My copy of Death Quest still hasn't arrived yet - in retrospect ordering it so close to the holiday shipping season was probably a bad decision - so I guess now's a good time to try and wrap our heads around what we just went through.
Fortune of Fear. Where to start? What can we say without using words that 54 Charlee Nine would (bleep) out?
The title sucks. It refers to Gris' fortune, which is won without any effort, involves no character development, lasts for less than a third of the book, and is utterly, achingly wasted. There's certainly nothing fearsome about it, and the only effect it had on the plot was making Gris flee to America and do his bloody job once he'd wasted the money (after said fortune let him to waste a month neglecting his job). But why'd he end up leaving? Because he was facing punishment for the crimes he committed with the fortune. What about the other crimes he'd done? Why couldn't Gris have been forced to flee Turkey because of child abuse or his outstanding credit card debt? Or why couldn't that Bloody Dagger assassin guy bully Gris into returning to America?
In other words, why did the eponymous pile of gold even need to be in the story?
I guess to titillate, because none of those other ways of getting Gris out of Turkey involved him spending a month in the backseat of a limo with random peasant women. Though this theory is problematic because the author quickly undoes that bit of "fanservice" by revealing that the women were both coerced into spreading their legs for Gris and raped beforehand by his henchmen. Why'd Hubbard do that? Did he want to get the reader all flustered by reading a not-too-explicit-but-more-explicit-than-it-should-be sex scene, then make them feel guilty by revealing it had been rape all along? If so, why? Was it to ensure that the reader wasn't enjoying the adventures of Gris? Then why include the sex, or make Gris the protagonist to begin with?
Come to think of it, sex played a bigger part of the story than what was in the title. Gris' wasted his fortune on Turkish not-hookers, and the consequences of that forced him back onto the job. Then he went to America and raped a pair of lesbians into becoming his benefactors. And then Krak mind-raped the frigidity out of Miss Simmons and turned her into a gang-rape fetishist who gave Heller a pass on her class. They should've called this thing Record of Rape or something.
This in turn leads me to realize that there is exactly one healthy sexual relationship in Mission Earth, Heller and Krak's... well, assuming you consider a relationship built around exclusion, deception, and insane jealousy to be "healthy." All the other sex has been rape, prostitution, nymphomania, statutory rape, outright pedophilia, or homosexuality caused by Psychiatric Birth Control. Is Hubbard making a statement about contemporary culture or just sex in general? Or is there no statement to be made, and this is just what he wanted to write about?
Useless gold, unhealthy sex... did anything else happen in the book? There was that section in Atlantic City early on, but that turned out to be a big waste of time. Maybe Miss Boomp will use her new casino to save Heller later or something, but I'm skeptical. And then there was... well, those pirates back at the Apparatus base are presumably waiting for Gris to finish planning that heist of Switzerland, right? Or did he manage to talk them out of it? I hope not, because that would mean that the whole "line-jumper" subplot was only there to facilitate the "Gris' fortune" subplot, which I've already established was basically pointless. Compound pointlessness. Fractal subplots that lead into each other without affecting the main plot.
I can think of four meaningful events in this book. First, the Countess Krak arrived to team up with Heller at the start of the story. Then around the middle we established that Heller is cheating the stock market to build up the fortune needed to create the Eco-friendly technology that will save the world. Shortly afterward Dr. Crobe designed a magical pollution-eating microbe to assist in the same. And at the end Heller passed his Nature Appreciation class, apparently all that was holding him back from earning the degree that would force the world to take him seriously.
So what about these four events required them to be bracketed with rape and mind-control and poorly-invested gold ingots? Or in other words, why did 90% of Fortune of Fear need to happen?
'cause Hubbard wrote it, that's why. There was nobody around him to say "do you think having a character cure someone's homosexuality by raping her might be a bit controversial?" Or "are there a few scenes we could cut to keep the plot moving on at a brisk pace?" Nope, this was a man convinced of his intellectual greatness and status as a master storyteller, a man about to change the world through his satirical sci-fi-romance-spy-humor epic, a man venerated as a prophet by the people around him.
Or maybe Hubbard was more level-headed than that, and knew full well that Battlefield Earth's sales figures had been inflated by his followers, which meant that it didn't matter what he wrote. So he just strung together a bunch of rants and rape and rambling subplots and called it a bestseller.
All this criticism aside, I can think of a few positives about Fortune of Fear - it really fleshes out Heller and Krak's relationship, or more specifically how horribly dysfunctional it is. Theirs is a romance built around withholding information from each other, duplicity, and outright lying. After the oh-so-perfect "love story" involving Jonnie and Chrissie in Battlefield Earth, such a disturbing affair is almost refreshing, even if the author probably didn't intend it to be as such.
Similarly, I was worried that the Countess Krak was going to be another Chrissie, a vapid collection of attractive body parts whose only characterization was her slavish devotion to the male lead. Boy was I wrong! Krak is manipulative, vengeful, and delusional. Gris and the book's jacket spent a lot of energy hyping how dangerous she was, and while part of this is due to her being a rare Mission Earth character capable of forming and then executing a basic plan, Krak really is kind of a scary psycho lady.
The downside of these revelations is that we no longer have any reason to root for our heroes. They aren't sympathetic, and now it's hard to say they're even good people. And since the closest alternative protagonist around is Gris, we're left with nobody to cheer on, nobody to care about. Combined with the excruciatingly meandering, plodding story, there's no incentive to pick up the volume in the series.
Well, no positive reason anyway. Maybe you're using Hubbard's opus as a way of examining his neuroses and warped worldview. Maybe you're fascinated by how horrible the series is, and are perversely interested in just how much worse it will get. Or maybe you decided to start a blog about Mission Earth.
The point is, five books in and we're just getting started.
Back to Part Forty-Two, Chapters Ten and Eleven
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Monday, December 10, 2012
Part Forty-Two, Chapters Ten and Eleven - We Can Ony Speculate What the Homework Is
Miss Simmons tells Heller not to move from his seat on the tree stump, because he's "in for the biggest surprise of all." Then she addresses her thirty-odd students, explaining how some "fiend so merciless as to defy all the annals of Hell" has been making her life miserable.
Is it normal for the people who want to mind-control the world to tell everyone else, from an early age, how they're trying to mind-control the world?
While the Countess Krak shudders and wonders if the game is up, Simmons describes how she got a letter warning her that she'd been hypnotized, making her realize that someone had been messing with her sex life. Then she talks about her childhood, and how her father would tell her bedtime stories about how men "were no good and only wanted vile gratification of their base desires." So when she got Gris' warning letter, Simmons immediately realized that her father was the one who had hypnotized her, went to the police about it, then confronted her parents.
This is why, when you're sending an anonymous tip that someone's been hypnotized by someone you want them to retaliate against, you tell them who you're talking about.
I'd also like to note that there's no real-time reaction from Gris regarding the magnitude of his failure, no "I clutched my head," no "cold sweat ran down my back," nothing. He narrates very loudly when Heller sees "THE COUNTESS KRAK!" a page later, but it's only at the end of Chapter 11 that he starts existing again and summarizes what went wrong. Hubbard went through a great deal of trouble to make in-story justifications for Gris to be a narrator, and here he is forgetting to make him narrate.
