Last time on fuck this, nothing important happened but Rhine made a big deal of it anyway.

This chapter opens with her throwing up all afternoon. Jenna sits with her and holds her hair, because Jenna’s a better person. We know Jenna and Cecily have both had periods of throwing up and Rhine barely notices.

The throwing up is a manifestation of Rhine’s weak female constitution, which is prone to hysteria and bad decisions. Anyway, she decides to tell Jenna everything, which I want to praise her for but in the process, this reminds me that we’re about two-thirds done with this book and it’s only now she tells her things.

Rose’s body in the basement, and about the kiss with Gabriel, and about Linden having no idea where we came from, and the absolute control Vaughn has over our lives. I even tell her about Rose and Linden’s dead child.

…I’m betting that Jenna had to fight the urge to roll her eyes at half of this. “Oh really you and the boy you spent hours with in your room with the door closed had something going on? Which Cecily only complained about every ten minutes? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Just when I think it might not be so bad, it gets worse. It gets worse and I can’t wake up. Housemaster Vaughn is a monster.”

Jenna, impressively, bites her tongue about the not so bad bit and instead just tries to reason with her about the other half.

“I don’t think the Housemaster would kill his grandchild,” Jenna says. “If what you say is true and he’s using Rose’s body to find an antidote, wouldn’t he want his grandchild to live?”

Thank you, Jenna. Not only are you the nicest one, you’re also the sanest. I mourn daily that you’re a secondary character.

I keep my promise and don’t tell her what I learned from Deirdre—that the stillbirth was no stillbirth at all.

So by “everything” you just meant “the obvious stuff”, not actually everything.

Her excuse here is utter bullshit – she could just have not mentioned who told her, or even said it was Rose who told her. What’s evil mad scientist going to do if that gets back to him, punish the corpse?

Rhine claims I want to think Jenna is right which is also bullshit, she’s made it clear what she wants to think with her endless harping about evil mad scientist is eeeevil every time the guy so much as breathes.

What reason could Vaughn have for murdering his grandchild? It’s true that he’s only ever had sons—maybe he prefers them—but a granddaughter would at least be useful to him as a child bearer.

What the fuck Rhine.

Look, I understand that your level of education is lacking, but you do realize men don’t pick the gender of their kid. If he’s only had sons, that doesn’t tell you anything but that by chance a sperm with a Y chromosome happened to win twice in a row.

If people were able to pick gender, and he gave a fuck, then he’d have made sure the grandkid was a boy.

The daughters of wealthy families even get to choose whom they marry sometimes, and take priority over their sister wives.

NO

Fuck you you fucking piece of shit.

Hey look, all that rape and I still can’t get past this random little tidbit. I wish actual violence upon the author now. It’s only fair, she’s fine with it happening to everyone else.

This is written with the idea women are worthless. It’s so ingrained in the author’s mind she doesn’t even try to think of why people would act like this, because the idea people would need a reason not to throw out their daughters is beyond her. They’re just dumb bitches. The really charming ones, who can be trained to do tricks like smile on command, some people might try to make sure the owner they’re sold to won’t beat them too much, but you can’t expect people to bother most of the time.

That’s why the author doesn’t think any of this is rape. That’s why she thinks it’s up for debate if any of this is wrong. Because women aren’t people. They’re things and there’s nothing surprising if they’re treated as such. Acting like what Linden does is morally wrong is like making a big deal about someone cutting down a tree for firewood. It’s the point of the tree. Maybe the tree doesn’t like it, but how can you expect anyone to assume the tree has feelings? How can you expect someone to just know that it’s wrong to rape or murder women? The fact Linden shows minor concern for them makes him an unusually kind and considerate person, like someone who puts bugs outside instead of stepping on them.

…

There wasn’t even a point to that, because Rhine then dismisses it and says she’s sure he killed the kid anyway and will murder any other babies he can. Then she insists Gabriel is being tortured. Then she says it’s all her fault he kissed her. Then she throws up more.

Cecily appears and asks what’s wrong, then gets her a cup of water to rinse her mouth out. So now both of them have shown infinitely more consideration for her than she has for them.

“Tell me everything,” Cecily says, a spark of excitement filling up her eyes.
“There isn’t anything to tell, really,” I say. I don’t want to tell her about the dazzling holograms or the succulent dessert selection or the city full of people where I considered running away. It’s better if she doesn’t know what she’s missing.

