Annotated 25-23
A few people commented on the last page: “Why doesn’t Carol just go to the cops?” I think all but the most strident police reformists would agree this is one situation where cops would be useful. Gather a little evidence beforehand and even HR’s money probably wouldn’t save him. But turning HR in and ending the Grand Experiment is just unthinkable to her. He’s the only meaningful relationship in her life and she’s already given so much, sacrificed so much… and the narrow-minded law enforcement would just see her as an accessory to kidnapping…
In an earlier draft, she contemplated just driving to Tijuana instead of coming back to work… or just swimming out into the same water she was dropping Ferris’ body into, and never swimming back in. But even those “solutions” don’t seem like they’d enter her head here.
As Karishi pointed out, the least Carol could do for Ferris is give him that attendance bonus anyway, since after all, he is still in attendance! Raise your hand if you agree!
What comes next framed it for me as Carol being a follower in a 2 person cult.
HR honestly thinks he’s saving the world and Carol believes him.
Rachel Bernstein talks about two-person cults from time to time on her IndoctriNation podcast, which is all about protecting yourself from systems of control like Carol is caught in. It’s mostly fascinating conversations with cult survivors.
http://www.rachelbernsteintherapy.com/indoctrination-podcast/
He is in attendance and deserves that bonus. He’s giving HR more of a hand than Carol ever will.
No, no, that’s all wrong. What Ferris really deserves here is severance pay.
I am sure they already gave him his cut.
These hand puns are some of the best digital sass I’ve seen in awhile. It’s like these fans could write the manual on wordplay. They could just call it The Handbook.
-rolls his eyes-
Yeah, I saw that coming.
Reminds me of Jamal Kashoggi.
I love that Carol looks super shell-shocked, but she’s still apparently able to sass HR.
So I guess Ferris is now working as a handyman
Ferris was a great employee. Always willing to lend a hand.
See, this is the thing I don’t fully get. How did they “abduct” these people with nobody asking questions? I mean, they didn’t EXPECT they wouldn’t be able to wake them up, so they wouldn’t have planned ahead to cover their tracks – you know, things like choosing loners with no active human relationships such that nobody would come looking for them.
Even with JJ Moustachio to help cover things up, etcetera, the participation of “the five” in this experiment was publicly televised!
And then the question of – the five volunteered for this, signed all sorts of wavers, and the only initial “crime” by Hurricane with an unforeseen complication. They could have come clean at the start and the worst possibility would have been some steep out-of-court payments and a little bad press that, honestly, they could probably have turned to their advantage.
As I understand it, HR’s spiral to madness started with his obsession to try to free “the five” in the first place, so why didn’t he do things the “obvious” and clean way at the start? Or was he always of an attitude of “I will fix this myself no matter what”?
Just my stream of thoughts on the matter.
I think the angle is that Arkerra (the game) isn’t just meant to be a parody of WoW; it became wildly popular because, for all that it’s very similar to other MMOs, it’s also somehow DIFFERENT. That its success is due to the online/”real place” fusion that HR managed to cobble together and no one else knows about. And then during the Five experiment, he sees these “players” interacting with and even changing the “game” on a level no one else has been able to, up to himself. Even surpassing his changes at times, challenging his sovereignty over “his” world. The Godhead complex and aloofness might have been festering for a while; his madness might not be wanting to save the Five but to remove the threat to himself. Involving other people in that means exposing his methods and the “code” of Arkerra to others.
How it didn’t become a rock solid legal case is beyond me, but like a lot of stuff involving HR it might be best that the how and why wasn’t too deeply explored. I’m of the opinion that HR as a character benefits a LOT from details being unknown. Toward the end of the story even the status of the five is called into question when somebody points out that the “brain scans” proving their survival don’t look like brain scans should. I suppose I’m saying that there’s reasons he might have done it this way, but I don’t recall any explanation being offered for why he didn’t enlist the authorities help in sorting it out. It’s not like they could have found another expert to deal with it, and he’s got plenty of strings to pull.