Miss Simmons tells how she confronted her parents, how her mother made her father confess that "he had told me again and again under trance that I was FRIGID! He told me that if I had a man or experienced an orgasm I would go BLIND!" Y'know, important things to tell a grade-schooler. Simmons calls him "a craven traitor to psychology! It is supposed to (bleep) everybody, not make them frigid!"
And while we could explore the twist of a psychologist going against his own teachings to protect his daughter, instead Miss Simmons calls attention to the fact that she's not wearing her glasses, so the author can with uncharacteristic subtlety reference Dianetics, an ad for which claimed "You are only three or four hours from taking your glasses off for keeps."
Simmons then thanks "Wister" for letting her get raped - "Those orgasms were GLORIOUS!" - tenderly takes his hand, gives him an A+ for the course, thanks him again for letting her get raped, and dismisses him from further classes with tears in her eyes. A confused Heller wanders off, spots "THE COUNTESS KRAK!" watching from nearby (she claims to be "Just visiting the classroom to see how the pupils were getting on"), and repeats what Miss Simmons told him. He's a little confused and wonders if his teacher has "scrambled her main drives" and decides to go back and check on her, flat-out rejecting Krak's attempt to get him to head home already. I actually rooted for Heller a bit when he did that.
They get back in time to watch Miss Simmons kick off the orgy.
You're a freshman at the university, you've got to take this BS nature appreciation course because some hippie has a lot of clout when it comes to graduation requirements, and then the professor suddenly says it's now a sex ed practicum. What will you do? Panic and flee because you've already got a fiancee, thank you very much? Call the cops? Lodge a "WTF?" with the Dean? Or drop trou and go along with it?
Even better is the Countess' reaction.
And Gris won't make a leering comment about those pages, even though he's looking at them through the Countess' eyes, because the author has forgotten that he exists.
When your boyfriend tells you how much he hates his professor, he's actually having sex with her. When the professor tells you how much she hates one of her students, she's actually having sex with him. When your boyfriend returns home, exhausted from a class he hates, it's because he's having sex with the teacher.
So an increasingly befuddled Heller watches clothing fly through the air as Miss Simmons commands that "For classwork during the remainder of the term, each boy of the class must first handle me and then each female classmate." He moves closer to investigate -
- and Heller retreats, thoroughly lost and happy to no longer be taking the course. But he has some uncharacteristic misgivings about his mind-raping, deceitful, paranoid girlfriend:
I guess... we should laugh? That's the appropriate response when an insanely jealous woman uses mind control to make her not-rival think she'd been raped and turn a college course into a swingers' club, right?
Gris starts existing again and voices his disgust that Miss Simmons' father, "a renowned psychologist, would go against his whole profession and try to suppress promiscuous sex, the very backbone of Earth psychiatric treatment." And this just raises a whole heap of questions. Is that why all the students are willing to shuck their pants, regardless of their personal beliefs, existing relationships, or fear of sexually-transmitted disease - they've already been sexualized by their other psychology classes? When Krak removed Miss Simmons' hypnosis, did that remove one layer of indoctrination, allowing her traditional psychological education to lead her to turn her class into an orgy, or did that merely let her realize her nymphomanic potential and sexualize her class, psychology or no psychology? And if "psychiatric birth control" is a real thing, why isn't Miss Simmons trying to turn her students gay, and why are books on more traditional sex available from the school bookstore instead of copies of Brokeback Mountain?
It's like this book was written by a ranting conspiracy theorist rather than someone trying to build a rational and consistent narrative setting.
Gris reasons that his attempt to warn Simmons backfired because Krak had hypnotized her to disregard and find a reasonable explanation for everything that happened in her living room the next day, which covered Gris' letter. Krak foiled him by complete accident. And then "In a brilliant flash, as clear as lightning itself, I understood something utterly: In order to thoroughly wreck Heller, I would first and foremost have to get rid of the Countess Krak!"
Sure, there's no "INSPIRATION!" this time, but Gris is on a roll:
After some herculean mental efforts, Gris has succeeded in recognizing the obvious. And he's completely given up on the whole "find Heller's platen" subplot. Now he's going to "Concentrate on that deadly female" and do whatever he can to take out Krak.
And after five books of Gris' repeated lack of success, we're supposed to view this as a dramatic moment rather than the set-up to another book of failure. Speaking of which:
Even the book is acknowledging that for all Gris' drama, he's basically the coyote trying to off the roadrunner at this point. What wacky hijinks will ensue as Gris tries to get that wascally woman?
Good grief, we're only halfway through this idiotic series.
Back to Part Forty-Two, Chapter Nine
Miss Simmons sighed and looked back at he class. "Now, students, a vile, foul trick has been played on me. You have all had basic psychology from kindergarten up, so you know about HYPNOTISM!"
Is it normal for the people who want to mind-control the world to tell everyone else, from an early age, how they're trying to mind-control the world?
While the Countess Krak shudders and wonders if the game is up, Simmons describes how she got a letter warning her that she'd been hypnotized, making her realize that someone had been messing with her sex life. Then she talks about her childhood, and how her father would tell her bedtime stories about how men "were no good and only wanted vile gratification of their base desires." So when she got Gris' warning letter, Simmons immediately realized that her father was the one who had hypnotized her, went to the police about it, then confronted her parents.
This is why, when you're sending an anonymous tip that someone's been hypnotized by someone you want them to retaliate against, you tell them who you're talking about.
I'd also like to note that there's no real-time reaction from Gris regarding the magnitude of his failure, no "I clutched my head," no "cold sweat ran down my back," nothing. He narrates very loudly when Heller sees "THE COUNTESS KRAK!" a page later, but it's only at the end of Chapter 11 that he starts existing again and summarizes what went wrong. Hubbard went through a great deal of trouble to make in-story justifications for Gris to be a narrator, and here he is forgetting to make him narrate.
Miss Simmons tells how she confronted her parents, how her mother made her father confess that "he had told me again and again under trance that I was FRIGID! He told me that if I had a man or experienced an orgasm I would go BLIND!" Y'know, important things to tell a grade-schooler. Simmons calls him "a craven traitor to psychology! It is supposed to (bleep) everybody, not make them frigid!"
And while we could explore the twist of a psychologist going against his own teachings to protect his daughter, instead Miss Simmons calls attention to the fact that she's not wearing her glasses, so the author can with uncharacteristic subtlety reference Dianetics, an ad for which claimed "You are only three or four hours from taking your glasses off for keeps."
Simmons then thanks "Wister" for letting her get raped - "Those orgasms were GLORIOUS!" - tenderly takes his hand, gives him an A+ for the course, thanks him again for letting her get raped, and dismisses him from further classes with tears in her eyes. A confused Heller wanders off, spots "THE COUNTESS KRAK!" watching from nearby (she claims to be "Just visiting the classroom to see how the pupils were getting on"), and repeats what Miss Simmons told him. He's a little confused and wonders if his teacher has "scrambled her main drives" and decides to go back and check on her, flat-out rejecting Krak's attempt to get him to head home already. I actually rooted for Heller a bit when he did that.