You might mistake this for consideration. Note the present tense, though. What Rhine means is that she doesn’t intend for Cecily to ever be allowed out. Cecily will never be allowed to experience them on Rhine’s watch. Rhine deserves them and Cecily doesn’t.

“You two never talk to me anymore,” she says, and she looks like she’s going to get worked up again. It’s like she gets more emotional with each trimester. “It’s not fair. I’m stuck in that bed all day.”

Yes, obviously this is just because pregnancy and not because people get more upset the longer they’re ignored and neglected. Because that would imply that there was any sort of actual reason for Cecily to be upset, and as the book has made clear, the stupid bitch needs to shut up because she’s better treated than she deserves as it is.

Rhine just lies more about how it was boring, so Cecily asks for a story about the twins.

Jenna raises an eyebrow. I’ve never told her about my twin brother, but she’s more intuitive than Cecily and she’s probably figuring it out now.

No, Jenna is more experienced than Cecily, so it’s easier for her to guess that a story someone tells might have pieces of their own life in it. Cecily is, if anything, the most intuitive of the bunch.

For some reason, Rhine tells about the day their parents died.

A genetic research facility had been bombed by first generations in protest of experiments being done to prolong the life span of new children. Cries of “Enough!” and “The human race cannot be saved!” filled the streets.

It’s obvious by this point that anything the author touches will be handled terribly, so the fact this is a minor, irrelevant side-note isn’t exactly wasted potential. But it’s a concept that would be interesting.

Why is it the first gens? Seventy year olds are usually not on the front lines of a protest. Angry young men are, and there are going to be an extra lot of angry young men. The population ratio is going to be horribly skewed by all the kidnapped women on top of the fact the women live shorter lives. Their wives and sisters and friends are at constant risk of disappearing, so that’s going to be pretty upsetting, and anyone close to their age also dies. And even if they’re assholes who don’t care, they’re also not going to get laid much – the brothels charge and between that and the murder, plus the surviving women staying away from anyone out of fear, there aren’t going to be many women left around, which historical evidence shows is all you need to produce a hyper violent society that riots at the slightest provocation.

Huh. In retrospect, why don’t the gatherers rape the girls? It’s obviously not because of their strong respect for women. But if they did that, Rhine wouldn’t be a special virgin who, unlike all the whores, doesn’t deserve this.

Rhine goes to sleep and wakes up to find Cecily sleeping with her. While she doesn’t mind the rapist doing this, Rhine’s annoyed by Cecily.

Cecily is curled up beside me, snoring in that nasal way she’s adopted in her third trimester.

Cecily probably has sleep apnea and is having trouble breathing, as well as having a high rate of a heart attack or stroke! It’s so annoying. God, it’s hard being Rhine.

it’s just the nervous new attendant from this morning

Which is weird, if you think about it. He’s in his late sixties at the youngest. Given how employable the first gens are, it doesn’t make sense for him to be inexperienced at this job, and if he’s been a servant for decades, you’d think he’d be less nervous by now.

He tells her to check the napkin and she finds a candy while complaining that Cecily drools, unlike the sexy rapist who’s so perfect. Why can’t you be more like the rapist, Cecily?

Outside, the snow begins to stick to the ground

IN FLORIDA

YOU KNOW I HEAR THAT IF YOU GO ALL THE WAY NORTH TO GEORGIA IT’S JUST TUNDRA

TUNDRA AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE

Cecily’s upset because she wants to make a snowman, but Linden-chan gets off on preventing her from doing anything so she’s kept inside. Oh, and as always it gets worse:

The orphanage never let her go out in the snow either. It would be too easy for the children to get sick in the cold, and the staff members weren’t equipped to deal with an epidemic.

That’s right, Cecily has never in her life been allowed near snow. And she never will be. Ever.

Also this is total bullshit, but whatever, the author likes shitting on Cecily.

Rhine says she wishes the pregnancy was over already because Cecily’s a mess.

She’s always out of breath, or crying, and her finger is swollen around her wedding band.

Two of those three are probably caused by the fact she’s spending most of her time locked in a room, so her muscle is atrophying and she’s miserable.

I mean, yes, they’re also normal symptoms of pregnancy, but while women often experience those things from pregnancy, humans always experience them from being locked in a room, so I think it’s obvious which is the bigger factor.

It seems like she goes into Cecily’s room at this point, or else she was already there, rendering it confusing why she’s acting like it’s Cecily invading her bed. She continues to insist the fact her parents named their kids after things found in the blown-up world has secret meaning (that, naturally, she’s too dumb to figure out because puzzles, like math, are hard).

