without our support, and may I remind you, you are greatly outnumbered and unprepared.”

Would they really? All we have to go on is “irritated murders”. The family of the dead kid and the families of the other Candor divergents are obviously not going to be happy this was called a peaceful attack, and most of the Candor should be upset just that their faction was indeed attacked. Nothing about this conversation seems to have any connection to the Candor virtues – he’s said almost nothing about what he knows and doesn’t seem to have interviewed many people, and he appears disinterested in further investigation. But then, who’s to say Candor values remain the same? From the looks of it, in alternate reality, they’re Erudite-light rather than people who argue and debate to find the truth. That’s why they’re all silent while letting a single guy speak for them about how he has no idea what the Erudite’s plan was but he’s sure it’ll be fine so let’s be peaceful.

“I thought so,” he says smugly. “Very well. I will contact Jeanine Matthews, and see if we can negotiate a peace. Any objections?”

So yeah, the Candor don’t debate in this universe.

Tris explains this all means their only option is the factionless, because obviously appealing to the rest of the group is impossible since Candor just obey whoever’s in charge without question, same as the Amity.

Later, injured traitor Dauntless show up who are Tori and Zeke, whoever those may be. Zeke demands medical attention for Tori and the rest are all naturally wondering why they should aid a traitor, to which he gives no explanation but a louder demand for medical care. Now, obviously Tori at least hates the people killing divergent, and Tris should know this, but perhaps she doesn’t in this universe because Tori never explained. Unless Tori didn’t lose her brother at all. This is confusing.

Tris does oppose plan shoot them now.

“Told you the Divergent were crazy,” one of the other armed Dauntless mutters to the woman next to him.

Not shooting people immediately is a brave/reckless thing, in that it’s generally safer for you to just unload bullets into anything twitching. She didn’t give any explanation that could’ve been crazy, she just said not to at a point the group was unsure of if they should shoot or not, which means all of them were also half in favor of plan don’t shoot them.

I would give the author partial credit for at least making sure to consistently build the case that there’s discrimination and distrust toward the divergent, but given I’m currently reading an alternate universe version(s?) of this series, I’m not giving anything credit because evidence shows it’s just a random blip that may be contradicted in a few lines.

“Where should we … take her?” one of them asks.
“Find Helena,” Zeke says. “Dauntless nurse.”

Apparently the universe instability is so severe it’s affecting the character’s own recollections of their history. The Dauntless now struggle to remember who handles injuries despite dealing with the aftereffects of a battle just yesterday (or did that not happen?), and the closest they can get is to have one person manage to dredge up the name of one nurse.

Now that they’ve decided not to shoot the pair and left to give Tori medical treatment, Zeke finally bothers to explain they aren’t actually traitors but moles!

“That’s a nice story,” says the blond Dauntless man. “Want to tell it again under truth serum?”

Further evidence that factions are increasingly informal groupings as we progress deeper into this alternate universe. It’s not out of character for the Dauntless to appreciate the benefits of other factions – they seem like about the only people who are decent like that. But if it’s supposed to be part of the Dauntless kit, they should have access to it themselves. Perhaps in the alternate Insurgent, the factions aren’t nearly independent mini-kingdoms but actually work together as part of a group.

Wait, no, if they relied on Candor for detective aspects, Candor would already know there’s been mysterious deaths and Tobias saying it’s divergent-related would’ve resulted in, “Oh, that’s what was behind the dozen unsolved cases we got from Dauntless? Damn, if only we’d worked it out sooner.”

Uriah shows up just then and they hug in a very manly punchy way.

We sit in a room in Candor headquarters called the Gathering Place, which the Dauntless have taken to saying in a mocking way whenever they can.

Okay, so the Dauntless don’t respect other factions after all, they just put utter faith in the truth serum that is one faction’s specialty.

Lynn told me they host monthly debates here

So…they do debate. But it does seem to be very different than constant debate. I guess in this series, the Candor’s virtue-turned-vice is that they’ve ritualized their debates and only do the bare minimum of that. Indeed, we’re told next they hold religious services weekly. I’m not sure how they handle that. Erudite being religious, sure, part of science is knowing you don’t know everything, but we know Candor being black and white holds true in this universe too, because it’s still being shown off in every inch of their decor. How do they handle religion without head explosions, especially since there’s no sign there’s only one religion?

“Anyway, as I was saying,” says Zeke, rubbing his eye, “I was mostly working on getting Erudite defectors out safely. That’s why there’s a big group of them here, and a small group at Amity headquarters.

How much help could you possibly need? Assuming the assault we saw a few chapters ago is still canon to the AU we’ve fallen into, an Erudite got out via the method of ditching the group midway through a coordinated assault. It would make sense that Dauntless-Erudite are distrusted, but if regular Erudite are also under lock and key, how is the group keeping cohesiveness? And how would Zeke know who they were?

It could make sense if he was smuggling out Erudite dissenters, because then we could assume they’d been locked up and conveniently labeled as Not Wanting To Be Part Of This Bullshit, but defector has a more specific meaning.