They get back in time to watch Miss Simmons kick off the orgy.
"I am at last free to teach you what I subconsciously wanted to teach you in Nature Appreciation. Now, Nature Appreciation is really about the birds and the bees. So there will be a substantive change in course material.
"We will not use the texts of Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis and Freud, for they are crummy fellows to run around with. Such sources are bad, because they do not have any love in them. Instead, the text we will now use for the class is a classic Persian book, The Seventy and Seven Variations in the Act of Love by Hammer Hammer, translated by the respectable Chinese scholar Hoo Chu Longdong, with beautiful illustrations and diagrams by Phullup Cummings. I was able to get these at the college bookstore last night."
She flipped open the sack on the stump and began to pass them around. The students took them with great interest. "Now, girls, open your books to Chapter One, 'The Essentials of Orgasm.' But the boys should open theirs to Chapter Thirteen, 'Variations of Gang Rape.'"
You're a freshman at the university, you've got to take this BS nature appreciation course because some hippie has a lot of clout when it comes to graduation requirements, and then the professor suddenly says it's now a sex ed practicum. What will you do? Panic and flee because you've already got a fiancee, thank you very much? Call the cops? Lodge a "WTF?" with the Dean? Or drop trou and go along with it?
Even better is the Countess' reaction.
The Countess Krak, able to see those pages with her sunglasses
And Gris won't make a leering comment about those pages, even though he's looking at them through the Countess' eyes, because the author has forgotten that he exists.
sunglasses, muttered, "Now I know for sure why he was so tired Sunday nights. That slut! Jettero," she said in a louder voice, "I think we better be going."
When your boyfriend tells you how much he hates his professor, he's actually having sex with her. When the professor tells you how much she hates one of her students, she's actually having sex with him. When your boyfriend returns home, exhausted from a class he hates, it's because he's having sex with the teacher.
So an increasingly befuddled Heller watches clothing fly through the air as Miss Simmons commands that "For classwork during the remainder of the term, each boy of the class must first handle me and then each female classmate." He moves closer to investigate -
"Now Roger, we'll call that a pass. Thompson and Oswald, you come over here at once. The rest of you get busy. BUSY! BUSY!"
A boot landed in the brook with a tremendous splash!
Three girls' jackets went flying up in the air!
The very trees were shaking!
The Countess Krak had a leafy willow in her hand. Miss Simmons' strained voice came through the speaker. "Remember, it's no good without love. So I love you and you love me. OH, OSWALD!" The Countess snapped the willow with a furious jerk.
- and Heller retreats, thoroughly lost and happy to no longer be taking the course. But he has some uncharacteristic misgivings about his mind-raping, deceitful, paranoid girlfriend:
He was gazing at her very suspiciously. "Did you have something to do with that?"
Her look was very bland and guileless. The very soul of innocence. She said, "Me? Jettero!"
I guess... we should laugh? That's the appropriate response when an insanely jealous woman uses mind control to make her not-rival think she'd been raped and turn a college course into a swingers' club, right?
Gris starts existing again and voices his disgust that Miss Simmons' father, "a renowned psychologist, would go against his whole profession and try to suppress promiscuous sex, the very backbone of Earth psychiatric treatment." And this just raises a whole heap of questions. Is that why all the students are willing to shuck their pants, regardless of their personal beliefs, existing relationships, or fear of sexually-transmitted disease - they've already been sexualized by their other psychology classes? When Krak removed Miss Simmons' hypnosis, did that remove one layer of indoctrination, allowing her traditional psychological education to lead her to turn her class into an orgy, or did that merely let her realize her nymphomanic potential and sexualize her class, psychology or no psychology? And if "psychiatric birth control" is a real thing, why isn't Miss Simmons trying to turn her students gay, and why are books on more traditional sex available from the school bookstore instead of copies of Brokeback Mountain?
It's like this book was written by a ranting conspiracy theorist rather than someone trying to build a rational and consistent narrative setting.
Gris reasons that his attempt to warn Simmons backfired because Krak had hypnotized her to disregard and find a reasonable explanation for everything that happened in her living room the next day, which covered Gris' letter. Krak foiled him by complete accident. And then "In a brilliant flash, as clear as lightning itself, I understood something utterly: In order to thoroughly wreck Heller, I would first and foremost have to get rid of the Countess Krak!"
Sure, there's no "INSPIRATION!" this time, but Gris is on a roll:
And then another lightning bolt. Whereas I could not slaughter Heller until I got the word from Lombar that the former's communication line to the Grand Council no longer mattered, there was NO restraint of ANY kind WHATEVER in removing the Countess Krak. She could be dropped off buildings or ground to mush under the heavy wheels of trains and I would suffer not the blink of an eye about it from Lombar.
After some herculean mental efforts, Gris has succeeded in recognizing the obvious. And he's completely given up on the whole "find Heller's platen" subplot. Now he's going to "Concentrate on that deadly female" and do whatever he can to take out Krak.
I could do it! I would do it!
And my eyes slitted with firm resolve.
GET RID OF THE COUNTESS KRAK!
And after five books of Gris' repeated lack of success, we're supposed to view this as a dramatic moment rather than the set-up to another book of failure. Speaking of which:
What crazy plan
will Gris use now?
Does this finish the
Countess Krak?
Read
MISSION EARTH
Volume 6
DEATH QUEST
Even the book is acknowledging that for all Gris' drama, he's basically the coyote trying to off the roadrunner at this point. What wacky hijinks will ensue as Gris tries to get that wascally woman?
Good grief, we're only halfway through this idiotic series.
Back to Part Forty-Two, Chapter Nine
Friday, December 7, 2012
Part Forty-Two, Chapter Nine - Simmons' Sunday
Yes, this chapter starts late Sunday morning, or what Gris tells us "would live long in my memory as Simmons' Sunday." I'm not sure what's so special about this day given everything else that's happened to him. What about Torture Session Tuesday? Or Wanted for Adultery Wednesday?
Setting his viewscreens up in the closet again, Gris watches and Heller and Krak prepare for their day. Krak thinks Heller is "agitated" after Bang-Bang told him that his Nature Appreciation class has been relocated from the Bronx Zoo to Van Cortlandt Park. And you can guess what she's fixated on.
Hubbard spent a lot of effort telling us how wonderful Heller is, how he's brilliant and charming and smart and all that garbage, and we're supposed to be saddened when things somehow don't go his way. But the only time I actually feel sorry for him is when Hubbard gives him a girlfriend like the Countess Krak.
Krak casually asks Heller about what the weather's going to be like for the day, then assures him that she's got some museum exhibits to see. But instead of expanding her mind by studying the history and artwork of Earth, she hurries along to the garage ahead of Heller and hides in the luggage compartment behind the Porsche's front seats. And Gris is nervous because she obviously had a shopping bag full of magic tricks again, but he "had forgotten to fill the strip well in her viewer and had no way to check back on what she had packed in that shopping bag."