Since so far any time Rhine thinks something for no reason, she’s proven right, I guess that’s why the author was saying bullshit about how reading more would make sense of how America accidentally the rest of the continents – it’s going to turn out the rest of the world is fine and just hasn’t been dealing with us because god, why would you? We’re apparently infected with a virus that makes you stupid, hate women and reinvent slavery. That’s why the first gens talk about curing a “virus” when the cause of death is a genetic disorder. The other countries have refused to give us intact DNA samples from before the disaster because the only thing keeping the outbreak manageable is the reduced lifespans. The cover story is because if anyone tries to leave while still infected, the other countries have formed a coalition to nuke us into a glass ashtray, radioactive glass being well known for how sterile it is.

The reason Rhine and Rose’s parents were killed is they were part of the group that opposed quarantine. Rose’s parents were trying to convince the younger gens to try to break out, hoping for a containment break in the hope that once the rest of the world became infected they’d help us with the cure. Rhine’s were trying to modify the virus so it could be smuggled into another country and start and outbreak there. That’s why they were wearing hazmat suits during work despite everyone already being infected with the current virus.

The only problem with all of this is that it’s fucking stupid compared to a cover story about the rest of the continents having, I don’t know, an outbreak of the rage virus or something. Saying there’s nothing there won’t stop people from sailing around looking for fish and then discovering Europe. There’s some momentary hesitation about shooting them when they’re just kids that ends when they keep insisting they’d landed in the Indies.

Anyway, she spends some time looking out Cecily’s window.

I see the black limousine driving a path through the snow and I’m reminded of where I am. I watch it navigate around a shrub and then drive straight into the trees.
Straight into the trees! There’s no impact. The limo simply drives straight through them as though they weren’t even there.
And then it dawns on me. Those trees aren’t really there. That’s why I couldn’t find my way to the gate from any of the gardens or the orange grove.

No, you couldn’t find it because you’re a fucking moron.

I’m sorry, I’ve been trying to put up with her relentless incompetence and no. Fucking no.

She’s been there months. At no point did she even try to walk through these trees. She didn’t even pay enough attention the night she left for a party to notice it.

There’s also that if she’d paid the slightest attention to Cecily, mentioned she was looking for the road or even just spent a small amount of time with the girl so she would have seen it herself…

But mostly no one halfway intelligent would have been fooled by the illusion. Trees. The snow is falling right through them HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU SO FUCKING STUPID?

And don’t think the author’s getting off here either. At least objects like hedges are relatively uniform and don’t move much in response to wind. Better still would be a wall or something. Trees? Fucking trees? Seriously?

Rhine considers leaving, but no, secondary love interest! He doesn’t want to leave but she has to ask him to leave! Unstated but obvious is the fact that if he won’t go she’ll just sit around and pine.

I just need to know that he’s okay. I can’t even think about leaving until I know that much.

See, Rhine’s a good girl and good girls always consult with the closest male about what they should be doing. Before she was attempting to return to her brother, but once Gabriel made his intentions known he became her interim owner.

Jenna tries to distract me with interesting facts she’s read in the library books, and I know it’s for my benefit, because normally all she reads are romance novels, but I just can’t bring myself to pay attention. She coaxes me to try some of the homemade chocolate pudding, but it’s like paste in my mouth.

Yet another point of Jenna being considerate. Yet again, we’ve never seen Rhine acting like this.

Her little child slave attempts to perk her up and gets more and more desperate as Rhine continues to sulk. Suddenly –she’s been there more than nine months at this point – Rhine realizes that Deirdre only ever talks about how Rhine is and never herself. And this after Rhine’s little fit about how the rapist never thought about her past, no less. So she asks about her dad.

“Do you miss him?” I ask.
I can tell that this is a subject of great sorrow for her, but she’s got a strength and tranquility that reminds me of Rose, and I know she’s not going to break down and cry.

Translation: she exists only to give me inspiring stories like all good social inferiors. Her actual suffering exists only to the level which won’t inconvenience me.

She obligingly says she’s very happy to be a slave here, but when pressed, says she wishes she could have seen a real starfish or at least gone to a beach once.

Rhine wakes up early and decides to go sleep with someone else because she feels lonely. I guess the bit about having strict rules about not entering each other’s rooms is gone.

She picks Jenna.

