Part Seven
Consciousness

I think I said earlier that there were eight parts, but apparently it’s just seven. So almost done!

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us . . . Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
—ALBERT EINSTEIN

This perfectly encapsulates all the quotes of this book. There’s no coherent tone. Sometimes it’s pretentious stuff, sometimes it’s a joke. And here at the end, it’s also riding the coattails of other, cleverer people.

Anyway, we’re all really here to find out if Connor-sue made it through with real injuries.

His face aches, and he can see out of only one eye.
…
This is unquestionably a hospital room
…
He tries to lift his right arm but there’s an ache in his shoulder

Surprisingly promising!

A nurse pokes her head in to explain he’s been in a medical coma for the last two weeks. Coma Connor is the best Connor. He desperately asks about Risa. Nurse blows him off (because adults are evil). This is one of those rare moments in the book where the author’s intention actually aligns with what he’s writing – Connor is beat up and concerned for Risa! Other person won’t tell him! Drama!

“Just relax now, Mr. Mullard. Let us handle everything.”

…huh.

His second thought is that he’s been unwound after all. He’s been unwound, and somehow, someone got his entire brain. He’s inside someone else now.

This book has indeed created a new nightmare scenario for confused people waking up after injury.

After a moment, Connor realizes that the rest of his head also seems pretty like he remembers, so unless someone took his whole skull, he probably wasn’t unwound. He says he’s Connor.

The nurse studies him with an expression that’s kind, but calculated—almost disturbingly so. “Well,” she says, “as it so happens, an ID with the picture charred off was found in the wreckage. It belonged to a nineteen-year-old guard by the name of Elvis Mullard. With all the confusion after the blast there really was no telling who was who, and many of us agreed that it would be a shame to let that ID go to waste, don’t you agree?”

It’s like, I’m turning this whole paragraph around in my head, trying to find the strand to start untangling it, but every angle I look at it makes exactly as little sense as the last.

“Now tell me,” she asks, “What was your name again?”
Connor gets it. He closes his eye, takes a deep breath, and opens it again.
“Do I have a middle name?”
The nurse checks the chart. “Robert.”
“Then my name is E. Robert Mullard.”
The nurse smiles and holds out her hand to shake his. “A pleasure to meet you, Robert.”

I guess it is fitting, though. My brain crumbles trying to make sense of this development from a plot standpoint, but from a metaplot standpoint, I guess it couldn’t be any other way. This is how problems are solved in this book, tripping and having adults do everything for you. Even the stupid Roland subplot wasn’t resolved by Connor, he just ran out the clock on it until someone else killed Roland.

She shakes his left hand instead. “Your shoulder will feel a bit sore until the graft is completely healed.”

Oh for christ’s sake.

He’s got a new eye too then.

Also, the nurse says for some reason she wasn’t supposed to mention that just because the doctors wanted to tell him that instead. I can’t imagine why. Maybe there’s a really high chance of alien limb syndrome when you do this and they just like to watch people flip out.

She explains that the fake ID they apparently wanted to use up instead of selling on the surely very, very lucrative black market means you qualified for emergency transplants because I guess if he was someone else he wouldn’t have?

I’ve seen the eye—don’t worry, it’s a decent match.

Oh thank god there won’t even be cosmetic repercussions for this.

As for the arm, well, the new one is a little more muscular than your left one

OH NO HIS NEW ARM WORKS EVEN BETTER THAN HIS OLD ONE TRULY CONNOR IS SUFFERING AND NOT A CONSEQUENCE-FREE SUE.

She leaves him alone with the arm. His arm. An arm that bears the unmistakable tattoo of a tiger shark.

Jesus christ why.

And despite the fact this entire book has been all about muscle memory, you just know it’s not going to strangle him or anything. I don’t even know what this is. Symbolic proof that he’s totally defeated Roland?

I’d like to add that since Roland was only just cut up, his brain probably hasn’t been blended yet, so they actually could reassemble him. That’d really add a layer of horror for me, that it’s not so much Roland is dead yet as he’s still on the conveyor belt to be killed.

Well. On to Risa.