I bet 54 Charlee Nine, the Robotbrain in the Translatophone, runs on a tapedrive. We're dealing with aliens that harness the power of black holes to shift their capital forward in time so nobody can attack it, but apparently they haven't figured out digital data storage.
We get another case of Gris clumsily inferring what other people are thinking when Heller shows up at the garage.
Or maybe he ran over a squirrel the other day and was worried the furry pancake had gotten kicked up and lodged in the underside of his car.
Heller speeds off in his modified car, and Gris takes a break from mentally ranting about how the Countess Krak is worse than a mafia hitman and a Dracula combined to worry that if Heller got pulled over for speeding he might miss his "appointment with destiny" or otherwise interfere with "the coming catastrophe." Poor little guy still thinks everything's going to go his way.
There's also some suspiciously appropriate music on the radio, presumably another Hubbard original:
This actually gets a smile - a hell of a smile - out of our villain, who "smiled so broadly, I almost tore my lip." Not only does Heller unknowingly have the extremely dangerous (to everyone else) Countess Krak in the back seat, but he's on his way to meet Miss Simmons. As Gris explains, "It was bad enough to face one woman. But he was absolutely surrounded with the treacherous species."
I almost wonder if the author's trying to deflect any accusations of misogyny towards Gris after doing that "rape the lesbians straight" chapter.
Heller arrives at the park, disembarks and walks off. Krak gets out shortly afterward, stalking her boyfriend from about two hundred yards back. They soon arrive at Near-Rape Grotto, where there's still visible bullet scars in the trees and Miss Simmons and the other students are waiting. The teacher is in a black topcoat and matching slouch hat, but not wearing her glasses, and bids Heller sit down on a particular rock, then resumes counting the attendees.
Gris is confused because he can also hear the counting coming from Krak's monitor. She taps the pair of sunglasses she put on as part of her stalking outfit, and Gris realizes: "THE GLASSES!" Yes, it's another Eyes and Ears of Voltar toy, sunglasses that amplify distant sound and can zoom in on things. She focuses on her not-rival, Miss Simmons.
Miss Simmons is still doing a rolecall, by the way. But apparently in a very slutty manner.
I'm glad Gris is here to tell how dramatic or exciting these scenes are. Instead of the author conveying these emotions through, y'know, his writing.
Good old Gris. He doesn't have a direct hand in events, or indeed any way of knowing how things are going, but he keeps these adorable expectations that just because he wants something, it's going to happen that way. And after all these books and all those slaps to the face, he's kept this stupid, stupid innocence.
Back to Chapter Eight
Setting his viewscreens up in the closet again, Gris watches and Heller and Krak prepare for their day. Krak thinks Heller is "agitated" after Bang-Bang told him that his Nature Appreciation class has been relocated from the Bronx Zoo to Van Cortlandt Park. And you can guess what she's fixated on.
"That's that Miss Simmons, isn't it, dear?"
"I wish you'd forget about this Miss Simmons thing. She hates me like poison. My only interest in her is that she could cost me my diploma and nobody will listen to me when I make my proposals."
"I shouldn't be counting on proposing to Miss Simmons, dear."
"Please, can't we call a truce on. . ."
Hubbard spent a lot of effort telling us how wonderful Heller is, how he's brilliant and charming and smart and all that garbage, and we're supposed to be saddened when things somehow don't go his way. But the only time I actually feel sorry for him is when Hubbard gives him a girlfriend like the Countess Krak.
Krak casually asks Heller about what the weather's going to be like for the day, then assures him that she's got some museum exhibits to see. But instead of expanding her mind by studying the history and artwork of Earth, she hurries along to the garage ahead of Heller and hides in the luggage compartment behind the Porsche's front seats. And Gris is nervous because she obviously had a shopping bag full of magic tricks again, but he "had forgotten to fill the strip well in her viewer and had no way to check back on what she had packed in that shopping bag."
I bet 54 Charlee Nine, the Robotbrain in the Translatophone, runs on a tapedrive. We're dealing with aliens that harness the power of black holes to shift their capital forward in time so nobody can attack it, but apparently they haven't figured out digital data storage.
We get another case of Gris clumsily inferring what other people are thinking when Heller shows up at the garage.
He noted that the springs seemed a bit lower, for he gave the car a cursory exterior and motor check, probably for bombs. Then he gave an "Oh, well," and started the car up, possibly believing all the monkeying he was doing with it had changed its balance or weight.
Or maybe he ran over a squirrel the other day and was worried the furry pancake had gotten kicked up and lodged in the underside of his car.
Heller speeds off in his modified car, and Gris takes a break from mentally ranting about how the Countess Krak is worse than a mafia hitman and a Dracula combined to worry that if Heller got pulled over for speeding he might miss his "appointment with destiny" or otherwise interfere with "the coming catastrophe." Poor little guy still thinks everything's going to go his way.
There's also some suspiciously appropriate music on the radio, presumably another Hubbard original:
Fatal Woman,Fatal Woman,So drenched in sin.Fatal Womn,The Devil's twin.Fatal Woman,You done me in.And that's why I shall die.
This actually gets a smile - a hell of a smile - out of our villain, who "smiled so broadly, I almost tore my lip." Not only does Heller unknowingly have the extremely dangerous (to everyone else) Countess Krak in the back seat, but he's on his way to meet Miss Simmons. As Gris explains, "It was bad enough to face one woman. But he was absolutely surrounded with the treacherous species."
I almost wonder if the author's trying to deflect any accusations of misogyny towards Gris after doing that "rape the lesbians straight" chapter.
Heller arrives at the park, disembarks and walks off. Krak gets out shortly afterward, stalking her boyfriend from about two hundred yards back. They soon arrive at Near-Rape Grotto, where there's still visible bullet scars in the trees and Miss Simmons and the other students are waiting. The teacher is in a black topcoat and matching slouch hat, but not wearing her glasses, and bids Heller sit down on a particular rock, then resumes counting the attendees.
Gris is confused because he can also hear the counting coming from Krak's monitor. She taps the pair of sunglasses she put on as part of her stalking outfit, and Gris realizes: "THE GLASSES!" Yes, it's another Eyes and Ears of Voltar toy, sunglasses that amplify distant sound and can zoom in on things. She focuses on her not-rival, Miss Simmons.
"The hussy," said the Countess Krak.
Miss Simmons is still doing a rolecall, by the way. But apparently in a very slutty manner.
Twenty-nine," said Miss Simmons, in a cold voice. "And thirty if you count Wister. There are some surprises in store for all of you. We can begin."
How ominous!
I'm glad Gris is here to tell how dramatic or exciting these scenes are. Instead of the author conveying these emotions through, y'know, his writing.
I expected Grafferty or at least police to be waiting around that wood. I hugged myself. If they were, they would catch the Countess Krak! Maybe even arrest Heller for the original eight murders!
