==Characters Introduced in Order of Appearance; Character Status==
Bryan Benson,
A police(?) detective and our leading man, a gigasaurus who loves sports and evading responsibility, possibly taxation too.
Chao Feng,
The First Officer (of what?), and a douchedrinker according to Benson.
Lau,
The captain of Patrick's favorite Chinese sports team.
Edmond Laraby,
A missing geneticist, dead or alive off the grid.
Avelina Pereira da Silva,
Science Director; Head of Environmental Research & Development. Got her full name in Chapter 3
Vasquez,
Not to be confused with Vasquez from Aliens; a player in Patrick's favorite sports game.
Lindqvist,
A sports player not even worthy of description by Patrick. Must be a PCJ caricature.
Ther
esa Alexopolous,
A lieutenant, and a Duty Officer (of what?), sidekick to the Chad Bryan Benson.
Vikram Bahadur,
Chief Constable of the Chinatown District, on par with Bryan Benson. Definitely not a Sikh.
Nibiru,
Not a character, but a black hole on the edge of a solar system. Probably the best character, though, if it's anything like Black Hole Sun.
Devorah Feynman,
Curator of the Museum, wants to preserve humanity's culture by locating and securing authentic works of art.
Constable Korolev,
Ther
esa sent him to back-up Benson; a rookie that's greener than grass
Chef Takahashi,
Probably Japanese. Probably a chef.
--E1: We're off to a riproaring start as Benson finally gets his foreshadowed date night with sidekick Ther
esa Alexopolous and Patrick reveals that he has no idea how
crucial the first 48 hours of an investigation are, particularly in a missing persons case. It's revealed that it's been TWO DAYS since Edmond's disappearance was recorded, which also means there's only 12 Days until
*the Flip*.
Considering Benson's rank and position, I'd imagine having fuck-all to show after two days would look pretty bad and the higher-ups would be breathing down his neck more intensely than ever given how close they are to colonizing Tau Ceti G. Also, why is Benson thinking about the wall in Laraby's apartment? Couldn't it be more specific to what he saw?
The only things of note here are getting another glimpse into Tau Ceti G, which is so far the most interesting part of the chapter. The other is how much of Patrick's own life Benson's appears to resemble.
--E2: Bryan Benson's character development is getting frontloaded so fucking hard that even though I might agree this is germane, the context of it is baffling - not so much because he's finding similarities between Laraby and himself, but the where and why of its occurrence.
Let me get this straight from the top: Being issued a child license (presumably another unusual reference to the CCP's self-destructive one/two-child policies) late in life is considered an insult to a family, one that the Bensons endured. For starters, we have the vaguest sense of how advanced the biological sciences are in this setting so I'm very loathe to assume that menopause has been extracted from the human genome, thus Bryan's conception, and that of his forebears, should have been impossible.
When you're trying to slowly transport a viable population to a new colony you don't want to overtax your current supplies with a sudden boom in numbers. Sure. But why go to the step of *insulting* a family who was long past the age of childbearing? Why would anyone have the time or resources to be this fucking petty? Depending on how you read this, it's arguable that resource rationing isn't very strict regardless of what's been told to us. Literally any other family could have been given an exception and allowed additional offspring to maintain a sustainable pop. Living space seems to be at a premium, but not food or water.
Next, we're given insight into how the Ark's riders were selected through a gene-filtering process that his ancestors had cheated. This is at once a good reveal and a very jarring execution, because we're learning heavy stuff about Benson himself, looking at the origins of the Ark and its people, and having to parse THAT shit while parsing new and weird terms and being lost in a limbo of at least 200 years between then and now. This is so concussing I had to read it a few times to make sure I was catching on, but the scandal only came to light when the first Bensons had a child suffering from Addison's Disease, which was never meant to leave Earth, a disease they were able to CURE, by the way, so why did it matter if they were "gene-cheats" or not!?!
Consequently, Benson's lineage was dumpstered when they were discovered to have cheated their way onto the Ark; rather than be given a nod for their creativity and ingenuity, they became personae non-grata. Even though no harm was done and they removed the disease (what the fuck), the Ark's special snowflakes bore a medieval grudge forever on, and now you've lost me and this is fucking retarded. If they cared this much, they'd might as well have lynched them and washed their hands of it. If this is how they were treating this one family on the ship, what the Hell kind of life could they look forward to on Tau Ceti G? Earth is fucking gone, there's no reason anyone should give a shit about this, and especially castigate the later generations for the sins of the previous.
Anyway he was a farmhand who had a chance encounter with the coach of his favorite team, had his life change, became a
*Zero Finals* champion, became Chief Constable, etcetera. I'm sure the tone of the bit I highlighted in red is purely coincidental when applied to Patrick S. Tomlinson himself.
