"This novel is dedicated to Annabelle, in the hopes she too finds her way home."
we begin our look at The Ark with a dedication to one Annabelle. i'm not familiar with her nor can i ascertain whether or not Patrick was kind to her given his treatment of Adrienne and other women in his life.
Chapter 1:
==Characters Introduced in Order of Appearance; Character Status==
Bryan Benson, Detective, Main Character
Chao Feng, First Officer, ???? Character
Lau, Team Captain, Bit Character
Edmond Laraby, Scientist, ???? Character
da Silva, Director, ???? Character
Vasquez Sport Player, Bit Character
Lindqvist, Sport Player, Bit Character
Ther
esa Alexopolous, LT., Duty Officer ???? Character
Nibiru, Black Hole ??????????????

--E1: My first gripe is that a whole bunch of unexplained terms have been rammed into my brain in the first two paragraphs and I'm already confused by what I'm reading. What's a
*plant conversation*? A person's
*plant voice*? Ping someone's
*plant*? The writing could be more engaging by introducing us to what a
*plant* while our protagonist,
Bryan Benson, is enjoying
*Zero Finals*.
*Zero Finals* is given too much detail to ignore while at the same time remaining unnecessary and completely uninteresting in comparison to the urgent call that Benson receives. Coming up with fake sports is just as bad as trying to come up with a believable fake language so I don't fault anyone for wanting to avoid doing so, but Patrick's descriptions of the sport and its roles should have been vague, evocative imagery to allow the reader's imagination to take over - no more than one paragraph.
As it stands, I consider myself to be suffocated on the first page. In fact, the first two pages devote more mention to
*Zero Finals* than whatever this story's plot is, which is actively being impeded by this damn sports game!


--E2: On page two, we finally learn what a
*plant* is, and I want to emphasize this as strongly as I can for later:
That got Bryan’s attention. You couldn’t just turn off your plant. It was a synthetic neural network blanketing the surface of the frontal lobe like a thin film of plastic wrap, eavesdropping on the brain’s higher functions and linking to the ship’s network. The brain’s own bioelectrical impulses powered it, including its organic wireless transceiver.
My opinion is that this should have been introduced more organically and used to help illustrate the universe we're in. Instead, my opinion again: this crucial detail of the setting wastes its potential impact. It's also wedged between multiple useless dialogue snippets.

--E3: Again,
*Zero Finals* worming into everything like some kind of space tick. There's a far more pressing issue for me, however, and that is the nature of the
*plant*. Several sentences seem to imply that these enable what is effectively pseudo-science telepathy, that your thoughts can speak to the minds of whoever calls you -- why would Benson have made not mentally swearing at people a learned behavior otherwise? Why is it
literally described as eavesdropping on the brain's higher functions and being linked to the ship's network??

--E4: More so-far unexplained terms:
*Tau Ceti*, *floater-speak*... I understand that by reading the book description, or back-of-the-cover blurb, we know that Tau Ceti is humanity's ultimate destination... but why has it taken this long to drop that very important name? While at the same time not even mentioning what it's for and what folks are doing, and not giving us some clues as to why they're doing what they're doing?

--E5:
Pardon? It would have been nice to know that Det. Benson was in a stadium EARLIER! I already have no idea where we're at, and now I have even less! And what was that part about unfastening a seatbelt!?

--E6: If you are going to write a story, do not make basic words like 'Zero' into proper nouns. That's not just my opinion, but a pet peeve. I've already begun to hate having to jog my memory to remember that
*Zero Finals* is the name of a sport.

--E7: I was saving this particular meandering dialogue for a special mention about passive, meandering dialogues and unclear details, but now it's an issue. We've once again experienced author-induced attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder by focusing on
*Zero Finals* to getting a crumb of plot, to
*Zero Finals*, to another treat. Patrick's understanding of the literary hook appears to be warped. We're supposed to be intrigued by the story to want to read more, not the author pulling the plot away from us by a string attached to a stick, over and over.


--E8: And immediately following that last diatribe, I once again have no idea where we are at in the story, what's supposed to be happening, and why I should want to follow any of the characters who have so far been named.
**I have decided here and now not to care about location names going forward because it's obvious that Patrick doesn't. The world building is pure nonsense and if I focus on it, I will get MATI.**
--E9: We are FINALLY on the plot for good now, on Page 4. Det. Benson is looking for Edward Laraby, and mentally expositing that there are only a few ways to get off the grid. One is wearing a tinfoil hat to jam the signals of the
*plant*, or being submerged deep enough in water.
**He also shudders at the memory of a six-year old girl's corpse being pulled from a local lake.** You are missing nothing else on this page. It's like the intro FMV to
Microcosm.

--E10: I think Patrick might be projecting a little here.

--E11: Now we're adding yet more power to the
*plant* device and contradicting its functions. At this point, there's no sense in constructively criticizing the work because there are too many jarring errors leading up to this. Bear in mind that I also have absolutely no clue where I'm at on the titular
Ark at this very second, and we've been exchanging poorly-aimed high-fives and floating in a weightless environment surrounded by a car. What's a car in that context? I dunno. What's a Zero Final?

--E12: Edward Laraby's file is detailed to us. No longer a mere beaker-lifting, flask-pouring, nondescript geneticist, but a bio-forming geneticist working on crop alterations and terraforming models for the future colony. Glad to hear it, but I have a question:
**what colony?** WHY hasn't this been introduced? And what does it mean to
*Flip the ship*?

--E13: And... that's it. The chapter ends. What the fuck? The page count is dynamic based on what resolution I stretch the reader to, and here is how it ends moving on from my previous entry.
Ok. Time for a summary.