Good old Gris. He doesn't have a direct hand in events, or indeed any way of knowing how things are going, but he keeps these adorable expectations that just because he wants something, it's going to happen that way. And after all these books and all those slaps to the face, he's kept this stupid, stupid innocence.
Back to Chapter Eight
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Part Forty-Two, Chapter Eight - Gris Threatens to Shoot the Messenger
Having decided upon his course of action and been freed from his closety prison, Gris immediately gets distracted by "one thing and then the other and then the first thing again" as per his arrangement with the women he raped the heterosexuality back into. But he eventually gets around to writing his letter.
Why, it doesn't look like Gris went into specifics over which of the foulest fiends who ever existed between Hells and Heavens told Miss Simmons that pack of lies, or even which pack of lies he's warning her about. Gee. I wonder how that could possibly go wrong?
Yes, he put his signature in the center of the letter. Yes, that's a premeditated use of an "o'er" in contemporary correspondence.
Come Saturday morning Gris calls up Raht and tells him to deliver the letter (and Simmons' glasses), then meet him in a park instead of Miss Pinch's apartment, even though Raht knows that's where Gris is staying. Gris goes to the park, grabs a hot dog and a coffee for lunch, and relaxes for one hour, then grows increasingly worried over the next four hours. Raht finally returns, explaining that some workers were putting in a new window and he didn't want to give the letter to them, so he waited an hour and a half for Simmons to wake up Gris threatens to shoot him if he doesn't get to the point.
Er... he's got a gun in his pocket, under the table, aimed at Raht. He's aiming a pistol. That's what he's doing.
Anyway, Raht relates how he gave Miss Simmons her glasses back, but she put them down before reading the letter. Gris protests that Simmons can't read without her glasses. Hello, minor plot point that will be explained in a couple of chapters. Once Miss Simmons finished the letter she turned colors and started screaming, then bid Raht stay at her house while she stormed out to talk to the police. This would imply that after getting fear bombed Grafferty and his officers ran back to the station and hid under their desks instead of returning to the crime scene, but Gris is thrilled because he knows that between Simmons, Kutzbrain and the cops, they should be able to put together an I.D. on the Countess Krak. Because the Countess Krak is good at using hypno-helmets to make people think they're rape victims, but not so much when it comes to covering her tracks.
Raht trailed Miss Simmons as far as the Downtown Express, then went back to her apartment and waited until she finally returned, no police in sight, "smug beyond relief. These Earth women are that way. They're happiest when they've got something on somebody, and that's the way she looked." So Raht reported back to Gris to pass on Simmons' thanks for saving her life.
Miss Simmons says nothing about Sunday. There is no indication that whatever action she's taken with the police will come to fruition on Sunday. There is no reason for the police to delay their search for the culprit until Sunday. But Gris is somehow under the impression that nothing is scheduled for the rest of Saturday afternoon and evening, and the plot will advance the following morning.
In an amazing coincidence, the next chapter begins late Sunday morning. Wonder how Gris knew that?
Back to Chapter Seven
Dear Miss Simmons,
I herewith return your glasses so you will know I am a friend.
I have to inform you that a dastardly deed has been perpetrated upon you.
You were hypnotized and lied to by the foulest fiend who ever existed between Hells and Heavens. You were told a pack of lies while in hypnotic trance. DON'T BELIEVE THEM!
The things you were told were utter hogwash and you should cast them utterly from your mind. You have been absolutely right all along about him.
Just realize that your future and that of this planet depend utterly upon your exposing that (bleepard) for what he is.
Don't let the firm hue of resolution be sickled o'er by the pale cast of hypnotism. ACT. ACT. ACT!
Your true friend,
X
Why, it doesn't look like Gris went into specifics over which of the foulest fiends who ever existed between Hells and Heavens told Miss Simmons that pack of lies, or even which pack of lies he's warning her about. Gee. I wonder how that could possibly go wrong?
Yes, he put his signature in the center of the letter. Yes, that's a premeditated use of an "o'er" in contemporary correspondence.
Come Saturday morning Gris calls up Raht and tells him to deliver the letter (and Simmons' glasses), then meet him in a park instead of Miss Pinch's apartment, even though Raht knows that's where Gris is staying. Gris goes to the park, grabs a hot dog and a coffee for lunch, and relaxes for one hour, then grows increasingly worried over the next four hours. Raht finally returns, explaining that some workers were putting in a new window and he didn't want to give the letter to them, so he waited an hour and a half for Simmons to wake up Gris threatens to shoot him if he doesn't get to the point.
That got to him. "I bet you would," he said. "And cops would instantly be all over the place." He gave me a glaring look. But he got down to business. "So she got up. She was wearing a housecoat that was pretty wrinkled and she didn't seem to be bothering to keep it closed. She sure is built. Breasts nice and firm. Brown pubic hair. Nice legs . . ."
I made a threatening gesture with my hand in my pocket.
Er... he's got a gun in his pocket, under the table, aimed at Raht. He's aiming a pistol. That's what he's doing.
Anyway, Raht relates how he gave Miss Simmons her glasses back, but she put them down before reading the letter. Gris protests that Simmons can't read without her glasses. Hello, minor plot point that will be explained in a couple of chapters. Once Miss Simmons finished the letter she turned colors and started screaming, then bid Raht stay at her house while she stormed out to talk to the police. This would imply that after getting fear bombed Grafferty and his officers ran back to the station and hid under their desks instead of returning to the crime scene, but Gris is thrilled because he knows that between Simmons, Kutzbrain and the cops, they should be able to put together an I.D. on the Countess Krak. Because the Countess Krak is good at using hypno-helmets to make people think they're rape victims, but not so much when it comes to covering her tracks.
Raht trailed Miss Simmons as far as the Downtown Express, then went back to her apartment and waited until she finally returned, no police in sight, "smug beyond relief. These Earth women are that way. They're happiest when they've got something on somebody, and that's the way she looked." So Raht reported back to Gris to pass on Simmons' thanks for saving her life.
I was so enthralled, I didn't even notice when he left.
I could hardly wait for Sunday. Wow, was this going in the most unexpected direction Krak could ever imagine. (Bleep) her! Her and all her fancy, stupid tricks!
Miss Simmons says nothing about Sunday. There is no indication that whatever action she's taken with the police will come to fruition on Sunday. There is no reason for the police to delay their search for the culprit until Sunday. But Gris is somehow under the impression that nothing is scheduled for the rest of Saturday afternoon and evening, and the plot will advance the following morning.
In an amazing coincidence, the next chapter begins late Sunday morning. Wonder how Gris knew that?
Back to Chapter Seven
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Part Forty-Two, Chapter Seven - Itchy Darts
Let's wrap up this scene, shall we? You can only spend so many chapters in the same apartment scrambling peoples' brains before it gets old.
Krak returns to Grafferty and his three fellow officers, all frozen in ridiculous poses after grabbing those magical black squares thanks to Krak's "magician's forcer gesture." The Countess collects the rounds from their weapons using skills learned off-screen from Bang-Bang Rimbombo, then puts the now-empty firearms in the men's holsters. After that she packs up her mind-rape kit and puts her coat back on, but before she leaves she takes "A BOMB!" out of her bag and prepares to set it right under Kutzbrain.