For me at least, this is a very easy question. HR’s goal was always to become a god using his mix of magick and tech: he arrived at that decision when he was (to all appearances at least) perfectly rational. Maybe he was sincere about offering selected others their chance at godhood too, maybe not. But in any case, his attempts to get the Five out of a world that had rejected his control was always in service to that larger goal. Involving the public or the authorities would mean giving up his life’s purpose. Even if he spun it well… and I have my doubts that “HURRICANE PUTS CONTEST WINNERS IN COMAS” is really a pig you can put that much lipstick on… the chance of him getting to do another experiment in the same vein would be pretty much zero.
The Gorram Batguy’s question about “How come Shanna’s the only one investigating here” is, in fairness, thornier, though I don’t think “publicly televised” means quite what it used to mean. We’re talking about a YouTube fan video here, not 20/20. And I don’t think any of the Five had the sort of social lives that would lead anyone to report them missing in that critical 48-hour window of time, after which it gets a lot harder to get law enforcement to prioritize the case. Even so, there are weeds to untangle here. I’ll probably get into them some more for Shanna’s next appearance.
That’s what I’d more or less gathered here too. That HR always wanted to know the godhead and become god and the five were an experiment in that direction.
Putting it like that, it then becomes clear why he became so obsessed with the Five. If he is god, then their existence is thwarting him and his ego. Which is why he keeps banging his head on the wall and trying to prove that he can bring them back, because a god would be able to do that. Except everything he tries to do with them keeps telling him one thing: You are not God. Which he can’t accept and drives him to keep looking, keep trying, and between that and listening to Brother Tom….I guess he finally broke underneath it all and then something put together a humanoid figure out of the broken shards
So … HR invited the Five in order to test the waters before going in himself. I’m thinking he _could_ have involved authorities and then steer the affair so that some overeager rescue attempt ends up either removing them intact or killing them (in wich case he advised against it!), and he could escape with survivable injuries.
But even as I’m writing that, it’s still a bad idea if his intent was to keep working on the project, especially if he thought he could get them out by other means.
The thing that strikes me is that neither the public nor personal acquaintances or the gaming press was asking too many questions. After those pre-game interviews with the Five, you’d think there’d be a few game journalists queuing up for post-game interviews, and parts of the gaming community impatient to read/hear/watch them. There should be a reasonable crowd of people at least asking questions.
Of course, HR might have played it by publicly claiming that the experiment had failed and they weren’t able to play the game, therefore it’s sadly not worth doing any interviews, and the Five have been sent home with some consolation prizes — but that’s me making up stuff.
That said: Carol’s cooperation in Ferris’ … “dismissal” … stumped me more than that. HR is using magic, so during the first read I assumed he’d probably solved that situation using some of that, and assorted other means. But I feel as if Carol was a much too nice person to simply accept this mission from HR without either arguing A LOT and finally succumbing, or some form of visible motivation to not just help cover up (nay, prevent!) an unfortunate accident, rather than murder. I imagine she’d have accepted if HR had trapped Ferris and kept him confined to some closet in the basement. She’d feel bad about it and would compensate by bringing him nice food and explaining to him why it’s for the good of the company and so on. This still seems a bit too much.
Well, Carol didn’t get a vote on killing Ferris; she just got tasked to perform damage control after HR decided Ferris needed killing. She’s allowed to have emotions about that, and HR will let her vent them up to a point: she will still be arguing with him after disposing of the body. But the choice she ultimately faces is to abandon HR utterly or to do what needs to be done to ensure their continued survival as a unit. There really isn’t a meaningful middle ground. Still, the toll this takes on her will inform her next appearance.
As far as the incurious gaming community, I think your hypothesis about HR burying the story with a “nothing to see here” is pretty sound, except that HR would probably go with “needs further testing, still in beta” rather than “failed experiment.” It’s better business to present failure as “pre-success” wherever possible. More on this, again, in Chapter 27.
Something tells me that HR has never mopped a floor in his life. Also, Carol will never be able to enjoy that song again, will she?
How did he keep his clothes so clean?
Perhaps it’s a side effect of blood magic. Sacrifice the stains away!