Last time, Melanie II didn’t want to head toward the next landmark until they went all the way to the previous one, not being clear on how humans use landmark navigation.

Predictably, this was a mistake, and they wasted that much gas in finding out and turning around. Incidentally, really hope the brainslugs have some sort of global warming fix if they’re still using gas, like filtering all the carbon out of the air or something. It’s a pretty good fuel and god knows it’s not doing anything useful sitting around, so if they could just get around the accidentally gonna kill us all part it actually would make plenty of sense to keep using as a transition fuel.

We have to move, Wanderer. It’s only going to get hotter.

Uh. About that. Isn’t it a better idea to travel during the less hot parts of the day?

I loaded the water, one bottle at a time, into the pack, my motions unnecessarily deliberate; I added the remaining granola bars just as slowly. All the while, Melanie ached for me to hurry. Her impatience made it hard to think, hard to concentrate on anything.

That’s not impatience, it’s non-dumbassery. You have limited supplies and you’re dragging your feet. Be less stupid.

She also whines about how her back hurts from sleeping in the car. I’ve slept in cars and your back should be fine, shut up and stop whining.

Melanie I also advises ripping up branches to hide the car, but that doesn’t seem like it’d really do anything. She just sort of drove the car into a gully, it’s not actually a particularly good hiding spot so branches will just delay anyone finding them, not really stop it.

Melanie II’s objection is not this, but just that maybe she wants to be found, such as, say, if this is a wild goose chase and she runs out of water.

Home? she questioned, throwing cheerless images at me: the vacant apartment in San Diego, the Seeker’s most obnoxious expression, the dot that marked Tucson on the map…

Yeah that’s not actually good enough to be arguing for actual suicide. She could always try again. Maybe you are just trying to kill her. Don’t give up so easily, Melanie I.

Melanie II asks what would have happened if she hadn’t happened to come this way and run into temptation. Melanie I says that she might still have tried this but admits she was pretty scared to rock the boat when there were so many souls around. This disappoints me – it’s best to avoid coincidences. I’d rather have had Melanie be the one urging her brainslug to come down this way in the first place.

I’m still afraid. Trusting you could kill them both.
We flinched together at the thought.

Instead of taking this as reassurance, she starts pleading with the brainslug not to hurt them without even a thought that it’s the brainslug’s fault this is an issue in the first place. Oh, Melanie I, don’t get whiny on me. This is still your selfish enemy here. Melanie II again expresses her overwritten husbando feels and this time Melanie I notices.

I didn’t like leaving the wash, just as I’d resisted leaving the car. I could follow this wash all the way back to the road, and the road back to the highway. It was miles and miles, and it would take me days to traverse, but once I stepped off this wash I was officially adrift.
Have faith, Wanderer.

I don’t think it’s supposed to be ironic here, but yeah, for someone named Wanderer she sure doesn’t like doing it. And it can hardly be chalked up to her host’s influence when that host is jumping up and down shouting to do this. Maybe Wanderer isn’t actually particularly much of an explorer, it’s just other brainslugs are even bigger wusses than she is?

Hm. But that doesn’t make much sense when considering how expansionist they are. They must be willing to take risks and want more experiences to keep colonizing planets, and this one is supposed to be particularly given to exploring the new.

Melanie I argues for faith in her crazy uncle, and Melanie II explains she doesn’t understand the concept of “faith”, presumably because she is a godless brainslug. You’d think a species whose natural form is a delicate brainslug reliant on others to insert it and who travel across incredible distances of space would graps the concept well enough.

Anyway, Melanie II continues to be wussy and drinks way too much water, and Melanie I continues to not take this opportunity to drive the body just until the difficult part’s over with.

There was nothing to see; one twisted, brittle shrub looked exactly the same as the next. The empty homogeny lulled me into a sort of daze–I was only really aware of the shape of the mountains’ silhouettes against the pale, bleached sky. I read their outlines every few steps, till I knew them so well I could have drawn them blindfolded.

Hm. That does sound boring. But come to think of it, why didn’t you get a bike? It sounds like the ground is flat enough for it.

They again decide to sleep when it gets dark. When you’re only carrying three days worth of water, I think the risk of traveling in the dark isn’t that great.

We’ll want to stay as far from the cholla as possible. You toss in your sleep.

So the author does indeed know about what a fun plant cholla is. I guess we’ll chalk this up to Melanie I not wanting to say anything much to avoid Melanie II noping out of this trip.

Melanie II doesn’t care because she’s busy freaking out about sleeping on the ground. Seriously? You’ve had seven lives and you’ve never done something like this? Melanie I attempts to talk her into this and can’t help but let slip that there’s bugs and snakes and coyotes. Yet again, does not try to tell the brainslug to let her deal with the discomfort. I don’t think that’ll be occurring to her at all at this rate.

