Last time on Matched.com, she’s still matched to Xander and we learn more about Ky and the tablets.

This time, back to flashbacks! She recounts telling her parents about the new kid at the pool, not mentioning the tablet thing.

The omission felt like the tablet itself stuck in my throat. Every time I swallowed, I felt it catch there, threatening to choke me.

This actually brings up an interesting point. Do they practice swallowing tablets?

My dad insists we take vitamins and has since before I can remember and I’ve now spent about a decade having a monthly ibuprofen binge, so I can dry-swallow anything that comes in a bottle. My brother is a whiny baby who stuck to gummis and never had to go through menstruation, so he can’t, leading to many fun times where he’d try to swallow something, fail, and then spend a while choking or even vomiting. Unless they feel large disasters would be improved by that sort of hilarity, the government needs to make sure people know how to take the pills. Especially given that these are probably closer to the large end of the pill spectrum, or at least the blue is.

But they don’t seem to take anything else, and considering how big a deal they make of someone losing the pills or accidentally damaging them, it doesn’t seem like you’re supposed to take the tablets except in emergencies, so when would they get practice?

This would all make more sense if the tablets were chewable. Or just by saying they’re getting vitamin supplements with their meals.

Anyway.

All her parents care about is boggling over the impossibility of a new kid.

Adoptions were and are virtually unheard of in our Province of Oria.

So. They’re a province, and Oria itself is presumably just a subsection of the larger full society or else it’d have been used as a synonym by now.

So hm. Obviously, the death toll for these people must be extremely low, so they won’t have orphans much. But it seems Ky was removed from his family due to one parent being infracted, and infractions seem more common, so you’d think this would happen occasionally. (You’d also think people would know it meant the kid was considered an aberration, though.)

Right then, Xander’s dad shows up to chat.

We aren’t allowed to go into one another’s residences, but I could imagine him standing there on the steps, looking like an older version of Xander.

These are some terribly uptight people.

Xander’s dad brings tells them the kid is an orphan (cover story for the dad being a lesser criminal of some kind? They do seem to be trying to avoid people treating aberrations any differently than they would a regular person) and he’s from the OUTER PROVINCES OMG.

The Outer Provinces are on the geographic fringe of the Society where life is harder and wilder. Sometimes people refer to them as the Lesser Provinces, or the Backward Provinces, because they have so little order and knowledge there.

First, book book book, no. If outer province is synonymous with lesser and backward, you don’t need to come out and say it. Everyone knows when you say outer you mean lesser backward suckhole. Also, I feel like this is the sort of thinking they’d want crushed. It really isn’t in line with their belief their society is awesome or the idea the society is in charge of everyone.

Second, this is obviously a place where they like conformity and as they have electronics, there’s no reason that distance from the center should mean different treatment or culture. There might be some supply problems, but that should be it.

I can’t tell what the population density is. The game room was crowded, but it seems like that was because everyone was sick of the other options. The houses seem like suburban ones, not even too closely packed. The trains aren’t crowded and the train platforms seem to usually have only a single person waiting at them. There really doesn’t seem to be any reason to have people in crappy provinces, they have space.

There’s a higher concentration of Aberrations there than in the general populace. And even Anomalies, some say. Though no one knows for certain where the Anomalies are. They used to be kept in safe houses, but many of those stand empty these days.

Maybe there are just fewer anomalies now? And I’d guess the higher number of aberrations has to do with the different conditions. Why does she seem to think there’s a fixed number of anomalies running around? Is the idea that they’re some sort of biological thing that occurs at a set percenta oh hey maybe that’s where the gay people are. Although I don’t see why they’d care if people were gay, so, maybe not.

“He’s here with full Society approval,” Mr. Carrow said. “Patrick showed me the paperwork himself. He told me to tell anyone else who might be concerned.

But you live in a super controlling nannystate! You shouldn’t even think it’s possible for the kid to be here without approval!

In fact, speaking of that…

We learn that the Markhams had lost their kid, and this new one they’ve adopted is the woman’s nephew.