Gris cranks up the melodrama to give a lament for the soon-to-be departed.
Krak hits the plunger (of course) of the explosive, while Gris warns that "The bomb was set to go on time!" The author naturally forgets to tell us what time limit Gris is talking about.
The Countess causally steps out of the apartment, leaving the door open behind her, then waits in an alley across the street, "watching the apartment window intently as though expecting something to happen." And this is what happens when you decide the book's narrator is a character inside of it watching things unfold through another character's eyes and ears - Gris can't just say Krak "watched the apartment window expectantly" because he can't see her face, so we get that awkward line even though it's clear from context that she's waiting for something.
What happens is a flash and smoke pouring out of the apartment windows, but not a true explosion. Immediately afterward Krak triggers the dynamo to the paralysis paper (I guess Krak was looking down at her hands, allowing Gris to see what she's doing), causing "INSTANT SCREAMS!" Grafferty and his officers bolt from the apartment, "howling" the whole time, and after fumbling with their keys they manage to get into their cars and speed away.
Kutzbrain, meanwhile, leaps through a glass window, extracts himself from a hedge, and starts running around in a circle while babbling about someone being after him. And it's at this point that Gris realizes just what the hell is going on - those clever folks at the Eyes and Ears of Voltar make "emotion bombs," and Krak just used a "fear" variant.
This book would work so m... well, this book would be less irritating if the author just admitted that the characters were using magic. Krak would be a powerful sorceress who knows Paralyze, Fear, and Geas spells. Gris is of course a crap wizard who managed to get himself a scrying mirror or something, but is so inept that he has trouble keeping it on-target. Heller's a magic knight trying to save the world through his spellcraft, but with enough subtlety that the natives don't realize they aren't the ones doing it.
Calling this science fiction just gives Hubbard an opportunity to show off his ignorance.
Anyway, Krak isn't happy with just Fearing Kutzbrain - as he spins around in horror, Krak shoots him with another dart, "a dart that causes people to get warm and itch so violently that they shed their clothes."
I'd like to say that Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have any spells so bizarrely specialized, but I'm sure if I flipped through a rulebook I could find something just as weird.
So Kutzbrain, now nude, runs down the street, straight through a mob of staring children, who start running after him, yelling about the streaker. Take that, you nasty sexual deviant. Now you're buck naked... surrounded by children... feeling very hot... I think this might have been a bad idea.
But this time Gris is able to see Krak's expression as she eats a candy bar. How about that.
Meanwhile Gris has to phone Raht and get him to call Miss Pinch to let Gris out of the closet. He's irritated at getting trapped, and his lingering flea infestation, but most of all he's mad at "the smug manner in which the Countess Krak had been eating that Milky Way!" But then he has more "INSPIRATION!" and decides to send Miss Simmons a warning that she'd been hypnotized, thus undoing Krak's conditioning. Sounds like a reasonable plan. Let's see how Gris screws it up.
Now, the troub... a troubling thing about this section is Krak's treatment of the policemen. Obviously she has reason to retaliate against Kutzbrain - he propositioned her, and we've established that she's willing to murder over that sort of thing. But Grafferty and his cops weren't actually a threat. The worst case scenario would be that Krak would have to go to the station and answer some questions, which shouldn't be dangerous if she stuck to her cover identity. Even if she wasn't willing to put up with that, she could have been patient and methodical and used her hypno-helmet to cover her escape, maybe even making the cops arrest Kutzbrain directly.
But instead she decided to use a Fear Bomb on them and send them screaming from the apartment. And what then? Are they supposed to forget that it happened? Don't they remember her face, and the inexplicable terror they felt after encountering her? What if they go back and find a comatose woman in the apartment? What if they gather the debris from the Fear Bomb and start wondering what sort of device detonated in that room?
Instead Krak chose to humiliate them. So either she has some strange grudge against New York's law enforcement, perhaps picked up from Heller's mobster friend, or the author got so caught up with stabbing strawmen in his "satirical" epic that he forgot to give his sock puppets reasons to do so.
Back to Chapter Six
Krak returns to Grafferty and his three fellow officers, all frozen in ridiculous poses after grabbing those magical black squares thanks to Krak's "magician's forcer gesture." The Countess collects the rounds from their weapons using skills learned off-screen from Bang-Bang Rimbombo, then puts the now-empty firearms in the men's holsters. After that she packs up her mind-rape kit and puts her coat back on, but before she leaves she takes "A BOMB!" out of her bag and prepares to set it right under Kutzbrain.
Gris cranks up the melodrama to give a lament for the soon-to-be departed.
Poor Kutzbrain. If only somebody had thought to warn him that she had slaughtered three men for simply making an innocent pass at her! I knew she would never forgive that. She had simply put it off because she had other things to do. Now the world of psychiatry was about to feel the full degradation of one of its leading lights. I wondered if in his final moments he would trace his downfall to the cheery words inviting her to lie down on the couch for a jolly romp? How, in his profession, could he possibly suspect he had been dealing with worse than death itself? Alas, poor Kutzbrain's professional habits--nay, his professional duty to rape women and wives--had not included a subcourse in dealing with a Manco Devil incarnate, like the vicious Countess Krak.
Krak hits the plunger (of course) of the explosive, while Gris warns that "The bomb was set to go on time!" The author naturally forgets to tell us what time limit Gris is talking about.
The Countess causally steps out of the apartment, leaving the door open behind her, then waits in an alley across the street, "watching the apartment window intently as though expecting something to happen." And this is what happens when you decide the book's narrator is a character inside of it watching things unfold through another character's eyes and ears - Gris can't just say Krak "watched the apartment window expectantly" because he can't see her face, so we get that awkward line even though it's clear from context that she's waiting for something.
What happens is a flash and smoke pouring out of the apartment windows, but not a true explosion. Immediately afterward Krak triggers the dynamo to the paralysis paper (I guess Krak was looking down at her hands, allowing Gris to see what she's doing), causing "INSTANT SCREAMS!" Grafferty and his officers bolt from the apartment, "howling" the whole time, and after fumbling with their keys they manage to get into their cars and speed away.
Kutzbrain, meanwhile, leaps through a glass window, extracts himself from a hedge, and starts running around in a circle while babbling about someone being after him. And it's at this point that Gris realizes just what the hell is going on - those clever folks at the Eyes and Ears of Voltar make "emotion bombs," and Krak just used a "fear" variant.
This book would work so m... well, this book would be less irritating if the author just admitted that the characters were using magic. Krak would be a powerful sorceress who knows Paralyze, Fear, and Geas spells. Gris is of course a crap wizard who managed to get himself a scrying mirror or something, but is so inept that he has trouble keeping it on-target. Heller's a magic knight trying to save the world through his spellcraft, but with enough subtlety that the natives don't realize they aren't the ones doing it.
Calling this science fiction just gives Hubbard an opportunity to show off his ignorance.
