psst.. you mentioned 17776 earlier so now i have QUESTIONS
which of the spaceprobes is your favorite and why
My favorite is 2B2. I think it's cool how it had to be programmed to be a professional athlete, but then its "second brain" evolved it into an artist, and now it can't be a professional athlete anymore, so it doesn't even want to be
I like this because I like stories where people have complicated emotional relationships with activities, and the parts of the activity where they really excel. And I like stories where emotional struggles with identity are a part of this
My second-favorite is 92. I just love the universe in which it lives — there's this huge, bureaucratic, cartoonish and sinister place full of funny little artifacts that I want to know everything about
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The Chemist chapter 8
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Chapter 8
The pictures that were Daniel but at the same time weren’t.
The holes in the file on Daniel’s history, the missing photos.
Time, dates, birth dates —the easiest small changes to make if you wanted to hide something.
Daniel’s strange reluctance to believe what he was seeing when he looked at the spy images.
His struggles with loyalty.
Those long, long fingers.
“Other Daniel,” she whispered.
Is this book seriously trotting out the “evil identical twin” trope? JFC stop.
She nodded to the photographs scattered on the floor. He seemed to notice them for the first time. He leaned over to examine one, then bent down to grab it. Then the one underneath, and the next. He crumpled t
hem in his fist.
“Where did you get these?” “Compliments of a small department working for the American government—entirely off the books. I used to be in their employ. They asked me to freelance.”
His face contorted in outrage. “This is highly classified!”
“You wouldn’t believe my clearance level.”
And what? He thought that somebody grabbed Daniel, took him to a farmhouse dozens of miles outside of the city, and started torturing him… FOR FUNSIES?!
“Well, since you already know the details, I guess it’s not a huge breach of policy for me to tell you that I shut down the de la Fuentes situation six months ago. De la Fuentes’s death is not common knowledge. What’s left of the cartel is keeping this quiet so they don’t appear vulnerable to the competition.”
Naturally, the mysterious government agency that couldn’t be bothered to find out that Kevin Beach is still alive, also can’t be bothered to find out that the terrorist HASN’T BEEN ALIVE FOR HALF A YEAR.
First things first. She reset the screen saver on her computer to come on after fifteen minutes of inactivity.
I love how she knocks Kevin out, and the first thing she does is the most inane activity imaginable.
Explaining things? Pfft! Not in this book!
Back to Other Daniel. The Batsuit was a chore to remove.
The stupidest thing about this is that as soon as Julie saw him, she identified him as Kevin Beach, Daniel’s supposed-to-be-dead identical twin brother.
SO WHY THE FUCKITY FUCK IS SHE STILL CALLING HIM “OTHER DANIEL” AND “BATMAN”?!
There would be repercussions to deal with. She needed time to rest and heal —time no one was going to give her.
Chapter 8 summary: Julie tells the mystery man (she will not stop calling him “Batman” because he’s dressed in all black; I refuse to stoop to her level of stupidity) that she’s sedated Daniel. The mystery man then ties Julie to a chair, and takes the gas mask off. Julie is surprised that it’s Daniel’s identical twin brother… the one who’s supposed to be dead.
He then finds the photos of him talking to the Mexican drug lord who’s supposed to be in charge of this terrorist attack. Julie spills everything, about the attempts on her life, about being asked to step in to deal with “Daniel”. She guesses from the gun Kevin has that he’s CIA, but that if not even her agency knew Kevin was still alive, that he’s working off the books with this one. Kevin is more angry that somebody tortured his brother than the fact that somebody’s clearly setting both Julie and Kevin up (and using Daniel as bait).
Julie then… somehow or another, gases both Kevin and his giant dog. Julie holds her breath, and despite the fact that her hands are zip-tied behind her back, she manages to put the gas mask on. She frees herself before she locks the dog into a room, and parks the car in front of the door to prevent it from getting out. After that, she checks Daniel’s body all over more closely for a tracking device, and finds one “nestled against his femoral artery”. She figures that it sent out an alert when she started torturing Daniel, which is why Kevin swooped in to save the day.
She then resets her broken nose. And will not shut up about the mysterious chemical concoction she made that she nicknamed “survive”. It’s kept intentionally vague, but the only thing I can think about is that it’s mainly to hide how dumb the entire thing is. She then passes out on the cot.
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