Last time, giggling and ominous chatter.
THE SERUM WEARS off five hours later, when the sun is just beginning to set. Tobias shut me in my room for the rest of the day, checking on me every hour. This time when he comes in, I am sitting on the bed, glaring at the wall.
…
“I’ll kill them,” I say. “I will kill them.”

See, doesn’t my fast metabolism theory sound good? You don’t want people coming down hard after your happydrugs, that just means they’ll view the state as unnatural and be angry again. You want it to wear off nice and gradual, so there’s no clear sober/drugged division.

Tobias then explains he’s decided to hide the hard drive behind the dresser (instead of, just a thought, keeping it on them).

“That’s where it was before.”
“Yeah, and that’s why Peter won’t look for it here again.”

Oh christ. Have you never seen someone search for an object?

If we were talking about say, a safe, something hard to check, yes, people would check twice. But that’s only if there’s great effort expended, because that’s the only time we rely primarily on reason to pick our options.

Human brains aren’t half as functional as we’d like. We were gatherers first and foremost, and we would indeed recheck the same areas because if something was there last time it might be there again. That object permanence we’re so proud of totally screws us up in any situation where objects disappear, and we will check and recheck the same area in increasingly stupid places because our brain can’t let go of the idea it must be there somewhere.

It will not be the first place he checks. It’ll probably even be one of the last. But he’s going to run through every obvious place he can think of and sooner or later he’ll check it because all checking involves is tipping a piece of furniture slightly.

At absolute best, it’d a better hiding place than another obvious location because yeah, he’ll run through a couple others before returning to the place it’d be stupid for you to have hidden it, so you have a better chance of returning before he actually found it. But the actual smart thing to do is find a spot that’s actually a good hiding place. Susan’s room, for one – don’t even tell her, just do it. She’s the least connected to you. If you want it in your room, you could try sliding it underneath the dresser, near the front so that even if he slides it an inch or two from the wall it won’t be visible. The fact you hid it there once means he won’t search as thoroughly, and you could use that.

The best hiding place depends on details and all I know of the room is that it’s got a bed and dresser, but generally, pull-out drawers have empty areas on the sides or bottoms, and you might be able to wedge the thing in there. The standard search pattern is to pull out the clothes and check the drawers themselves, so if there’s a more hidden place, that again could be missed.

Also, you could try sticking it in, say, the water filtration room or whatever. In fact, just go stalk Marcus now, since Peter already knows you’re doing that. While stalking, pause and leave it somewhere hidden, then continue stalking. Even if Peter figures out the drive is no longer in your room, and even if he then figures out you’re not carrying it and must have dumped it somewhere (both unlikely), he still won’t know exactly where you dumped it and will have to search everywhere you’ve been.

Or finally, you idiots could just keep carrying it. Even aside from the problem of Peter, there’s the fact you could be thrown out or attacked or anything suddenly, and need to flee then without time to backtrack and dig this up from your hiding place.

“Why couldn’t I fight the peace serum?” I say. “If my brain is weird enough to resist the simulation serum, why not this one?”

Because the two have nothing to do with each other beyond being called serum.

“I don’t know, really,” he says. He drops down next to me on the bed, jostling the mattress. “Maybe in order to fight off a serum, you have to want to.”

Or we could victim blame in a stupid attempt to be philosophical.

“Well, obviously I wanted to,” I say, frustrated, but without conviction. Did I want to? Or was it nice to forget about anger, forget about pain, forget about everything for a few hours?

Nope. God, book, you’re in first person and you explicitly wrote her struggling to remember what was going on and being constantly distracted. You wrote her wandering out to find Tobias and forgetting what his name even was halfway through calling for him. She several times says she doesn’t like something but that something else attracts her attention so she can’t focus. You also wrote her hallucinating.

“Sometimes,” he says, sliding his arm across my shoulders, “people just want to be happy, even if it’s not real.”
He’s right.

Where was the editor? Because it wouldn’t be hard to rewrite Tris’ section if that was supposed to be the idea, and it’d even be a good point about how the factions tend to paper over problems but it’s appealing because it’s an easy fix. Tris could’ve stopped being upset and angry not because she couldn’t remember why she’d been punching Peter but because it seemed so unnecessary now when it was obvious everything was going to be fine. Bonus: less daterapey subtext.

“You might be right,” I say quietly.
“Are you conceding?” he says, his mouth falling open with mock surprise. “Seems like that serum did you some good after all….”
I shove him as hard as I can. “Take that back. Take it back now.”

See, that’s why the serum is a failed idea. If it causes sudden mood changes, it won’t cause any lasting change. It’s like you can help alcoholics by putting a nausea drug in their drink, causing an instinctive aversion, but if you tell them and they know it was just something you added, it doesn’t do anything.

