Well, it’s time to find Cam his bride orbiting planet you know what bride actually sounds less awful than the term the book keeps using, we’re going with that.

They get two hundred girls There are actresses and models, scholars, and high-society debutantes. who are all hand-picked by Roberta.

The final twenty are brought to Cam for his assessment in a cushy fireside interview in the grand living room. They are all well-dressed, pretty, and smart. Most of them talk about their résumés as if applying for an office job. Some look at him with no qualms, while others can’t look him in the eye at all.

So – why are those ones here?

I suspect there’s not much thought to it, it’s just that they all want this job but some of them still think he’s gross and the author’s showing the range of opinions. But the “job” is to stand near Cam with the very strong implication you’re in a sexual relationship. It’s not even an issue of if the official story is that you’ve had sex, the way purity works in our culture is that you can be gross for associating, gross for being in a situation where it’s possible regardless of if it happens or not.

So if we accept that actually being his girlfriend means signing up for people to think of you as, if not literally fucking Cam, than fucking-adjacent, you’d think people who are disturbed by the look of him wouldn’t want the job. If they’re repulsed, why would they think standing near the repulsive thing was going to do them any favors socially?

Actresses might do it out of desperation, but they’ve got to also be aware that sleeping your way to the top is already the shit standard and sleeping with the wrong people along the way makes other people not interested. It’s a risky thing and so probably not a risk you’d take if you personally view him as disgusting and expect basically everyone to see him the same way.

Models – at least with actresses they can use publicity in more than one way. Models have to be virgin sexbombs. Who’s going to hire Bride of Frankenstein for the swimsuit issue that good all-American men want to jack off to? Someone who is currently a model and trying to claw their way into acting might be desperate enough for it, and someone currently a model but expecting to age out of it soon might see it as an okay opportunity except that I’m pretty sure they’re going for the young waif look, so it seems like anyone in that bracket would already be too old, and again, it seems like someone would only even consider the option if they didn’t think Cam was that gross because if he is, career-killer.

Scholars, this one works. Academia is many shitty things, but just standing out in any way helps. If fifty people apply for the grant and you’re the only one who wasn’t instantly forgotten then who cares if it’s because he thinks you fucked a zombie, that’s still a net win. They’re also the most respectable/least associated with prostitution, which is absolutely the association that’s going to be made when there’s a girl hired to stand next to the very expensive thing.

High-society debutantes…

Allow us to consider the definition that pops out of Google:

deb·u·tante
‘deby??tänt/
noun
an upper-class young woman making her first appearance in fashionable society.

The whole point of debutantes is that they’re at the height of their desirability and attention. Why would the rich girl choose to fuck up her chances and ensure she’ll never marry anyone of her actual social class by going out with the science project? What does she possibly have to gain?

Now, if we’re talking new vs old rich, that’s where this gets unpleasant. See, the more you have the more important it is you keep finding new ways to be better than other people. You could have a “debutante” who’s not of very respectable breeding (Dad is self-made and probably in some particularly unimpressive, or generally considered boorish) but who herself has no scandal attached and seems legitimate enough to America at large even if the top .001% is still going to sneer at her. But someone who’s managed to make it this far with no scandal despite being wealthy enough for at least moderate attention doesn’t seem like the sort of person to be jumping on the controversy zombiefuck train, does she?

So here’s what I think we actually have – there’s scholar chicks who are okay with this because this isn’t actually that big of a deal in a world that’s already accepted men getting replacement tackle from twelve year olds, and there’s rich girls whose dads are forcing them to do this because think of the publicity Grace come on do you realize how big this could be for me, who can’t make eye contact and are desperately hoping not to be picked.

There’s one girl who fawns all over him, putting off more heat than the fireplace.
“I would love to be your first,” she says. “You can do that, can’t you? I mean you’re . . . complete, right?”
“More than complete,” he tells her. “In fact, I have three.”
She just stares at him dumbfounded, and he decides not to tell her he’s joking.

Plus your standard reminder that women being sexually aggressive is way more disgusting and you should make fun of them for it, also they’re probably dumb.

(Also I’m going to assume this is one of the scholar girls who’s being totally sincere.)

Cam explains there’s a few he finds attractive but none there’s really the spark of connection he has hoped for. Cam, you’re barely interacted with anybody since being stapled together. I’d think you’d be way more desperate for fellow human contact.