When I knock on Jenna’s door, I hear her soft giggle from somewhere in the room. There’s a rustling sound, and then she says, “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” I say.
Another giggle. “Come in,” she says.
I open the door to a bedroom that’s warm with candlelight. Jenna is sitting up in the bed, running her fingers through her tousled hair, and Linden is tying the drawstring of his pajama pants. His bare chest is pale; his cheeks are flushed. He pulls his shirt on in a hurry, and it’s still unbuttoned when he stands and heads for the door. “Good morning, sweetheart,” he tells me, not quite meeting my eyes.
There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s perfectly normal. Jenna is his wife. He’s our husband. I should be used to the idea. It was inevitable that I’d eventually catch a glimpse of what goes on behind these doors. But I can’t help the painful blush that washes over my face, and I can see that Linden is looking embarrassed too.

Although the book claims the rapist is ignorant regarding the fact Jenna’s apparent consent is actually fear of his father, Rhine is under no such impression. But she’s his wife, and he’s her husband, so it’s perfectly normal.

Why does this matter in specific terms, beyond being generally vile? Because women are significantly more likely to stay in a relationship after being raped if they don’t believe it was rape. And in the event it is brought to court, convincing a jury that it was rape requires first convincing them that it’s possible it was rape. A minority of people will say even violent forced sex isn’t rape if it’s the husband.

This book has consistently portrayed sex as something entirely about the man. Jenna is suicidal and miserable early on, but she gets better, and the fact he starts fucking her doesn’t affect her at all. And it’s finally come to this, Jenna giggly with sex-tussled hair. I’m sure we’ll follow this with Jenna explaining that it’s not like she enjoyed it or anything, because sex has no meaning for women after the first time, when it changes them from virgins to worthless. It’s no more significant than if he was demanding she play a game of chess with him.

Don’t worry, it can get worse.

Her body shimmers in a layer of sweat; the hair receding from her face is damp; the buttons on her nightgown don’t align. I’ve never seen her this way, so wild and beautiful; Linden must be the only one who usually sees her like this.

Linden’s magic cock not only fucks the annoying out of Cecily, it fucks the depression out of Jenna. I wonder if the author thought anything of what she wrote, that it tames Cecily to have sex she’s nominally consenting to, but Jenna’s made “wild and beautiful” by having forced sex.

I push back a wave of jealousy, which is of course absurd.

Absurd is not the term I would use.

Anyway, Jenna’s still a frigid bitch unworthy of the rapist’s love, so she just snuffs out the candles complaining about the smell.

“How long was he here?” I say, in a measured tone.
“Ugh. All night,” she says, and collapses back into bed. “I thought he’d never leave. He thinks if we do it a bunch of different ways, it’ll get me pregnant.”

I…

The thing is, that doesn’t even make sense for the rapist to think, but I can’t figure out why he’s lying about it. Unless the theory he’s manipulating them is true so he needs an excuse.

“Is that what you want?” I ask.

RHINE SHE ALREADY TOLD YOU SHE’S ONLY HAVING SEX WITH HIM BECAUSE SHE’S AFRAID HIS FATHER WILL DO SOMETHING WORSE THAN JUST KILL HER WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU WHY WOULD YOU ASK THIS

IT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE LOGICAL SENSE EVEN IF YOU FORGOT THAT BECAUSE YOU’RE A FUCKING MONSTER WHO DOESN’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE, BECAUSE SHE’S COMPLAINING HE WOULDN’T STOP FUCKING HER SO WHY WOULD THAT BE WHAT SHE WANTED

Hardly. But what can I do?

Rhine then starts chatting about her worries with Gabriel, because Jenna’s issues are too minor to bother with.

Jenna sits up and puts her arm around me. “He’ll be okay,” she promises.

Jenna’s shaping up into one of those self-sacrificing doormats who spends all her time comforting others at the cost of her own wellbeing. It’s particularly sad when you think about how little Rhine needs, let alone deserves, her support here.

Rhine just keeps up the sadface, so Jenna gets icecream and drags her out to watch a soap opera.

The actors are all teenagers made up to look much older. Jenna tells me they’re constantly changing the actors, since of course the show has been on for more than a decade and the original actors have died by now. The only consistent actors are first generations.

I think this is the first, and given how far along we are, probably last bit of consistent worldbuilding.

Cecily shows up eventually.

Her stomach looks like an overblown balloon. She hasn’t bothered with the last few buttons of her nightgown, and the skin around her bellybutton is stretched so far that it shines painfully.