Anyway, Tris is embarrassed so she skips supper, which is dinner to these people, and spends it picking “ripe” apples. Why is no one harvesting the ripe apples already? Hell, we know Abnegation is normally used as extra farm labor, why aren’t they now? Why didn’t anyone think to send the group defined as fearless (and known to be cranky) up the trees instead of having them wash clothes with others?

Tris also says that being active helps her push away grief, which is just all the more reason the Abnegation should be out there as well.

She hears cars.

The Amity own about a dozen trucks that they use for transporting goods, but they only do that on weekends.

What.

(And why weekends, of all things? If they still divide up weekday/weekends like we do, why wouldn’t the transfer be done on a normal day given it involves several other factions?)

Okay. Let’s try to figure out max population. This will be rough, but…

NPR claims the average American eats about a ton of food per year. And googling found a book, The Earthbound Cook, talking about a flatbed truck holding about six thousand apples, which incidentally is just about a ton.

So. Two dozen trucks of a ton of food each per week, fifty-two times a year: 1248 well fed Americans, eating calorie-dense food. While the people of the city seem likely eat fewer calories, they also seem to eat much less processed food – a ton of apples has far fewer calories by weight than chips. Same for the Abnegation’s peas and chicken breast diet.

And that’s assuming she means that the trucks leave on Saturday then take another load Sunday, while the more likely reading is just that eleven trucks worth of food enter the city each week. It’s also assuming max loads each week all through winter. So far, there’s no sign the food is being processed much. The apples are rotting in the field. That actually is the sort of screwup you’d get if you refuse to ship more food during the harvest period. On the other hand, they should manage year-round production given they have greenhouses, so there shouldn’t be any weeks they’re not shipping food at all.

Including the fact the factionless are kept on starvation diets and that they make up the majority, we seem to be looking at maybe two thousand people maximum, unless Amity’s outside the gate numbers are enormous. That’s barely a sustainable breeding population, and that’s before we get into the fact they can only marry within their group, which makes them partially closed gene pools.

Granted, you can get three generations without marrying your siblings, so the population should still look fine at the moment, but this really isn’t going to last. Maybe that’s yet another reason Erudite is so hellbent on taking control – Abnegation’s way is a slow death.

You may have forgotten where we were. It’s that the Erudite approach. You may have also forgotten that the Erudite last book showed off their solar car invention, which was extremely quiet, yet they are apparently currently approaching with a noise level resembling trucks, as if they’re not traveling in those. Further evidence Abnegation has been preventing them from widespread development!

Apple trees aren’t very tall; I may not be able to see far enough.

While I may be annoyed at the general refusal of things to make sense, I would like to say that yes, apple trees are not very tall. That is a true thing you just said there. Thank you, author, for making more sense than Hunger Game’s apple groves in the middle of thick forest.

Tris proceeds to Dauntless it up by climbing until the branches break and only just manages to avoid breaking her own neck. She then spies…

a few moving specks—silver, when the light catches them. Cars with black roofs—solar panels

Oh book, why must you be so inconsistent with information. So Erudite is mass producing their solar cars, but the solar cars you specifically said were incredibly quiet are noisy like regular cars and can only be distinguished visually?

Also, why is everyone assume Erudite is still a powerhouse? They failed their coup and pissed off the only faction that has guns in the process.

She runs to warn everyone.

“Why do we need to run?” says Susan. “The Amity established this place as a safe house. No conflict allowed.”

For fuck’s sake, Susan. Are you aware you’re one of the only female characters left? Tris is currently surrounded by her boyfriend, her brother, her asshole not-prisoner, and her boyfriend’s evil dad, with the only other female character being the possibly evil spokesperson of Amity. Even the new side characters have been guys.

You have a standard to uphold, Susan. A standard of not being incredibly stupid.

Well, at least Tris decides to overcome her hatred of thought long enough to actually make a plan. They’re half dressed in Amity clothes already, they should mingle so Erudite can’t pick them out.

Come to think of it, this suggests there’s really very little actual record-keeping in the city. It must be up to individual factions to keep track of their people and they must do that mostly by sight, which in turn means all the numbers I was listing earlier must be much smaller. 300 is probably closer to max faction size, with perhaps Amity being over that due to being split up.

Tris then grabs the gun.

and when I do, my throat pinches, and I can’t swallow. I don’t want to touch the gun. I don’t want to touch it again.

She really should’ve just given the gun to Tobias. At least she thinks to grab her medication and hard drive.

If the Erudite catch us—which is likely—they will search us, and I don’t want to just hand over the attack simulation again. But this hard drive also contains the surveillance footage from the attack. The record of our losses. Of my parents’ deaths. The only piece of them I have left. And because the Abnegation don’t take photographs, the only documentation I have of how they looked.
Years from now, when my memories begin to fade, what will I have to remind me of what they looked like? Their faces will change in my mind. I will never see them again.