It was a rare case of government failure. A Class One Anomaly should never have been unidentified, let alone allowed to roam the streets, to sneak into the government offices where Patrick worked and where his son was visiting him that day.

Ah, so that’s what they are. Or at least the class one type.

A minor thing to consider here is that it actually says quite positive things about this society that they treat crazed murderers as people who just have to be kept away from others instead of killing them.

“Her nephew,” my mother said, her voice filled with empathy. “Of course Aida would want to raise him.”

So by implication under normal circumstances no one would want to raise an orphan. Huh. Wonder what they do with them.

“And the government might feel like they owed it to Patrick to make an exception for him,” my father said.
…
“It’s logical. An exception as recompense for the accident. A son to replace the one that they shouldn’t have had to lose. That’s how the Officials see it.”

And confirmed that adoption isn’t normally on the table. That doesn’t make much sense. If they’re stuck in an orphanage or something normally, then they’re not getting the stable home environment you apparently value so much, and also they’ll have different experiences than the rest of your society which you obviously hate.

Her mom tells Cassia to be nice to the boy.

It might be hard to be new when everyone else belongs.”

But actually Ky is super good at blending right in and in a few days it’s like he was always a part of things.

And that is how it’s always been with Ky, I realize now, looking back. We have always seen him swimming along the surface. Only that first day did we see him dive deep.

Book. Just stop with the forced metaphor already. It doesn’t work. Accept it, move on.

Anyway, now she’s meeting with her soon to be dead or disappeared grandfather.

The Officials didn’t keep me too long at the game center after I stepped on the tablets; I still have enough time for a visit.

One of the potential problems with dystopias is that it can be hard to tell if something is meant to not make sense. There’s no real reason for the officials to keep her there at all – she moved her foot, the container was there, okay done. But it could be a deliberate thing to show that the officials don’t act based on reason but treat damaging the pill container in the same way priests would get upset at someone stomping on a cross.

Her grandfather is sitting by the window because he likes to watch the sunset, and she wonders if he’s trying to see everything he can in his last moments.

The air-train tracks, dull in the daylight, look like beautiful glowing paths above the ground now that their evening lights have been turned on. As I watch, an air train rushes past, carrying people along in its white and lighted space.

So the air train appears to just be a train on raised tracks. That’s dull.

He is eating a piece of something called pie, which I have actually never tasted

Wow. You know, imagination-hating atheists usually don’t have such strong issues about pie.

“Everything’s fine. I’m still Matched to Xander,” I say. I’ve learned from the Society that this is the way to give news; reassurance first, all else after.

I’d really like to hear more about this – we’ve had occasional snippets but despite the fact this is first person, we’ve had very little insight into her head and she’s not particularly observant when it comes to others. Considering how much trouble miscommunication causes, standardizing things would be a huge boon.

So, she explains the whole bit about the other person’s face, although she’s distracted by how incredibly delicious the pie looks.

“It wasn’t a mistake by the Society,” I say. “The Society doesn’t make mistakes.”
“Of course not,” Grandfather says, his tone measured and even. “People do, though.

I really wish the book would explain at some point exactly what people mean when they say Society.

So Cassia explains about the whole aberration thing.

Her grandfather gets really upset by this

“I don’t like it,” he says. “Why would someone change your microcard?”

Cassia is obviously not a very worldly person, so it’s possible that her grandfather knows better than she does about this and this really is a sign of something more. But he doesn’t explain further, instead just echoing her earlier pity for Ky.

We learn Ky’s position sucks and everyone was surprised he got it.

“He works at the nutrition disposal center.”

Sounds like he’s a sewer worker. Anyway, it’s apparently miserable work and involves hot water that leaves Ky’s hands red from the abuse.

She explains the official said it was okay to tell him, and he says he just wants to protect her.

Not always, I think, raising my eyebrows back at him. Grandfather is the one who finally made me stop sitting at the edge of the pool.

Cassia turns out to have a very bizarre view of “protect” because she thinks convincing her to swim in the perfectly safe pool is somehow different.