Risa’s life as she knew it ended the day the clappers blew up the Chop Shop

Risa’s life as she knew it has actually ended quite a number of times, by my count.

—and everyone eventually did learn that it was clappers, not Connor.

I’m really not sure why the book is so desperate to explain this it has to make it the first sentence. We already know he didn’t, so why does it matter so much what other people think? Is it just that explosives=evil so we have to make it clear Connor had nothing to do with it, he only uses guns and car accidents like a proper hero?

Especially after the confession of the clapper who survived.

DAMMIT LEV CAN’T YOU DO ANYTHING RIGHT?

Risa’s experience sucked a whole lot more, though. She was trapped in the rubble in horrible pain and had to try to comfort the even more horribly injured Dalton while he slowly died.

The guitar player had been luckier. He was able to wrestle himself out from under the debris, but he couldn’t free Risa, so he left, promising her he’d send back help. He must have kept his promise

You’d think someone saving your life would make them worthy of a name. Or even just going through an event like that together. But this is Risa, who forgot 66% of her companions’ names while she was in a crate with them, and never again mentioned the third one she supposedly bonded so much with.

For some reason, they told her he was dead. I’m not sure if this is connected to the ID thing or if they were just fucking with her because evil. I mean, the ID thing at least has to do with something, but you’d think if you were trying to keep that quiet you’d just tell her she did it so she didn’t keep arguing you’re lying and she saw him alive.

Also apparently Lev is the one who carried her out, because Jesus gives you super strength. All by himself. No wonder she’s in such terrible shape, how hard is it to understand that you don’t want to jostle someone more than you have to when they have who knows how many broken bones?

Risa tells him the other kids stormed the gates and escaped, although presumably the tithe kids stayed behind and have been murdered. The book doesn’t seem to like tithes, so I don’t think it cares. Being indoctrinated makes you a bad person.

Connor asks if she’s okay, and she says her back broke.

Connor waits for more, but that’s all she has to give him. “Well . . . that’s not so bad, right? They can fix that—they’re always fixing that.”
“Yes,” says Risa. “They fix it by replacing a severed spine with the spine of an Unwind. That’s why I refused the operation.”
He looks at her in disbelief, and she in turn points at his arm. “You would have done the same thing if they’d given you a choice.

No, I think it’s pretty obvious he wouldn’t have, given he’s upset and confused you didn’t choose to use a murdered kid to fix your spine.

This is also a new flavor of medical nonsense – if they can reconnect the spine they’re stuffing into you as a replacement, they can reconnect your existing severed spine. You have to sever a spine to get it out of the donor. It would be totally useless if they can’t fix the severing part. How the fuck can you miss something like this?

Connor’s super upset, further proving he’s still on the organs are awesome side.

“They can’t unwind me now—there are laws against unwinding the disabled—but if I got the operation, they’d unwind me the moment I was healed.

What the fuck. So why don’t all unwinds cripple themselves, then get a transplant when they turn eighteen? Also, why the fuck would you have a law like this? What sort of society would look at mass murdering teenagers and say, wait, we’re really got to protect the disabled ones, who we otherwise don’t give two shits about?

She smiles at him triumphantly. “So you’re not the only one who beat the system!”

Connor didn’t beat the system. Someone else blew up the system and for no reason the system then decided to save him.

Then she sees he’s got her attempted rapist’s arm. There’s a glorious moment where the book remembers that yeah, attempted rape was a thing that happened and it’s traumatic.

But when she looks at Connor, all that fades away. There’s only him.

So that’s why he has it. He has it so that he can be emo about it, because it’s all about him, and then she can reassure him that he’s the most important person in the world.

And of course, forget that, of the two of them, Connor was the one actually okay with her being raped, while Roland at least limited himself to the threat of it. The one who, when called on it, said that if she was going to be all hysterical about him encouraging Roland to rape her, maybe she should have been raped.

“I know this is your hand now,” she tells him. “Roland would never have touched me like that.” Connor smiles, and Risa takes a moment to look down at the shark on his wrist. It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No—the soul of a man.

Did you know I’m getting a bunch of hits from people who are doing search terms for the answers to school questions? So this is being taught in schools.

I just felt I should mention that.