Come to think of it, why didn’t Erudite use the magic truth serum on everyone who said they wanted to join? Do they not have access? Does it not exist now?

Zeke explains he woke up Smack-dab in a pack of Dauntless traitors. I decided to go with it but how the hell does that work? No one knew what’d happened and it should’ve been chaos for ages. How do you wake up in a strange place, look at each other, and say, “Hey, let’s go figure out what happened, then join whoever did it for whatever reason they did it?” Hm, maybe in this version, only about half of Dauntless was put under, just the people whose loyalties the higherups were suspicious of, so zombie and aware Dauntless were mixed about evenly. Even that isn’t a solution, because the others would’ve been suspicious of someone who’d been put under and then, upon waking up, immediately says that no really he’s cool about it and he’d love to go back with you to your leader who planned this.

Will’s sister is also there.

“Yeah, I talked to her about getting out of Erudite once, while I was there,” says Zeke. “Said she saw an Abnegation woman get killed while she was on a mission for Jeanine and couldn’t stomach it anymore.”

That is a low, low standard she has. Not when this was planned to murder people. Not when she was sent out as part of it. She just got squicked by actual blood in her face and ran off then. That also ruins my more sympathetic assumption that she had an actual objection to her faction using her baby brother’s faction as slaves.

Cara and Christina both leave, so Tris follows them.

Christina is crying and upset about Tris’ murdering of Will.

I don’t understand how she could have done that!”
Christina’s sobs make me feel like I am about to crack open.
Cara takes her time responding.
“Well, I do,” she says.
“What?” Christina says with a hiccup.
“You have to understand; we’re trained to see things as logically as possible,” says Cara. “So don’t think that I’m callous. But that girl was probably scared out of her mind, certainly not capable of assessing situations cleverly at the time, if she was ever able to do so.”
My eyes fly open. What a—I run through a short list of insults in my mind before listening to her continue.

Wow, Tris. Be more unsympathetic why don’t you.

That statement isn’t even a direct comment about if she thinks you’re smart. She’s saying the reason you would kill your friend was that you were not able to think of a better solution for whatever reason that may have been.

“And the simulation made her incapable of reasoning with him, so when he threatened her life, she reacted as she had been trained by the Dauntless to react: Shoot to kill.”

Since it’s not like we can take anything for granted, I declare now that in this universe, she shot him in the chest the way actual people who are trained to shoot to kill would. This removes what seems like deliberate malice in blowing his head off while leaving it totally plausible Will would still die.

“So what are you saying?” says Christina bitterly. “We should just forget about it, because it makes perfect sense?”
“Of course not,” says Cara. Her voice wobbles, just a little, and she repeats herself, quietly this time. “Of course not.”
She clears her throat. “It’s just that you have to be around her, and I want to make it easier for you. You don’t have to forgive her. Actually, I’m not sure why you were friends with her in the first place; she always seemed a bit erratic to me.”

…I think Cara has just turned into Candor, since she shouldn’t have known Christina before this otherwise. And I have no explanation for her apparently knowing Tris’ general behavior when they only interacted once – even if Cara is confident she can assess Tris from that, there’s no possible reason to use “always” in such a statement.

Cara continues. “Anyway. You don’t have to forgive her, but you should try to understand that what she did was not out of malice; it was out of panic. That way, you can look at her without wanting to punch her in her exceptionally long nose.”

Yup, Cara appears to have transitioned to Candor. We’ve seen no Erudites talk like this and they seem if anything taciturn about non-educational subjects.

This also seems to be piling negativity on Cara, with her first going out of her way to raise the possibility Tris was stupid and Tris deciding that was a million times more important than their discussion about the friend she murdered, then calling Tris erratic and questioning them ever being friends, then finally insulting her appearance.

Even though Cara was rude—and the nose comment was a low blow—I am grateful for what she said.

Or perhaps the Candor are no longer the honesty/rude faction now? Maybe that’s it. Smart people = blunt assholes with no social skills seems about what we should expect from the books, and the Candor we’ve been seeing don’t seem talkative at all and only concern themselves with the truth when it comes to verifying specific claims.

We learn Jack won’t be talking to Jeanine but a representative. Presumably Erudite assume it’s a trap even though he’s a truth factioner because even they can’t believe anyone could be this dumb.

“She’s not going herself?”
“Yeah, and stand out in the open where a bunch of angry people with guns can take aim?”

I have no idea why they’re meeting in the open, by the way. Both leaders have perfectly serviceable buildings – Erudite has made it clear they aren’t afraid of entering Candor’s, while Jack should have nothing to fear entering Erudite’s given his pitch involves insisting Erudite won’t harm non-divergent, plus they’re literally surrounded by empty buildings that could be used as neutral territory if they wanted.

Tris notices Tobias is acting as leader and is confused why he’d be going into that role, despite the obvious fact that Dauntless is currently leaderless and needs someone in charge if they’re going to have any chance of winning, and also not winning means they all die.