My grandparents were one of the last couples who chose to be Matched later in life. They were thirty-five when they Matched. My father, their one child, wasn’t born until four years later. Now, no one is allowed to have a child after they turn thirty-one.

Huh. Well, that explains the age thing. Not sure why they made the cutoff thirty-one when there’s still another few years before the chance of a birth defect skyrockets.

Anyway so he goes to check out the diving board.

“Sir,” said the waterguard in charge of the pool. “Sir?”

“I have a recreational pass,” Grandfather told her, not stopping. “I’m in excellent health.”

…does everyone need a special pass to jump off the diving board or just old people? Why do they even have a diving board if they’re so twitchy about this?

Anyway because he does it, she goes after and does the same, and so for at least one day Cassia wasn’t sitting around. Yay! If only people would do the same for her now.

She jokes about it being leaping to her death then freezes up because of the whole thing where he’s going to die. He’s fine with it and everyone says it’s fine but she’s scared. I wonder how many of them aren’t okay with it but just acting like they are because they think everyone else is?

She thinks about how she has to get home soon, but she doesn’t want him to think she’s just waiting to leave.

Marking time until our visit is over. Marking time until his life is over. Although, if you think about it, I am marking time for my own life, too. Every minute you spend with someone gives them a part of your life and takes part of theirs.

Grandfather senses my distraction and asks me what is on my mind. I tell him, because I won’t have many more chances to do so, and he reaches out and grips my hand. “I’m glad to give you part of my life,” he says, and it is such a nice thing to say and he says it so kindly that I say it back.

There’s an impressive sort of honesty to a lot of what Cassia says and thinks. And for once that’s even accomplished without treating honest and hateful as the same thing.

She tells him she signed up to hike as a summer activity, because he did when he was younger before they canceled it and loved it, so when it was reintroduced this year she took it. They wonder where the hiking will be, since there isn’t much in the way of forests in the city. He suggests maybe they’ll go on the hill.

The Hill is the last place in the City that has been left forested and wild. I can see it now, its prickly green back rising out of the Arboretum where my mother works. It was once mostly used for Army training, but since most of the Army has been moved to the Outer Provinces, there isn’t as much need for it anymore.

…they have an army? Huh. And it’s in those outer provinces we’ve just learned about. On the other hand they seem to have stopped even bothering to train people, so that would suggest they’re phasing out the whole army business.

Then he talks about what he’s been thinking about. One of them is Cassia’s grandmother.

My grandmother died early of one of the last kinds of cancer

That’s not really how cancer works. She might have died of one of the last cases of cancer, or been one of the last cancer deaths. But it isn’t like there’s a couple types of cancer running around mugging people. Pretty sure the author’s trying to say that it was one of the few types of cancer they didn’t have a treatment for then.

“I think,” he says finally, “she would ask you if you wondered.”

On that deliberately mysterious statement the conversation has to end because the last train is arriving soon. Before she goes, though, her grandfather asks her to bring the compact with her tomorrow.

I don’t cry. I wonder when I can. It won’t be tomorrow night at the Final Banquet. People will be watching then. To see how Grandfather handles leaving, and to see how we manage being left.

Well that’s pretty fucked up. Possibly the most fucked up thing we’ve heard so far. One of those dictatorships where you can’t even show you’re upset by what they do to you, then.

I know Grandfather’s time is running out. I have known this for a long time. But why, as the elevator doors slide shut, do I suddenly feel that mine is running out as well?

I’ve no idea, Cassia. I mean, this place is shaping up to be pretty sucky, but there’s no sign they’d do anything to you any time soon.

She explains to us that the “wonder” is as in, did you wonder if he was the match?

For a moment, I did. When I saw Ky’s face flash in front of me so quick I couldn’t even see the color of his eyes, only the dark of them as they looked back at me, I wondered, Is it you?

No further explanation on why. She seems legitimately happy with Xander and not just in denial, since she didn’t jump on the idea she was meant to be matched to someone else. And she doesn’t seem to have thought of Ky at all until it was brought up now.

So. Cassia continues to be a pleasant narrator, but she could stand to explain her reasoning a bit more.