WELCOME TO THE MACHINE, MY GIRL
Holden was undergoing a series of simultaneous, yet very different emotions
I’d make the usual complaint here except that for once, FOR ONCE, we are actually going to be told what these emotions are…in the dumbest way possible. Wait for it. It’s awesome.
by the time the fake ambulance rolled into his line of sight in the Prometheus Corporation parking garage. He was already decked out in the white scrubs, and his tucked shirt did a poor job of hiding the gut which hung over his groin.
We’ve gone from “HOW LONG HAS HOLDEN BEEN IRISH?” to “HOW LONG HAS HOLDEN BEEN FAT?”
This is Chapter Ten. Holden has been around since Chapter Two. He had a long POV chapter around Four. Plenty of time to describe him.
Really, Story. I don’t ask for a lot. All I want is a sort of general description fairly close to the introduction of a character, with some basic information that can be expanded upon at your convenience. Tall or short. Fat or thin. Young or old. Blond, brunette, or redhead.
Fear, anticipation, worry, hope, and anxiety were all running through his veins.
Hey, look, there’s his laundry list of “simultaneous, yet very different emotions.” Ignore that all these emotions, with the exception of hope, are actually very similar; at least he’s gotten past that whole “Eva experienced a feeling” thing, right? Right?
Just wait. Your head is going to fucking explode.
He feared that Eva wouldn’t make it.
Then perhaps you should have arrange to administer the retrovirus in a hospital with everything sterile and monitored, rather than leaving her to vomit blood on the floor of her Social Studies class.
He anticipated the procedure,
Er, the verb form “to anticipate” is not synonymous with “anticipation.” Basically all you’re saying here is “he was looking forward to the procedure” without any information on how this made him feel.
and had been dreading the thought that his own daughter would undergo this. Worry settled in, taking residence right next to fear. Anxiety was high. Now, he could only hope that everything worked out. Hope was one of the few things that kept him on his feet for the past four years, and it had long, bitter arguments with the ale.
DID YOU SEE IT? DID YOU SEE WHAT HE DID?
HE VERY CAREFULLY EXPLAINED THAT HOLDEN HAD A FEEL. THEN HE LISTED THE FEELS. THEN HE EXPLAINED, IN ORDER, WHY HOLDEN WAS FEELING THE FEELS.
CONNOR FINALLY DOES THE ONE THING I’VE BEEN SCREAMING AT HIM TO DO SINCE THE FIRST FUCKING PAGE AND HE STILL MANAGES TO DO IT IN JUST THE WAY TO MAKE ME TEAR MY HAIR OUT.
How much do you want to bet that he thinks this was a very clever and revealing paragraph? I bet he’s proud of it. It just has that slimy self-congratulatory air about it.
The rear doors of the faux ambulance popped out. Holden gasped at the sight of his girl, bloodied and barely moving, on the stretcher. He had to maintain composure. Don’t let it get in the way. You’re doing this for her.
Medical ethics exist for a reason. This is that reason.
Jordache’s BMW slid into an adjacent spot. He opened the door and walked towards the stretcher. “Let’s get this show started,” he chuckled. He looked at Holden, who was gulping down his shock, holding it down. Holden saw his fists flooring that shark-smiling bastard,
Wasn’t this exact phrase used to describe Ms. Pickens back in Chapter 3? Yes, it was. So far he’s used this twice, used the Keyser Söze thing twice, described Eva’s eyebags as canyons twice…it’s like whenever he comes up with one mildly interesting descriptor, he likes it so much that he uses it again and again.
Then again, considering how long it took him to write what we have now, he may actually forgotten he’s already said that.
but instead went along with his program. It was the only sane way.
Without a word, Holden and the phonies rushed Eva to the elevator. Jordache pressed the button for the thirteenth floor, and pulled out a radio. “Sublevel
Should be “sub-level.” See, I’ve said that before and I still remember it.
six, how’s our little psycho doing?” he asked. Holden knew that he was referring to Krieger.
WE ALL KNOW HE’S REFERRING TO KRIEGER. THIS HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED.