I’m not sure if the motivation featured in the original universe’ Divergent, of not wanting to deal with his dad, is still true, but if so, another issue could be that he’s already being forced to interact with his dad. To a ridiculous degree, in fact, so if anything, being leader and being able to order someone else to handle discussions would be a step up.

Zeke asks Tris what the Erudite would do.

They all look at me. Expectantly.
“What?” I say.
“You’re Divergent,” Zeke replies.
“So is Tobias.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t have aptitude for Erudite.”
“And how do you know I do?”
Zeke lifts his shoulder. “Seems likely. Doesn’t it seem likely?”

No.

Even by the standards of the idiots of this book, no. We just had Marlene geeking out about simulations with her Erudite brother. Maybe in this version that was Tris geeking out rather than passing out on the table.

Tris argues their own brains work fine, Marlene says but her brain’s full of divergent magic!

“There’s no such thing as Divergent magic, Mar,” says Lynn.

That’s right, conspiracy girl! Only huge government edifices designed to falsify data to make it look like there is, for no reason!

Shauna (so many girls! Hurrah!) then speaks up to say that divergence is terrible and they shouldn’t look to it for help.

“Don’t you think someone with the aptitude for multiple factions might have a loyalty problem? If she’s got aptitude for Erudite, how can we be sure she’s not working for Erudite?”

Shauna is also a conspiracy theory fan, it appears.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Tobias, his voice low.
“I am not being ridiculous.” She smacks the table. “I know I belong in Dauntless because everything I did in that aptitude test told me so. I’m loyal to my faction for that reason—because there’s nowhere else I could possibly be.

So I guess another thing that never happened in this universe was all the time spent talking about choice and how the results of the test didn’t matter because you could still pick whatever and also the part where no one thought anything weird about someone getting one official result but then picking another faction, since Tris and Tobias were both marked down officially as Abnegation, then picked a different faction and weren’t immediately killed as obvious divergents for it.

Shauna then flounces off leaving a furious Tris. Look at that, Shauna, that’s like Erudite-level smarts right there.

“It’s not magic,” I say hotly. “You just have to ask yourself what the most logical response to a particular situation is.”
I am greeted with blank stares.

Tris attempts to explain the novel concept that a person meeting with a well-defended representative might not consider violence a first resort going from a strictly logical standpoint, and Zeke honest to god argues with her that but wouldn’t it be a good idea?

Never mind that Zeke obviously understands the concept of not blindly murdering people given he functioned as a mole fine, smuggled people out, and never even got caught but only had to leave because Tori was found out.

Proving, incidentally, that Tris sure as fuck is not Erudite-level clever, her argument is just that the representative is probably somebody important too, so it’d be losing a relatively high ranked Erudite to get rid of Jack, even though if your Plan A is to just shoot him, you can send anybody since he’s not going to have much time to realize something up. She does not point out that Erudite has no reason to shoot Jack and in fact every reason to keep him alive given he’s stated he’s okay with them murdering all of Candor’s divergents so long as they don’t murder the rest and his entire meeting is to communicate his utter willingness to go along with their master plan, plz no shoot.

“See? This is why we need you to analyze the situation,” Zeke says. “If it was me, I would kill him; it would be worth the risk.”

Dauntless appear to only register risk and not even include in the analysis what the gain is. There’s just risk and more risk, and you pick the one with the most fun level of risk.

I try to put myself in Jeanine Matthews’s place. I already know she won’t negotiate with Jack Kang. Why would she need to? He has nothing to offer her.

He is offering her a conditional surrender that’s completely nonbinding, given she can just take what he gives her and then attack him again all she wants whenever she feels like, while he does nothing to prepare secure in the belief he’s safe. Given he’s willing to let the Candor divergents die for the sake of the majority of his faction, he’s also likely okay with sacrificing the non-divergent Dauntless with them.

She will use the situation to her advantage.

I think my theory about a second universe’s book needs to be revised. This can only be explained as multiple universes, as the lines are He has nothing to offer her. She will use the situation to her advantage. which is impossible. Clearly, they must each go with a separate story, one in which Tris concludes that Jeanine intends to attack again regardless so she has no interest in even a temporary peace agreement, and the other where Jack is going to negotiate without being willing to aid her plans so she’ll need to manipulate him to further her goals. Neither of those seem like they could logically follow from the original setup last book so we’ve now dealing with an unknown number of universes bleeding into each other.

Incidentally, Tris now helpfully informs the group that

“I think,”
…
he will do anything to protect his faction, even if it means sacrificing the Divergent.
…
Or sacrificing the Dauntless.

Good job, Tris, you managed to work out what he explicitly said in front of everyone and what he then implied with a mallet.

Lynn then says something actually intelligent, which is that they need to eavesdrop on the conversation. I guess they’ll do that next chapter, unless we continue into an even more divergent Divergent book and the next chapter is about tracking down the Deathly Hallows.