Last time on Matched.com, the all-seeing government is actually a bunch of morons.

Our time together feels like a storm, like wild wind and rain, like something too big to handle but too powerful to escape, like something that is every tired cliche modern teenagers use. And you know? I don’t think this can be explained by them being teenagers, because the people talking like this are drawing off melodramatic romances. It’s the more generic version of comparing minor disapproval or the idea the world doesn’t understand to being Romeo and Juliet, it still doesn’t work without any background in the subject.

Today, Ky chats about how he got the poem, because he has so thoroughly sapped away Cassia’s agency she can’t even think to ask on her own.

Anyway, he got it from people who call themselves “archivists” but more special because they have a capital a.

“Back when the Hundred Committee made their selections, the Archivists knew the works that didn’t get selected would become a commodity. So they saved some of them.

A commodity to who? I mean, what’s the cost/benefit thing here? The government clearly can ruin your life if you oppose them in the slightest. It seems like the only people who gave a fuck about the poems were the people working in that area, so they’d be preseving everything they could get their hands on as soon as things went south and have their own copy. Plus, people who are into poetry tend not to be in it for the dough, so you’d more likely have a network of people working together to preserve things. I guess maybe the capitalist holdouts who were the only ones bright enough to successfully preserve the poems, because invisible market hand god says so, and then the poetry people had to pay them to see stuff? Unless those people are loaded it still doesn’t seem like it’s worth the risk of an enraged government.

Ky reinforces that they did it just for the money, not because they cared, because it’s impossible people could both be charging money for poems and sincerely want to preserve the things. He lets slip they’re quite pricey, and then won’t tell her what he paid. He does say he didn’t trade “their” poem, singular, because the book’s forgotten that there were two because it wants to just keep hammering on the first one’s symbolism, and that if she needs money she should offer it.

I asked how many Dylan Thomas writings they had and they didn’t have much. The birthday poem, and a story.

When you consider just how much you could preserve on a single modern flashdrive, this sounds utterly ridiculous. I’m going to assume that the archivists preserved all the non-old-white-European-guy stuff first because it was eliminated from the running early on as well as what was actually in demand, and that’s why they’re so lacking in the literary canon.

“Although proving authenticity might be a problem, since you don’t have the original paper . . . still, I’m sure they would be worth something.”

Holy shit counterfeiting in this world must be so easy. Anyone with access to the write paper and printer can churn out “authentic poems”.

Cassia just whines that they sound scawwy.

“They’re not completely evil,” he says. “I’m trying to get you to see that they’re no better or worse than anyone else. No better or worse than the Officials

They’re not evil at all! They’re charging for copies of a thing that’s really dangerous for them to keep.

She manages to ask how to find them after he’s told her she should know how to find them, all the while baffled at why she’d “need” to sell the poem. Hey, Cassia, why would selling the poem be bad in the first place, I though you wanted it preserved. Hipster.

Anyway, to contact the archivists you go to the museum because the author thinks that’s clever.

“Go to the basement and stand in front of the exhibit about the Glorious History of Oria Province. No one ever goes there. If you stay long enough, someone will ask you if you want them to tell you more about the history. You say yes. They’ll know you want contact with an Archivist.”

And the reason this works is that no one ever actually wants to know more about history, despite everyone being bored as all fuck normally. What a cutting statement about popular culture and kids today or whatever.

I think the author’s the one who can’t imagine anyone being interested. I’d have appreciated some reference to what that glorious history is, like at least Ky saying “you know, the exhibit about how it was formed XXX years ago and rebuilt to…” or whatever.

Also, this is so so so so so so so so stupid. The society follows everything you do, but they don’t notice you going to the exhibit no one else goes to and standing around forever until someone goes up to you and says the exact same phrase they do to everyone who does that?

She asks how he knows this and he decides to channel Mako too!

“It’s better if I don’t tell you.”

Makoshipping: because the only person who deserves having Mako inflicted on them is Mako.

In all seriousness, I can’t tell if it’s that the author just can’t think of how Ky’s figured this out and is just trying to move things past it or if she really thinks this is proper romance.

Then Ky hums a song and Cassia says she loves the singer’s voice in it and Ky mentions it’s a fake voice and Cassia’s all omg really because Ky knows everything and Cassia knows nothing. So yeah, all the singer’s voices are computer generated, because they are. The society lets people redesign the dresses every couple years, but they don’t let people sing the songs even once. I bet people would be way less bored with the music if they had even that much variety.

Cassia doesn’t get how that can be true because the singer sounds real and like she’s taking breaths, and Ky says that’s added in too to make it sound authentic. How does he know? Because where he lived before people sang and none of them sang that good and that’s how he knows everything, including why the voices would sound like they were breathing.