By the time he gets to the last girl, a Boston scholar with New York fashion sense, he just wants to get this day over with. The girl is one of those who is intrigued by his face. She doesn’t just look at him, though, she studies him like a specimen under a microscope.
“So what do you see when you look at me?” he asks.
“It’s not what’s on the outside—it’s the inside that matters,” she responds.
“And what do you think is inside?”
She hesitates, then asks, “Is this a trick question?”

Also, maybe you’re not feeling “the spark of connection” because you are literally interviewing them for a job. You know? Like it’s obvious she thinks how you’re put together is really cool, but she doesn’t feel comfortable enough with you to actually say that, does she? She tried to go to a standard script instead, and she then interpreted the next question in that light. You can’t jump back and forth between interviewing someone for how good they are at serving as your prop and trying to make a legitimate human to human connection and expect everyone else to keep up.

Finally Roberta says, “We’re not looking for your soul mate, Cam, just someone to fill a role. A consort to help ease you into public life.”

Incidentally the way Roberta talks strongly suggests she completely gets the prostitution aspects of this and is 110% in favor of it.

Cam gets upset and refuses. We do get this, though:

Deep down he knows she’s right

Which…Roberta not terrible, maybe? But then it goes on:

All they need to make Roberta’s scheme work is an attractive, personable girl holding his hand, convincing the public that there’s so much about Cam to love. But he finds no bit of actor in him. Perhaps he can feign it, but he dreads the moments alone when he has to face the emptiness of a false relationship.

So I feel that it’s probably right only in the sense of her plan, which is as a whole evil and terrible and getting referred to as “scheme”.

And if he can’t find a soul mate among the girls paraded before him, does that mean they’re right, and he has no soul?

That’s a really stupid thought, Cam. “I talked to a whole twenty girls in an extremely artificial situation and not one of them is my unique among all billions of humans soulmate, well shit, guess I don’t have one!” If only you said it aloud Roberta could point that out. Instead he says something vaguer.

“Incomplete,” he says. “If I’m whole, why do I feel like I’m not?” And as usual, Roberta has a calming platitude intended to ease his mind, but as time goes on her rote wisdom leaves him flat and disappointed.
“Wholeness comes from creating experiences that are solely yours, Cam,” she tells him. “Live your life and soon you’ll find the lives of those who came before won’t matter. Those who gave rise to you mean nothing compared to what you are.”

It’s a platitude only because what you’re saying is basically meaningless. There really isn’t much else she can say, is there? She just has to reassure you that your irrational feelings aren’t actual fact and that’s that platitudes are for.

The attacks in the press conference still plague him. If a human being has a soul, then where is his? And if the human soul is indivisible, then how can his be the sum of the parts of all the kids who gave rise to him? He’s not one of them, he’s not all of them, so who is he?

Roberta for some reason decides to softball this as “I’m sorry,” she tells him, “but I don’t deal in the unanswerable.”
“So you don’t believe in souls?” Cam asks her.
“I didn’t say that, but I don’t try to answer things that don’t have tangible data. If people have souls, then you must have one, proved by the mere fact that you’re alive.”
“But what if there is no ‘I’ inside me? What if I’m just flesh going through the motions, with nothing inside?”
Roberta considers this, or at least pretends to. “Well, if that were the case, I doubt you’d be asking these questions.” She thinks for a moment. “If you must have a construct, then think of it this way: Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are.”
“Until we are not,” Cam adds.
Roberta nods. “Yes, until we are not.” And she leaves him with none of his questions answered.

And that’s why she should’ve just said that souls aren’t real. Why is it fictional people are allowed really strong feelings about how real souls are but never really strong feelings about how not real they are?

I honestly do not know why every artificial thing in fiction always has to complain about having a soul. I get that this would matter to some people. But it’s all of them, and all of the people around them are required to treat this as profound even though they’re almost always scientists and those scientists are almost always ones who clearly do not have the slightest concern about what God may or may not want them to be doing.

Look – what is a soul? If you have no idea what it even does, then who cares? If slapping together a bunch of meat into the shape of a person produced a thing that acted differently, then yeah, that’d suggest some sort of souly thing was going on. But if sticking meat together makes something indistinguishable from something grown from a single cell of meat, then souls either don’t exist or don’t do anything. If you must have a whine about it, maybe you could wonder if this means that you lack an immortal soul and don’t go to heaven. In a more religious setting where people already were generally certain that souls existed and went to heaven, I could see a character concerned about that.