--E3: I absolutely refuse to pay any sort of attention to location names after Chapter 1 because Patrick has utterly failed at giving us a sense of belonging in this story. Sandwiched right in the center of this, however, is what I've been craving for so long: a partial or perhaps full answer to whatever the fuck
*the Flip* is.
In twelve days, deceleration occurs, a "flip" occurs, but that's all it was? Patrick is condescending in everything he does, even writing. I genuinely think he assumes all his readers would know exactly what he meant by
*the Flip*.
--E4: Ther
esa finally arrives and she sounds like a completely different person from her throwaway introduction in Chapter 1. The innuendo aside, it's fascinating to me how we go from Benson pondering his good fortune (status, fans, the affection of women) into his date arriving and being described as jaw-droppingly beautiful. This is the kind of thing decried as "male fantasy" right here.
--E5: Not much of note in this entry, but there's just the faintest glimpse of something infinitely better in the writing. A lot of this padding. I think everyone has their own definition of what's padding and glaze over at different points, but this is mine... sort of. It's mostly because that these characters are not characters whom anyone can care about.
--E6: Benson & Ther
esa get seated for dinner, with a mildly interesting revelation about a component of their meals: real white-meat chicken, and real eggs. Not much of note to say here, other than that while I gnash my teeth at the constant *Zero Finals* references, I'm not unable to admit that referencing a character's exploits with little gifts and surprises like this is a good thing to do. It's a much better way to reveal someone's background than exposition.
--E7: Patrick takes a moment to let us all know just how inclusive is he is with his very diverse cast. I honestly can't tell from the way this is written if Vikram Bahadur is supposed to be a Sikh or not because these characters don't have unique speech tics and without being told explicitly who is talking, I can't follow along with straight dialogue even when it's just two of them. Kinda fucked up, tbh. I'm guessing Bahadur is NOT a Sikh: Sikhs are allowed to eat meat as long as it is prepared in accordance to their beliefs.
--E8: My opinion on this is a reflection of my forums avatar.
--E9: Depending on how much you've read of the Bible, you may or may not be aware of how deeply rooted in religion this concept is, and it is a very Christian one... and Patrick certainly has no love for Christians or Christianity. I dunno, just feels weird, OP, because my thinking is, why does any of this matter? Birth control can be assumed to be extremely effective, so why isn't everyone just tube-tied until they get a child license? Obviously nobody wants prostitution in plain sight but who gives a fuck if a man and woman meet up like Benson & Ther
esa have, get horny and want to roll in the sheets afterward?
--E10: There's so much to unpack here and it's strikingly out of place, at least to me. After three pages of mostly-nonsense, there's a reflective talk about between the two not-lovers about what'll happen when they colonize Tau Ceti G. Benson makes a wild assumption (or maybe not because he's the kind of protagonist that the universe rewrites itself for and around) that all of the rules, codes and protocols in place on the Ark will simply vanish and that's bullshit - I enjoyed his musings about how society keeps stratifying itself just before this came up, too.
Benson then laments he'll be obsolete when constables are no longer needed, implying life will be meaningless,
*Zero Finals* will disappear and they won't need adept law enforcement. Titanic amounts of bullshit. I also like that he seems to know where Ther
esa's train of thought goes, somehow.
Isn't that a bit misogynistic, Patrick?
More bullshit about the new world not needing to enforce what's currently in place on the Ark, and that is BULLSHIT. Are they going to land on Tau Ceti G and immediately have a flourishing civilization? Fuck no. It's taken 200 years to get here, it'll take at least a few decades to get things up and running, get infrastructure built, establish society anew. They're not only going to need to KEEP these rules for stability's sake, but gradually introduce new ones to avoid complete pandemonium.
And then we get to the second red highlight, about Bryan being optimistic and believing in fundamental decency. Where the HELL did that come from? Real out of place, and also I don't get that sense from this at all. Bryan's a jackass who attacks waitservants for making him get cleaned up because he's a fucking slob. This is stupid and insulting to any reader's intelligence.
--E11: As though she sensed my distress, Devorah Feynman barges into this romantic(?) affair with an update on the case. The painting is real, and that means there might be a motive to Laraby's disappearance... but of course, no suspects yet. Whilst I enjoy Devorah's snark I also think this could have waited for later. Oh well. And more unsubtle innuendo. Yay. I know the first thing that comes to mind when I think of vaginas is the smell of fish. Is Patrick trying to be funny or horny?
--E12: Bryan and Ther
esa continue the night; Ther
esa rudely suggests that Devorah could have been motivated to aggress Laraby for that painting, but it's faulty because if anyone knew about the painting... why did they leave it there? Whatever. I enjoy the line about it being two days and assuming Laraby is dead - no shit you may as well have, because you haven't accomplished anything so far; you two are TERRIBLE investigators.
After a bad, misplaced pun, Ther
esa and Benson apparently agree to go to the missing guy's house and sleep in his expensive bed together.
Lmao.