Anyway, Krak isn't happy with just Fearing Kutzbrain - as he spins around in horror, Krak shoots him with another dart, "a dart that causes people to get warm and itch so violently that they shed their clothes."
I'd like to say that Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have any spells so bizarrely specialized, but I'm sure if I flipped through a rulebook I could find something just as weird.
So Kutzbrain, now nude, runs down the street, straight through a mob of staring children, who start running after him, yelling about the streaker. Take that, you nasty sexual deviant. Now you're buck naked... surrounded by children... feeling very hot... I think this might have been a bad idea.
The Countess Krak tidied up her shopping bag. She fluffed her hair.
Sedately she strolled off in the direction of the subway. She was thinking, no doubt--the sadistic female monster--that this was a day's work well done. She even bought a Milky Way at the subway stand and munched on it quite happily as she rode triumphantly home.
But this time Gris is able to see Krak's expression as she eats a candy bar. How about that.
Meanwhile Gris has to phone Raht and get him to call Miss Pinch to let Gris out of the closet. He's irritated at getting trapped, and his lingering flea infestation, but most of all he's mad at "the smug manner in which the Countess Krak had been eating that Milky Way!" But then he has more "INSPIRATION!" and decides to send Miss Simmons a warning that she'd been hypnotized, thus undoing Krak's conditioning. Sounds like a reasonable plan. Let's see how Gris screws it up.
Now, the troub... a troubling thing about this section is Krak's treatment of the policemen. Obviously she has reason to retaliate against Kutzbrain - he propositioned her, and we've established that she's willing to murder over that sort of thing. But Grafferty and his cops weren't actually a threat. The worst case scenario would be that Krak would have to go to the station and answer some questions, which shouldn't be dangerous if she stuck to her cover identity. Even if she wasn't willing to put up with that, she could have been patient and methodical and used her hypno-helmet to cover her escape, maybe even making the cops arrest Kutzbrain directly.
But instead she decided to use a Fear Bomb on them and send them screaming from the apartment. And what then? Are they supposed to forget that it happened? Don't they remember her face, and the inexplicable terror they felt after encountering her? What if they go back and find a comatose woman in the apartment? What if they gather the debris from the Fear Bomb and start wondering what sort of device detonated in that room?
Instead Krak chose to humiliate them. So either she has some strange grudge against New York's law enforcement, perhaps picked up from Heller's mobster friend, or the author got so caught up with stabbing strawmen in his "satirical" epic that he forgot to give his sock puppets reasons to do so.
Back to Chapter Six
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Part Forty-Two, Chapter Six - The Magician's Forcer Gesture
Krak makes each of the cops grab one of those little black squares to paralyze them.
Or to go into more detail: Grafftery kicks down the door and storms in with his men. Everything I've seen in television, movies, and even video games tells me that the policemen should have their guns out and be screaming at anyone they see to get on the ground. Instead Grafferty stares at the paralyzed Dr. Kutzbrain and yells out "Where's the rape-murder?", presumably expecting the murderous rapist lurking somewhere in the building to answer him.
Instead he gets the murderous mind-rapist Krak, who steps out of the bedroom, hits the plunger of the Magical Black Square device, and draws something that Gris only catches a glimpse of but thinks looks like a thumbtack. She grabs Kutzbrain with that "thumbtack" in her hand and declares "If it's a rapist you're looking for, here's your man!" And just after Grafferty asks about the murder, Kutzbrain starts ranting about tearing people to bits while demanding that they answer the questions he isn't asking.
See, as Gris explains it, Voltarian military science has come up with something called an "interrogator dart" that injects a man with something that makes him "so furious and overwrought he could not ask sensible questions." So you're an alien super-spy, but you've been captured and hauled in for interrogation. If you still have a way to fire your concealed dart-launcher, this way you can dose your captor with something to make them absolutely furious with you. So you're still trapped, but now in a room with someone violently angry, which is... an improvement because... they'll just beat you to death instead of extracting useful information?
Why not just put poison on the dart? Or cut out the "interrogator" part and develop a toxin that makes enemies go berserk and potentially attack their allies? That would seem more useful. Or maybe come up with a "make interrogator become your friend and help you escape" dart if we're just pulling things out of our ass.
Grafferty tells two of his officers to apprehend Kutzbrain, then tells the other to take Krak in as a witness and search the apartment for evidence.
"Gun!" BLAM BLAM BLAM!
So psychology is a bunch of crap, but stage musicians have a magical hand gesture they use to compel people to snatch at whatever they're throwing?
Also, BLAM!
Like I said, she makes each of the cops grab one of those little black squares to paralyze them.
After dealing with that "threat," the Countess returns to the still hypnotized Miss Simmons. And just in case you thought my accusation that Krak was making Simmons believe she'd been gang-raped was hyperbole:
So she's not just convincing Miss Simmons she was gang-raped, but also that she's unclean, unworthy, and would "defile" the man she secretly longs for just by touching him.
There are no good guys in this book, no sympathetic characters to root for. There are only Gris, the rapist, Krak, the mind rapist, and Heller, the totally closed non-entity who has been demoted to a supporting cast member despite ostensibly driving the plot.
Krak goes on to tell Simmons how "Wister" is such a good student that he deserves the highest grade and doesn't need to attend for the rest of the semester. Not only that, but Simmons must now believe that Wister is a wonderful student and should brag about him to all the other teachers. And then the Countess decides to give her victim some relationship advice.
Ahahahaahahaah!
Ahem. 'scuse me.
The person giving this advice spent years in a dungeon run by a corrupt alien intelligence service while training circus animals and freaks of nature.
With that finished, Krak programs Simmons to sleep peacefully through the rest of the day and evening, disregarding or forgetting anything she hears or sees in the apartment before she wakes up the next day. Off goes the helmet, a no-doubt sticky and exhausted Miss Simmons immediately crawls under the covers and falls asleep, and now Krak has to figure out what to do with the five people she has paralyzed in the living room.
Gris is, of course, freaking out.
She doesn't have to you imbecile, she has a mind-control helmet. Though in fairness Gris is stupid enough to murder witnesses even if he had the means of erasing their memories with one of those. Just look at all the wonderful spy toys he left sitting in a warehouse for three books.
The guy sets up his mission on Earth to revolve around him sitting on an ass watching his enemies do things while occasionally barking orders to his henchmen or, in extreme situations, getting up to botch the job on his own. And then he bitches about how terrible fate is and how he's powerless to do anything.
Wonder how the paint fumes are building up in that closet of his?
Back to Chapter Five
Or to go into more detail: Grafftery kicks down the door and storms in with his men. Everything I've seen in television, movies, and even video games tells me that the policemen should have their guns out and be screaming at anyone they see to get on the ground. Instead Grafferty stares at the paralyzed Dr. Kutzbrain and yells out "Where's the rape-murder?", presumably expecting the murderous rapist lurking somewhere in the building to answer him.