In any event that called for Krieger’s presence outside of his cell, several precautions were taken. Krieger, dressed for business, would be handcuffed and shackled at the ankles, and a muzzle would be placed over his mouth. He would be strapped onto the two-wheeled gurney and rolled out in the company of two doctors, two guards and the gorilla, Abe. The guards would be armed with high-voltage shock batons, the doctors with injection guns filled with a potent sedative that would knock the boy out for hours, and Abe’s arms would be enough to floor him.
Hang on. Lemme break out SOTL again:
Heavy canvas webbing bound [Lecter] tightly to a movers tall hand truck as though he were a grandfather clock. Beneath the webbing he wore a straitjacket and leg restraints. A hockey mask over his face precluded biting; it was as effective as a mouthpiece, and not so wet for the orderlies to handle.
Hm. I’m going to be very suspicious of any long, particularly detailed passage—especially ones that pertain to Krieger—for the rest of this book.
There was a silence over the radio. Jordache said, “Sublevel six?”
“Hello, Jonathan. Tell me, has the lovely Ms. Elliot received my present?” The voice of Klaus Krieger, even over phone lines and radio frequencies, still had its peculiar quality.
Holden lunged over at Jordache, snatching the radio from him. “Krieger, I swear to God, if she doesn’t make it through this…”
And yet, in spite of all this, you hand him a scalpel and a trepanning saw and let him go to town on people’s brains.
“I insist that you relax, Dr. Elliot. The show has yet to begin.”
There was another, shorter silence over the radio. “Ah’ight, Klaus, that’s enough. Abe here. Everythin’s A-OK. We on our way.”
See, it’s not so much that the gorilla has a…shall we say, urban accent? It’s also that even within the context of this story, there’s no reason for the gorilla to have this accent. One would assume someone taught this gorilla to talk. The gorilla should, if anything, have that person’s accent, or else it would have picked up the accents of the people around it. No one else in the story talks like this.
“Gotcha, Kong.” Jordache grabbed the radio from Holden.
###
While the grownups were bitching above her,
It’s “grown-ups.” Also, there is nothing quite like using the word “grown-ups” to remind your reader that this work was written by a goddamn child. Unless perhaps it’s referring to their conversation as “bitching.”
I’ll be generous. Since we’re in Eva’s POV here, it might be reasonable for her to refer to adults as grown-ups—except, as we are about to learn, Eva is unconscious, and so would not be aware of either the grown-ups or their bitching. That’s all on the author.
Eva Elliot was in a completely different realm. In between spurts of darkness, there were muddy glimpses of the real world, and edited in was a highlight reel containing only the good parts of her life up to this point.
More cinematic language.
Her mother and father joined her to complete a trio. The Elliot family didn’t always dwell near the ghetto. There were times in the summer, Eva remembered, where they had their own world near the woods, outside the city. New Eden, her mother called it.
Someone confirm for me that this is an anime reference.
The place hung over the ocean which shined
There is actually enough debate about usage of the transitive and intransitive forms of “shine” that I’m not going to say with authority if this is correct or not; technically either “shone” or “shined” is good. I’d use “shone,” but that’s just me. This is why you should never get involved in the higher English fields. Your life will devolve into endless prescriptivist bitchery about transitive verbs.
in the rays of the sun, reflecting it back. The house itself was large, having been constructed sometime in the 1930s.
Oh really? So during the Depression? I didn’t know the WPA built country estates.
Meh, that was glib on my part. There were still rich people building nice houses even during the Depression, but while there are many very beautiful older houses in California, most of them were built during the periods of affluence on either side of the Depression, not during it.
Suddenly, Eva found herself back there. She was in the back seat of the Oldsmobile,
Drink!
going up the dirt trail which led to the front of the estate. She was nine years old, and this was her first time going there.