“Perfect,” I moaned, sinking down into a crouch, though I was still afraid of the black ground beneath me. “Killed by wild dogs. Who would have thought it would end so… so trivially? How anticlimactic. The claw beast on the Mists Planet, sure. At least there’d be some dignity in being taken down by that. ”

I can’t imagine the claw beast is particularly badass when you find the idea of sleeping on the ground unbelievable. You are clearly not someone who’s experienced hardship.

Melanie I agrees and just says shut up and go to sleep, adding that it’s going to be even worse tomorrow.

She was turning into a tyrant. It made me think of the human axiom Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile.

Melanie II continues to not see anything ironic in these statements. I’m not clear on if the book does.

Next morning, Melanie II finds that she’s used up half her water already. See, if you’d just gotten three JUGS of water this wouldn’t be an issue.

Also an option: peeing in the bottle. Probably especially good in this situation because you’re probably drinking excess water due to heat and it’s going right through you. But like the Hunger Games before it, the book likely just doesn’t want to go into pee drinking.

(This would also be less of an issue if she had jugs of water, since then she wouldn’t have a container from the start. The more dehydrated you get, the less likely it is your urine contains enough water to be worth it.)

My stomach was harder to ignore than my mouth as the sun rose higher and hotter above me.

I find that really hard to believe. Being thirsty is something that just doesn’t go away. Your body knows you need to get water now and that every minute you aren’t getting water is one minute more of your body’s slow collapse. Hunger is more of an intermittent thing. If you ignore it, it goes away for a while then pops up again to remind you to get on that.

This is nothing, Melanie reminded me wryly. We’ve been hungrier.
You have, I retorted.

Interesting that it’s Melanie I that considers the two of them a “we”, while the brainslug is happy to disclaim things as being part of some other person’s life. I really wish we’d spent more time on how their society functions – they seemed to want to take over that person’s life normally, and treat things the host learned as their own skillset. For all I know, this is part of Melanie II being screwed up and prickly about it, and a normal brainslug would view the host’s experiences

Then they see the next one! And Melanie I now tells her the landmark to look for next. She’s doing a pretty good job doling out the information. Even if Melanie II decided to betray her now and head back, she doesn’t know if that’s the last landmark or not. In order to learn everything, she’s going to have to keep going, and soon she’ll be far enough that she won’t have enough water to make it back.

As they continue, they find an old dirt road, and Melanie II immediately embraces it just as Melanie I is nervous at the sight. Their characterization is as consistent as it is inexplicable. Melanie II’s earlier behavior was explained as not wanting to lose her way back, but that no longer applies. Melanie I dislikes roads because they mark civilization, but this road shows no sign of recent use or much use ever. At most, the person who used it once was brainslugged and still knows it exists, but that doesn’t matter if they’re no longer around. And Melanie I doesn’t make any argument for why she fears a brainslug is around, she seems just terrified of signs of humanity in general.

They continue along and see a building in the distance.

Melanie’s spike of panic had me dancing off the narrow lane and into the dubious cover of the barren brush.
Hold on, I told her. I’m sure it’s abandoned.
How do you know? She was holding back so hard that I had to concentrate on my feet before I could move them forward.

The Kevining is proceeding well.

Melanie II explains souls are super social and love society, except for how she was all isolated right from the start and also her comforter had to explain that humans are super social and love society in presumable contrast to their own natural tendencies.

This triggers a emo soulsearching bit from Melanie II about how she must no longer be part of that to be here on her own, and maybe she never was, because somehow moving between planets each life shows she was always unsociable.

Had I always been an aberration, or was this something Melanie was making me into? Had this planet changed me, or revealed me for what I already was?

Melanie totally changed you, unless you’ve always been down for death marches on the off chance you can see your host’s boyfriend’s face again.

Melanie had no patience for my personal crisis–she wanted me to get far away from that building as fast as possible.

That, or like me she realizes your persona crisis has obvious answers and doesn’t want you thinking about those too long lest you realize as well. Seriously, it is so, so obvious you’ve been Kevined.

Melanie II explains that when she says no one would live on their own, she means literally no brainslug could function like that. So what happens to ones sent off to do a job on their own? Does this just never happen or have they tried and it causes craziness?

Melanie I gives a counterpoint that no human could be living here either, because anywhere in the open was searched. So…it’s abandoned. I thought it being abandoned would be the default assumption, what’s the issue here?

Instead of that, Melanie II considers what might happen if they find non-uncle humans. They’ll obviously kill any brainslug they find. I’m not sure why they think her uncle will be different, though – I could see her boyfriend and brother hesitating, but not someone who likely gave her up for dead long ago and who’s also a crazy survivalist.

They finally decide that it must be abandoned. Move!

Also, Melanie I considers that they might be able to some makeshift weapon there, to Melanie II’s horror.

Ugh. How did such spineless creatures beat us?
Stealth and superior numbers. Any one of you, even your young, is a hundred times as
dangerous as one of us. But you’re like one termite in an anthill. There are millions of us, all
working together in perfect harmony toward our goal.