That’s a really good point, but one that should probably have been brought up earlier when I was boggling at why you were making a big deal about this, since I can’t see what’s gained by delaying the statement.

Also, if you’re assuming you personally will end up caught and searched, why don’t you and Tobias try to sneak off? Two people should be much easier than the whole group.

Then she smashes the hard drive for no reason.

I think the author thinks that somehow the simulation data was actually stolen when Tris got the harddrive, so without it they can’t run the simulation, despite that not being how programs work generally. If it’s the only copy, that needed to be made very clear, and even then they can just make it again.

But anyway, so the hard drive served to be totally pointless plotwise.

Tris heads back to the group and her brother says she’s still in Abnegation clothes, but it’s her father’s shirt so she doesn’t want to give it up, so Caleb takes it and puts it under his own, and this was a really good scene about her trying to hold on to her parents so now the character elements of the hard drive are redundant too.

I’m left with the guess the author thought the hard drive would be a good idea when she finished the first book, then changed her mind and didn’t want it to feature, so she had to write it out again.

“Do you think the Amity will lie for us?” I ask him, leaning out the open doorway.
“To prevent conflict?” Tobias nods. “Absolutely.

Considering the factions appear to be Insane Neutral at best, this no longer seems like a safe bet. Inducting the surviving Abnegation into a simulation would permanently prevent conflict.

The Erudite cars pull up to the compound. There are five of them, all silver with black roofs. Their engines seem to purr despite being solar cars that are super quiet.

five men and women in Erudite blue.
And about fifteen in Dauntless black.

You know what’s really annoying?

The way everything just doesn’t quite fit.

We spent most of last book on how there was interfaction drama and Erudite was manipulating other factions to support them and oppose Abnegation, then SURPRISE MINDCONTROL NONE OF IT MATTERS. Then the resolution was that they turned the mindcontrol off. And now the mindcontrol apparently just flat out didn’t happen and Dauntless instead fractured naturally to people who support the old guard and those who support the new the way we saw things set up for last book, which in turn means I can’t even care about how it’ll turn out this time because I can guess there’ll be some deus ex machina avoidance of actual faction politics in the last five chapters.

The book doesn’t even try to make it work.

When the Dauntless come closer, I see strips of blue fabric wrapped around their arms that can only signify their allegiance to Erudite. The faction that enslaved their minds.

STOP POINTING OUT YOUR OWN PLOT HOLES DAMMIT.

Actually, there is one and only one way this could work: the Erudite got control of some Dauntless in the chaos and put them under again, and those are being used here. That explains why so few and why they’re wearing a marker of allegiance when it’s basically a plz shoot me sign otherwise – the Erudite need to keep track of who they’ve enslaved and who’s still free.

Tobias continues gesturing at the plot hole by being shocked any Dauntless are on Erudite’s side (why is it impossible they’ve been recaptured by Erudite?), so then why exactly did you flee in terror and why exactly did everyone panic at the idea of Erudite showing up? They’re not exactly solid combatants.

So anyway, they continue Plan Pretend We’re Amity Because Our Society Doesn’t Have ID Or Anything.

“Just bounce a little when you walk,” he says, kissing my forehead, “and pretend you’re afraid of their guns”—another kiss between my eyebrows—“and act like the shrinking violet you could never be”—a kiss on my cheek—“and you’ll be fine.”

That’s dumb. We’ve seen no sign the Amity fear anything. They’re laughing and smiling when they enter the city through a barbed wire fence guarded by bored people with huge guns. For all the book criticizes Dauntless’ narrow view of courage, it sure seems to resort to painting everyone else as cowardly an awful lot.

“Tell the kids to play tag,” I say to her.
“Tag?” she says.
“They’re acting respectful and … Stiff,” I say, cringing as I say the word that was my nickname in Dauntless. “And Amity kids would be causing a ruckus. Just do it, okay?”

Retcon! Stiff was the derogatory term for the faction, and only used at her because she was the only stiff in Dauntless, and was thrown out at her multiple times before she’d done anything that’d possibly fit the definition. It was never even a proper nickname, it was just used as a slur a couple times.

It is amazing how pretending to be in a different faction changes everything—even the way I walk. That must be why it’s so strange that I could easily belong in three of them.

Not really. This shouldn’t even be that big of a deal given her birth faction at least has a public/private divide for behavior, where you’re allowed to be more open when you’re among your own. Behaving in different ways based on the situation rather than as an automatic expression of your faction tendencies is a concept she grew up on. She even seemed to grasp this likely extended to other factions when she observed each group of faction kids acting according to their stereotype and wondered if there were kids in each who didn’t want to be doing that but had to.