It was strange, really. She could hear the wheels of the Oldmobile,
Another drink!
as well as the wheels of the stretcher. Eva could see herself looking out of the passenger’s side window from where she sat, watching in awe as the POS car moved into a completely different realm. Her present self, the way she was now, sat next to the little girl on the driver’s side. The blood was still on her, but no one seemed to notice. Mommy and Daddy were talking about something
Alright, let’s prep got to get these clothes off
See, this whole section reminds me very much of the dream sequence in Rosemary’s Baby. I hate to accuse Connor of still more plagiarism…nah, not really, I live for that. That particular dream sequence has been imitated in a lot of sources as an example of Dream Sequences Done Right, so Connor wouldn’t necessarily have had to read Rosemary’s Baby to get the pattern down. It’s kind of sad that every time this story shows even the faintest trace of competence, I wonder if he’s stolen it from something.
but Eva didn’t really pay attention. Something to do with work. Meeting somebody. She didn’t know. She was just watching out the window. It was noon, and the sun was at its highest in the sky. Beautiful. Just beautiful. That was the only word her little self could use to describe it. Her present self and past fused into one girl, became part of the moment.
Lift on three.
She felt something holding her. She was standing in front of a camera now. It was on a timer, and the trio were ready for their big close-up.
One.
She felt something holding her.
You literally just said that.
She knew very much about the day she was born. Mommy always told her the story, about how her water broke for the first time in the Oldsmobile
Drink!
as they were on the way to Babel Tower. Daddy sped like Hell to the nearest hospital.
No need to capitalize “hell” in this context.
About half an hour later, Evangeline Anthony Elliot’s
Her middle name is Anthony? Huh. There’s a story there, I’m sure. Too bad we’re never going to hear it.
umbilical cord was cut. Mommy always called her a miracle.
Why? Her birth seems completely typical. Personally, I’m going to assume the miracle was that Holden was able to get it up with all the liquor in him.
Two.
She felt something holding her.
You literally just said—wait, you’re repeating that on purpose?
There were times where she would cuddle with Mommy and Daddy in their bed when they were at New Eden. They were a trio alright.
Comma between “trio” and “alright.” “Alright” should be “all right.” I am not even going to argue about the general acceptance of “alright” as a synonym for “satisfactory.”
THREE!
She splashed into the water. It was night, now. Mom and Dad were asleep. She was fourteen years old, and there was an urge those days to break away. An urge to be a real girl. An urge to give one giant middle finger to restraint and seize life. Nude and alone on the beach, she baptized herself. She was free, with no umbilical cord or arms to hold her back.
See? This book just likes for her to be naked.
Moonlight shone through the water, a divine spotlight on her. She was diving down when another urge over took her.
“Urge” is the new “emotion”! We are never, ever going to find out what this urge was.
She tried to fight it, but it was too strong.
There was a shock through her body. Suddenly, Eva found herself somewhere new. She could make out through her bloody, blurred vision the face of her father looking down, petting her hair with a rubber gloved hand.
Should be “rubber-gloved hand.”
Holden’s face is not petting her with a rubber-gloved hand, unless this is the story’s way of telling us that he’s always had a hand growing out of his face along with everything else we’re only just now finding out about him.
She was floating. She could sense that she was in a tub, and that she was in the goop she had dreaded ever since she volunteered. Daddy…
“It’s alright, Evie. Everything’s going to be alright.”
Point in this book’s favor: absolutely the only times I have felt a real feel for anyone involved are the scenes between Holden and Eva. Him calling her Evie and her calling him Daddy represent the only human emotions left here—far more profound than the attempts at being nihilistic and deadened.
Actually, the whole little flashback to Eva’s childhood is not too badly handled. It’s lacking in the concrete details that would make it feel like this specific person’s life, rather than just broad generalizations, but I don’t hate it. I even like the contrast between the peaceful inner life and the violence happening in the present. It’s just that I’m pretty sure that either this has been done a million times or Connor is plagiarizing from some source with which I’m not familiar.
There was another shock.
And another.
And another.
This continued for two days.
###
Dr. Klaus Krieger sat at his desk in Sublevel Six. Pachelbel’s Canon in D was playing over the speakers, at his request and for his listening pleasure. That piece had a profound sentimental value to him.