…what?

She is arguing that termites are death machines and ants are delicate creatures of harmonyfriendship? What the fuck, Melanie II. I’m going to be charitable and chalk that up to overwriting related brain damage. It’s looking plausible:

Again, as I described the unity, I felt the dragging sense of panic and disorientation. Who was I?

I mean, you seem to be viscerally disoriented when you think about certain things. Maybe the memories aren’t properly coded for your own brain and it’s producing errors as bits get into the wrong area. After all, I did theorize most species have better organized brains than humans.

Anyway, they finally go to the damn building.

The door frame gaped, doorless, and only a few shards of glass clung to the empty window frames. Dust gathered on the threshold and spilled inside. The gray weathered walls seemed to lean away from the wind, as if it always blew from the same direction here.
…
The little shack was empty, as we’d known it would be. There were no more signs of occupation inside than out. A broken table slanted down from its two good legs in the middle of the room, with one rusted metal chair beside it. Patches of concrete showed through big holes in the worn, grimy carpet. A kitchenette lined the wall with a rusted sink, a row of cabinets–some doorless–and a waist-high refrigerator that hung open, revealing its moldy black insides. A couch frame sat against the far wall, all the cushions gone. Still mounted above the couch, only a little crooked, was a framed print of dogs playing poker.

The writing of this generally tops off at serviceable, but this is pretty decent. It tells a bit of a story – someone left there with enough time to take some things since there’s no mention of food in the cabinets, but not enough to fully empty the place, or maybe they didn’t feel like bothering. And the place must have once had electricity despite how out of the way it is.

Melanie II tries the sink despite Melanie I thinking it’s useless and herself knowing that the brainslugs wouldn’t leave this place connected to the pipes. I’d expect somewhere like this to have a good chance of relying on a well, though.

In one of the rooms she sees some old newspapers with stories about murder and death and gets all upset. Melanie I says those were exceptions, but that’s a pretty lame excuse given the brainslugs apparently never do this stuff at all.

Can you see how we thought we might be able to do better, though? How we could have supposed that maybe you didn’t deserve all the excellent things of this world?

This is an excellent point that could stand to be expanded on. We don’t get this because Melanie I just says they could have cleaned the place up by blowing it all up, and Melanie II claims they flat out can’t with their level of technology which is obvious bullshit, our own current level of technology would be enough for that. It’s a weird answer anyway – they’re parasites, why would they want to kill off hosts? Then she adds that the planet itself is so nice they didn’t want to blow it up.

This unspeakable desert excepted, of course.

God, did you skim the orientation papers that much? First off, it’s hardly like this is the only desert, but more importantly, there’s all sorts of manmade fuckups covering the planet! The whole cornbelt is going to make regular desert look like paradise the moment human intervention pauses. Half of China is covered in smog. There’s also the fact Australia is on fire, don’t know how you missed that when it’s literally visible from space.

That’s how we realized you were here, you know,she said, thinking of the sickening news headlines again.When the evening news was nothing but inspiring human-interest stories, when pedophiles and junkies were lining up at the hospitals to turn themselves in

Huh. Why would brainslugs do that? How would they handle that?

They obviously find violence and harming others abhorrent, so getting stuck in the body of anyone who did bad things seems like it’s be too traumatic to handle. There’s no point in turning themselves in either, since they’re not that person and not going to commit any crime – although, given how little the brainslugs seem to change innate behavior, I can see the junkies wanting to turn themselves in because they couldn’t quit.

Or maybe that’s a sign of the brainslugs going nuts under the strain of being stuck in criminals. Especially considering what a coward our brainslug is, you would think they’d be too scared to go to jail.

I find it hard to believe this was the tipoff and not a brainslug getting hit by a car and paramedics finding it or someone seeing the shiny eyes or something.

Anyway, there is some food left in the cupboard – saltines and twinkies. Twinkies really don’t last that long, author, that was an urban myth.

Melanie I, ever more on the ball, instead says to check out the bottles of bleach, because you can keep water in them after they’re emptied.

Hm. So maybe this isn’t abandoned food but stuff left for anyone coming this way. That would certainly explain the twinkies.

In a minute. I finished one sleeve of crumbs and started on the next. They were very stale, but compared to the taste in my mouth, they were ambrosia. When I finished the third, I became aware that the salt was burning the cracks in my lips and at the corners of my mouth.

Good god are your survival instincts shitty. Water should be your first priority. You’ve only been without food a little while.

Anyway, Melanie II is really happy with all this and sets off again with a spring in her step. That seems overly optimistic – it’d be one thing if there was a well here, since that’d mean she could backtrack to it, refill all her water, and be able to make it back out alive. But here, she’s relying on being able to get the rest of the way on just this. She’s already at a halfway point – with how much water she drank getting there, what she finds here is probably only enough to get her back.