“Our Erudite and Dauntless friends are looking for some people,” Johanna says. “Several members of Abnegation, three members of Dauntless, and a former Erudite initiate.” She smiles. “In the interest of full cooperation, I told them that the people they were looking for were, in fact, here, but have since moved on. They would like permission to search the premises, which means we have to vote. Does anyone object to a search?”
The tension in her voice suggests that if anyone does object, they should keep their mouth shut.

God, this is dumb.

If Amity wasn’t going to maintain a safe house, then we shouldn’t have wasted time on their saying they decided to do that. It could’ve just been that they would let Abnegation stay for the moment but made no further promises. Now this just looks suspicious as hell, because they announced it, presumably officially to the people beyond this area, yet are rolling over when the Erudite show up. It also continues to illustrate how weird it is that none of the factions take Erudite’s behavior as a threat toward their own interests.

Finally, Johanna’s Candor, so she should know this looks like she’s lying. If Amity wants to be a safehouse, no one else has the right to search them, because the only reason for a search is to verify if the people are there and then act on that information. They’d have been far better served by establishing off the bat that Amity will take an invasion of their territory as a hostile act – Amity’s ability to respond to that is unclear, but if nothing else, if Johanna really opposes her faction leaving Abnegation to die, this would be a good way of either making Erudite back down or forcing Amity to realize Erudite doesn’t respect their faction’s right to exist any more than the Abnegation they slaughtered.

In conclusion, god this book gets stupider by the chapter.

Anyway, a Dauntless spies Tobias’ Dauntless haircut and tattoos, he assaults her first and gets the gun, the sound of a gunshot triggers a flashback for Tris to killing Will. I’m kind of eh about flashbacks, because I feel they’ve overused. Tris is also out of it to the point she stays frozen while another Dauntless is about to shoot her and has to be rescued by her brother grabbing the gun from her and shooting out the guy’s knees, because the other guy takes forever to aim apparently. Tobias then headshots the crippled guy despite him clearly no longer being a threat, while restricting himself to threats towards the two uninjured people.

I just wish Tris could have PTSD in a way that’s less damsel and more violent.

Then the Erudite woman tries to shoot and Tris saves the person she was aiming at who just happens to be Peter, and Tobias again doesn’t shoot and just threatens. Just shoot already.

So then all the Abnegation flee.

I hear a heavy thump and a scream. There are screams everywhere, to my left, to my right. Gunshots. The Abnegation are dying again, dying like they were when I pretended to be under the simulation.

And I don’t care.

One of my pet peeves in fictional tragedies is this kind of thing – it’s like once the author’s started slaughtering redshirts for drama, they just can’t stop. Lots of Abnegation are already dead. Probably most, in fact, because apparently shutting down the simulation didn’t actually stop Erudite so the ones who fled to Amity may be the only survivors.

Fictional tragedies always get more meaningless the more deaths you pile on, and in this case we’re also approaching the problem of running out of people – there were never many Abnegation to start with and it seems like now most are dead, so the heroes have just flat out failed here. The faction’s gone.

Finally we reach the fence. Tobias runs along it, pushing it until he finds a hole.

So there’s just random holes along the fence now.

The group split up, so it’s just him, Tris, her brother and her brother’s girlfriend. Presumably Marcus and Peter are also still alive because the author passed up every good chance to get rid of them and obviously loves having them around.

Once they reach relative safety, Tobias flips out about how Tris flipped out. Yet more evidence that the fear sims affect PTSD formation, leaving Dauntless with no real understanding of the disorder.

“Hey!” says Caleb. “Give her a break, all right?”
“No,” says Tobias, staring at me. “She doesn’t need a break.” His voice softens. “What happened?”
He still believes that I am strong. Strong enough that I don’t need his sympathy. I used to think he was right, but now I am not sure. I clear my throat.
“I panicked,” I say.

And I’m not sure how this is actually going to work. Tris’ ability to willpower her way through trauma works better when it avoids being a 1:1 comparison with actual disorders where that isn’t a solution.

Anyway, she promises it won’t be a problem next time, and he says they need to get going.

“We were probably the only ones they were really after, apart from Marcus, who is most likely dead.”

Which means that it’s because they stayed that the rest of the Abnegation were killed – for that matter, if Tobias already knew this as opposed to just figuring it out now, then when he told the Abnegation to leave with them, he must have done it with the intent of covering their own flight by getting other people killed.

Tris completely ignores this in favor of wondering how Tobias is handling his dad’s death totally calmly, because obviously Tobias’ feelings about his dad who isn’t actually dead anyway come on is more important than exactly how guilty they are over the deaths of all those other people.

I didn’t realize until that moment that Dauntless initiation had taught me an important lesson: how to keep going.

That was like half of the climax of last book. Not much of a dramatic line to end on, and really minor compared to the fact that Tobias just said all those people died because they were looking for you guys specifically.