Or maybe they’re just better singers than the people where you lived! Maybe they had actual training and a great recording studio and then the sound was cleaned up, just like we do now! But no, you just know it’s all fake because you have to be special and lecture Cassia on everything.

Then they have to destroy the poem.

“It’s not as sad to destroy this one,” I say, telling him and reminding myself. “Other people know it. It still exists somewhere else.”

So why not tell the other people “your” poem so they can know it too?

Cassia says they know nothing about the author. She can’t even remember when the “scribes” were invented, so she doesn’t know if it was written or typed back then, because history is stupid and no kid would ever remember any of it!

They tear it up into individual words so that it’ll end up lining a bird’s nest or something and am I the only one who thinks this may not be very risky but the risk is a stupid one? If anyone sees meticulously shredded paper with words on it where there shouldn’t be any, they’ll wonder how it got there.

Anyway, the hiking will not fucking stop. We just go to some other day when he’s asking about the matching banquet and what she was thinking of and she says angels but no one believes in them and he says he believes in her and there are less than ten chapters left of this book is this really what we should be spending time on.

We move quickly through the trees. I feel more than see that we must be nearing the top of the Hill. Eventually, our work here will be done and this time will be over. It doesn’t take long anymore to traverse the first part of the Hill; everything is tamped down and well marked and we know where we are going, at least initially.

The book is nearly over and I still don’t even know such basics as what the fuck they’re doing. Are they marking all problem areas on the entire hill? Because that’s what it sounds like but in that case they should have been moving in a spiral instead of straight up. Why would you mark all areas if you’re just planning to pave a single pathway to the top? How are they possibly avoiding all the other hikers going in the same direction as they are?

But there is still unexplored territory left. There are still things to discover.

Also, I hate conflating wild and new. Presumably the other kids marked at least a few things themselves, so the fact those areas are cleared of obstacles doesn’t mean you’ve explored them yourself. Or is this more hipster stuff about how it doesn’t count unless only you know about it?

Finally, one day she manages to ask him something instead of being led around by the nose nonstop. She asks why he cried way back in that early chapter.

It could have been my village. It was definitely one of the Outer Provinces.”
…
Those aren’t actors. It’s not a stage. It happens in all the Outer Provinces, Cassia. When I left, it was happening more and more.

They’re showing footage of their own fuckups dear god this is stupid.

Bear in mind that real footage is never as good as stuff you design to look like exactly what you want, so there’s no reason to do this any way you look at it.

Anyway. So. I…guess they’re at war? I mean, the video was supposed to be about how much life sucked pre-Society, so it can’t very well have been them raining death down on their own people. Who are they at war with? If they are at war, then why were we told earlier that they were no longer using the hill to train soldiers, that makes it sound like they’re scaling back their military efforts. Why no sign they’re on a wartime economy? Why are they still doing stupid stuff like throwing old books into burny tubes instead of anything useful?

Cassia is all D: Well, what did you think killed his village before this? No, seriously, he said they all died and you showed no curiosity so you must have felt you already knew, so what the fuck did you think? What does everyone know about this kind of thing?

So they sadhug and then she writes down that she loves him in the dirt and he tears up and says he loves her back. Then they’re about to kiss but they hear the whistle to go back down and the chapter ends instead.

Well. We got more info, but this is stuff that should have been coming up ages ago. Having it be real footage was totally unnecessary, he could have just said it reminded him of what happened, and this should really have been happening at the same time as him telling his story, because what else did she think his whole village getting killed entailed?

It’s not clear if she knows they’re at war – she hasn’t mentioned it before but doesn’t even express surprise at the suggestion they are, so no clues either way – but regardless, Ky’s claiming the war’s getting worse so there should have been signs of things changing. The only thing I can think of that differs is that she says an official used to live on their street but no longer does, and it’s not even totally clear if it was the official’s intended job to keep an eye on things or if they just happened to live there at the time. Cassia mentioned her portions of food seem smaller, but it’s at the same time as Xander says they’re increasing his – unless it’s to bulk him up for soldiering? If that was the intention we should really have had more comments from other people about food to get an idea of what the pattern of changes is. Plus some comments about perhaps the meal quality changing, like Bram complaining they never have, say, fish, which was his favorite meal and used to be relatively common.

When were scribes invented? Does Cassia know that people used to have computers before scribes, or has that whole section of history been removed and she thinks we went right from quills to modern day? What’s the history of the province and how does it differ from the history of the whole country? What do the history lessons cover? How old are the artifacts her dad sorts, and how/when were the areas closed off? Do they live in America? Where are the outer provinces, what’s the edge of their country? How many people are in the army?

Why the fuck doesn’t the book care about any of this stuff? What’s the point in having a setting if you forget it exists?