Did they play it at your graduation? Was it on NPR when you committed your first murder? What fucking value does it have?
Actually, I'm pretty sure this is yet another rip-off of Silence of the Lambs, specifically the scene in which Lecter listens to the Goldberg Variations in the Tennessee jail.
Even when Cheryl was existing, it was one of his favorites.
For those of you who, like me, are only barely paying attention at this point, Cheryl was Eva’s mom. This is the first hint we’ve had that Krieger ever knew her, and that apparently he had enough of a relationship with her that he associates certain pieces of music with her. This would have been extremely helpful to know. Even if Eva was unaware, Holden would have known.
I’m really beginning to get tired of this image of Cheryl as this perfect dead wife and mother. It’s boring and manipulative. We don’t know anything about her except that her death seems to have been a deep loss for everyone who knew her, something that would have been more effective if we had any idea of what she was like and what she gave to our other characters. You’d think someone so special that even the villain remembers her fondly would have, y’know, a personality and a purpose. Even worse, I can’t help but feel Cheryl wouldn’t have been nearly this impressive if she’d been presented as a living character. In death, she’s idealized…and a whole lot easier to write.
He found Beethoven to be a hack.
Because of course, Connor’s genius villain is above us crass plebs who consider Beethoven to be the apogee of Romantic music. Beethoven is just too passé for his sophisticated palate. Krieger: out-Lectering Lecter at every turn!
Again, while classical music is another one of those things that is Not My Field, I can't help but snerk a bit at the so-very-refined Krieger preferring the extremely overused, popularized Canon in D to, like, ALL of Beethoven.
He was too bombastic, too vulgar. But, what do you expect from a deaf lad whose father beat him? A very bad boy whose father beat him deserves better than sound and fury.
“Deserves” should be in past tense: deserved. Moreover, this sentence barely makes sense. What is Krieger trying to say here: that a bad boy whose father beats him should be expected to make better music, or that he’s too bad to be allowed to make “bombastic, vulgar” music?
Neatly arranged before him was the art of Eva. She was high above, and him so low.
Should be "and he so low"--subject pronoun replacing "Klaus." Subject pronouns are used whenever "to be" verbs are employed, even though in this case the "to be" verb is implied: "and he [was] so low."
Yet here she was before him.
Those last two sentences utterly confused me. I assumed he was being metaphorical and saying that Eva was a better person than he until I realized he was talking about their actual physical positions: she’s in the operating room on the upper floor, he’s in basement, and the pictures are in front of him. It’s not a bad image but it needs to be rewritten for clarity.
The cell was dark, save for the lamp which dangled over the sketches. Of particular interest was the butterfly. It was omnipresent, as was Eva’s dream self.
So is it just of particular interest because of its omnipresence?
Helping people achieve that was a specialty of his. He had a misfortune, which was certainly running about the city now, complicating matters for Jordache and the other Corporation dullards.
Hey, Krieger, you know what’s vulgar? A guy who talks about how stupid everyone else is compared to himself. Especially when that someone doesn’t seem particularly clever. And doubly especially when that same someone just admitted to having a “misfortune” that sounds more and more like a mistake.
I think I’ve found that special someone, he thought with a smile.
This is a really short section. I think it might have been better off being attached to the end of the last chapter, since there’s not much to be gained by increasing the anticipation between Eva’s abduction and her operation, since we already know what’s going to happen. We don’t actually gain much by Krieger’s short appearance either, since all it does is further establish that he’s a douche. I honestly would have been more interested in Eva’s memories, Holden’s feelings, or even the actual procedure itself. This story seems intent on giving me more and more of what I don’t like.
What's strangest to me is that while this is the first section in which things really seem to be happening, it feels kind of pointless. It feels like an afterthought, or something that we could just as well skip. We don't really learn anything about what's going on, and the tiny bit of information that might help with character development--the flashback sequence--could fit just about anywhere. All in all, it's just a strange, pointless chapter, even going by the low, low standards of having-a-point in the context of this story.