Regardless, the business of “I” is absurd because you can obviously tell if you experience consciousness or not. I can’t, but you can. Also, given a power drill can remove that “I” just fine, saying this has something to do with the soul means the soul apparently exists in a very specific part of your brain and you could, in Unwind’s world, easily swap “souls” and this entire line of reasoning is just even stupider than it already is normally.

In conclusion, I hate you.

Physical therapy has evolved into full-on training sessions with machines, free weights, and cardio. Kenny is the closest thing Cam has to a friend, unless you count Roberta and the guards who call him “sir.” They talk openly about things that Roberta would probably want to monitor.

Oh also now Roberta isn’t even his friend and he’d rather chat with this other guy also on payroll who’s definitely not paid to be chummy with him unlike everyone else who is just using him.

“So the great girlfriend search was a bust, huh?” Kenny asks while Cam pushes himself on the treadmill.
“We have not yet found a consort for the creature,” Cam says, mimicking Roberta’s accent.

Fuck you, Cam.

Kenny encourages him to be picky and so he goes back to the computer to look through the pictures and see if he can find That Girl’s picture – remember her, from a while ago. Roberta comes down and unlocks another batch of files which contain more photos of That Girl in That Girl’s wheelchair.

“Bus,” says Cam. “She was on a bus.”
“Her bus never made it to its destination. It was run off the road and hit a tree.”
Cam shakes his head. “I didn’t get that memory.” Then he looks to Roberta. “Tell me about her.”

So the moral is if you’re doing some weird evil science project and also some weird evil surveillance, don’t try to save money by using the same facilities for both. Spring for the separate building and staff or the science project will insist on dating the person you’ve got under surveillance.

On to a brief Nelson chapter. He’s caught more kids.

Nelson attributes his success to the ingenuity of his tactics. He caught the girl at a food court by posing as a resistance worker. Gullibility has always been his greatest ally. The girl’s hair isn’t quite red, as Divan requested, but it could be strawberry blond in a certain light. As for the boy, Nelson used the girl as bait, securing her to a drainpipe near an abandoned factory in an umber neighborhood that was known to be AWOL-infested. He waited until her cries drew someone from the dark recesses of the building, and he watched as the boy freed her.

Now this is the sort of quality evil I expect. He’s able to think to himself that these are people who will try to help out others simply for the sake of it, and use that to kill more of them. Much better than his previous showing of leaving some kid in a hole for almost a week and just hoping no one came within screaming distance.

His DNA analyzer pegged them both as known AWOLs, which is always better for his conscience than catching kids who actually had a life to go back to.

While this could be an interesting moment of morality for another character, it doesn’t work with his previous chapter. We know he thinks kids are parasite scum and that it’s hilarious how the kids not slated for murdering don’t expect him to murder them. He’s got so little characterization, why can’t it at least be consistent?

He was never an overachiever, so doing twice the job with half the effort is a rare thing indeed!

It’s really not clear why the book thinks this, unless we’re to believe the majority of his job is driving to Canada to dump off the kids. He caught the girl then brought her somewhere else to catch the boy. He didn’t actually catch two kids at once.

The girl’s eyes have fading purple pigment injections that are just plain ugly

You may recall that the Connor’s pre-unwinding girlfriend had those. Not entirely sure if this is meant to be actually her or just a reminder that she was actually terrible because kids shouldn’t do temporary and harmless body modifications, but…although we’re told it’s a fad all the kids today are doing, we actually haven’t heard of a single other person doing this.

Divan then says that hey..

“They are saying that the Akron AWOL is still alive.”
Nelson feels the little hairs on the back of his neck rise and embed themselves in his collar.
“That’s impossible.”
“Yes, yes—you’re probably right.” Then Divan puts down his spoon. “However, did anyone actually see or identify the body?”
“I wasn’t at Happy Jack. I imagine it was a mess.”
“Exactly,” says Divan slowly. “A mess.” Then he picks up his coffee and takes a long, slow sip. “Which means that any number of things could have happened.” Then he puts down his coffee and leans closer. “I believe these rumors may be true. Do you have any idea how much the parts of the Akron AWOL would go for? People will pay obscene amounts for a piece of him.”

Is it ridiculous that this would just occur to people? It must be that the conspiracy that controls everything has changed their mind about Connor and now wants him gotten rid of.

The Conspiracy That Controls Everything: Glues together even the most fragmented and contradictory plots!

And with this, we end part three.