That would be because it is painful! She’s probably a mess of stretch marks as her skin tears itself open and scar tissue fills the gaps. Although it isn’t visible, her internal organs are suffering similar abuse and her metabolism is by this point overclocked as the baby approaches the upper limit of what her body can support. At the same time as she’s feeding this parasite, her breasts are also growing and developing in preparation for nursing which is not only painful, but a further demand on her already failing body. Although giving birth will help in some ways, the period of nursing is if anything more demanding metabolically, as she’ll burn far more calories producing milk. In addition, should there be any problems with the baby’s nursing, it’ll tear open her nipples. Luckily, she’ll avoid most of the longer-term health effects due to her scheduled death at twenty.

In conclusion, abortion. It’s a wonderful thing.

On the TV, one of the characters has a tumor.

“What’s a tumor?” Cecily licks the spoon and dips it back into the carton for more.
“It’s what used to cause cancer,” Jenna says. “This is supposed to be the twentieth century.”

Since the idea that they’ve cured cancer is too stupid, I choose to interpret this as meaning that part of the genetic researchers’ fuckups has been that cancer cells are far more aggressive and spread rapidly throughout the body immediately, instead of passing through a contained tumor stage. Perhaps they did this because they, like Jenna, were under the impression tumors caused cancer rather than being a manifestation of it, so if they just made the cells break up whenever they became cancerous, the problem would be solved forever.

The actors commence to fuck.

It’s censored by strategically placed props and close-ups of the
actors’ faces, but I still look away. I dig a spoon into the ice cream and wait for the romantic music to stop.
Cecily catches me and says, “You’re such a prude.”
“I’m not,” I say.

This is because prude implies there’s something wrong with it. The slutty brat and the whore don’t mind seeing sex because they’re fallen women, but Rhine’s still pure and has value as a person.

Cecily asks if she’s waiting for their fiftieth anniversary.

Cecily is the only one who believes Vaughn will find his miracle antidote, and that we’ll live to see old age.

Well, Cecily also has the longest lifespan of you three. Jenna has a year to go (one hopes the rapist will stop fucking her while she’s still got ten months to go, but it’s unlikely) and Rhine and the rapist have four. Evil mad scientist believes he’ll find the antidote in that timeframe, but he made no promise of being within the year Jenna has left, and if he’s miscalculated at all, only Cecily will be around to benefit.

Honestly, considering he kept Rose going for months when there’s no sign anyone else has made progress at all makes me think he’s probably most of the way there.

Rhine is all EW NO STOP TALKING and Cecily’s like sex is no big deal we fuck all the time and Jenna says lol no he won’t touch her while she’s pregnant, which does make me feel a lot better about the fact they keep throwing Cecily at the rapist to distract him.

On the other hand Cecily’s desperate to please and the rapist obviously is willing to do more than missionary position sex, so…but I guess they’d find out if he was getting her to do anything else. Although I’m not sure they’d care or stop using her to distract him.

Cecily says they’ll start having sex once she’s not pregnant, which makes me cringe to think of on various levels.

And if you think I’m having all the babies, you’re crazy.” She waves her spoon between Jenna and me. “One of you is doing this next.

So first we have the idea that Jenna will only get pregnant if she’s in love, and now Cecily seems to have the idea that only one person gets pregnant at a time, as if one of the other girls being pregnant means she doesn’t have to be for a while.

Jenna suddenly looks upset

“We’ve tried. It just hasn’t happened.”
“Well, try harder.”
“Drop it, okay?”

She’s either worried she’ll be killed if she doesn’t end up pregnant or worried about getting pregnant at all.

Or she was lying to Rhine and she’s been doing something to reduce her chances. Considering how little Rhine trusts Jenna and how obvious she is about that, I imagine Jenna might have trouble trusting her back. People who assume you’ll betray them easily are often like that because it’s how they operate.

Rhine doesn’t give a fuck, anyway. She tunes them out and just watches the TV since the sex scene is over. She thinks about how she doesn’t think about the rapist like that. Then she thinks about Gabriel.

A wave of heat rushes up between my thighs. The ice cream in my mouth tastes twice as sweet. And for no reason at all, I sigh.

Subtle.

Well. At the least, the rapist’s servant is better than the rapist as the winning love interest. But I’m convinced the book only thinks that because the rapist already had a true love and is sleeping with the other girls instead of being fully devoted to Rhine.