Instead he gets the murderous mind-rapist Krak, who steps out of the bedroom, hits the plunger of the Magical Black Square device, and draws something that Gris only catches a glimpse of but thinks looks like a thumbtack. She grabs Kutzbrain with that "thumbtack" in her hand and declares "If it's a rapist you're looking for, here's your man!" And just after Grafferty asks about the murder, Kutzbrain starts ranting about tearing people to bits while demanding that they answer the questions he isn't asking.
See, as Gris explains it, Voltarian military science has come up with something called an "interrogator dart" that injects a man with something that makes him "so furious and overwrought he could not ask sensible questions." So you're an alien super-spy, but you've been captured and hauled in for interrogation. If you still have a way to fire your concealed dart-launcher, this way you can dose your captor with something to make them absolutely furious with you. So you're still trapped, but now in a room with someone violently angry, which is... an improvement because... they'll just beat you to death instead of extracting useful information?
Why not just put poison on the dart? Or cut out the "interrogator" part and develop a toxin that makes enemies go berserk and potentially attack their allies? That would seem more useful. Or maybe come up with a "make interrogator become your friend and help you escape" dart if we're just pulling things out of our ass.
Grafferty tells two of his officers to apprehend Kutzbrain, then tells the other to take Krak in as a witness and search the apartment for evidence.
Krak said, "I've got the evidence. It's right here!" She reached into the black case
"Gun!" BLAM BLAM BLAM!
case and tore four tabs off the black roll.
She reached out her hand to Grafferty and the cops, using a magician's forcer gesture, the way they make people feel they have to grab something.
So psychology is a bunch of crap, but stage musicians have a magical hand gesture they use to compel people to snatch at whatever they're throwing?
Also, BLAM!
They each took a tab, looking at it.
The Countess Krak pushed the dynamo plunger.
Grafferty and the three cops went into rigid statue stances!
So did Kutzbrain!
Like I said, she makes each of the cops grab one of those little black squares to paralyze them.
After dealing with that "threat," the Countess returns to the still hypnotized Miss Simmons. And just in case you thought my accusation that Krak was making Simmons believe she'd been gang-raped was hyperbole:
"Now," said the Countess Krak, "we will take up how you really feel about Wister. You know you are not good enough for him. But you are eternally grateful to him for not having you himself but letting you be raped. Your gratitude amounts to the worship you would give a saint and you know you would defile him if he so much as touched your body parts. You understand that, don't you?"
"Yes," said Miss Simmons.
So she's not just convincing Miss Simmons she was gang-raped, but also that she's unclean, unworthy, and would "defile" the man she secretly longs for just by touching him.
There are no good guys in this book, no sympathetic characters to root for. There are only Gris, the rapist, Krak, the mind rapist, and Heller, the totally closed non-entity who has been demoted to a supporting cast member despite ostensibly driving the plot.
Krak goes on to tell Simmons how "Wister" is such a good student that he deserves the highest grade and doesn't need to attend for the rest of the semester. Not only that, but Simmons must now believe that Wister is a wonderful student and should brag about him to all the other teachers. And then the Countess decides to give her victim some relationship advice.
The Countess Krak fingered the mike. Then she took a deep breath. She said, "After you have seen Wister away, you can please yourself. It will be your life you are living and I have no wish to take control of it,
Ahahahaahahaah!
Ahem. 'scuse me.
but I want to give you some very sound advice. Stop running around with this Krafft-Ebing fellow. He and his pals Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud are a crummy crowd. My suggestion to you is that you find a nice young man--NOT Wister--and get married. It's your life, but you should consider settling down and doing things in a more normal way."
The person giving this advice spent years in a dungeon run by a corrupt alien intelligence service while training circus animals and freaks of nature.
"A normal way," muttered Simmons.
"Exactly," said the Countess Krak. "You'll find it much more fun."
"More fun," muttered Simmons.
"Sex without love," said the Countess Krak, "is a waste of time. Do you understand?"
"Waste of time," said Simmons.
With that finished, Krak programs Simmons to sleep peacefully through the rest of the day and evening, disregarding or forgetting anything she hears or sees in the apartment before she wakes up the next day. Off goes the helmet, a no-doubt sticky and exhausted Miss Simmons immediately crawls under the covers and falls asleep, and now Krak has to figure out what to do with the five people she has paralyzed in the living room.
Gris is, of course, freaking out.
I flinched now as the Countess Krak went out of the bedroom and closed the door behind her. I knew what I would do: kill the witnesses.
She doesn't have to you imbecile, she has a mind-control helmet. Though in fairness Gris is stupid enough to murder witnesses even if he had the means of erasing their memories with one of those. Just look at all the wonderful spy toys he left sitting in a warehouse for three books.
My only question was how she would do it. I was losing allies right and left and could only sit there in that closet, trapped, and watch, powerless to prevent the inexorable, crushing wheels of fate.
The guy sets up his mission on Earth to revolve around him sitting on an ass watching his enemies do things while occasionally barking orders to his henchmen or, in extreme situations, getting up to botch the job on his own. And then he bitches about how terrible fate is and how he's powerless to do anything.
Wonder how the paint fumes are building up in that closet of his?
Back to Chapter Five
Monday, December 3, 2012
Part Forty-Two, Chapter Five - It's Not Mind Rape if You Enjoyed It
Unabridged version here.
After using her Scroll of Paralysis to disable the lascivious Doctor Kutzbrain, the Countess Krak returns to the apartment bedroom where Miss Simmons is still sprawled on her bed. Somehow the mind-controlled woman has managed to undo the front of her bathrobe to expose herself, presumably for the reader's enjoyment.
Krak sends the hypnotized woman back to the incident in Van Cortlandt Park, convincing Miss Simmons that she begged "Wister" to go away and that he left her alone. And then the eight men show up on schedule, and follow the Miss Simmons to a secluded section of the park. And Krak tells Simmons to let him do what she wants him to.
Holy crap he finally did it.
Or a princess getting pricked in a story involving a dwarf named Rumpelstiltskin. Or girls in Cinderella offering to let a prince try on their fur slippers (the French vair for "fur" sounds a lot like verre or "glass"). And let's not get started on all the rape in the original version of Sleeping Beauty.
So Father Simmons' brilliant plan was to use the very pseudoscience that turns college dorms into brothels and ordinary people into bands of nihilistic rapists to try and suppress his daughter's sexuality?
The sad part is that it was actually working until Krak undid it with mind-control.
The kicker is that, if you've bothered to glance at Krafft-Ebing's entry on Wikipedia, the man regarded women as sexually passive, and his work was pretty well eclipsed by the findings of Freud. Also, Ellis was quite progressive for his time regarding homosexuality.
Well, Krak makes the mistake of asking how Miss Simmons wants the scenario to unfold. The professor describes how she got/is getting knocked down in the mud, then mumbles a lot, and, ahem, really gets into her fantasy.
An interesting moment occurs near the end of it. Miss Simmons starts lecturing to an imaginary audience, saying "We will now take up page 92 of Krafft-Ebing. I am certain that your psychology teacher called it to your attention. Six of you form a ring. The other two . . ."
The hilarious twist is that the Psychopathia Sexualis is out of copyright and available online. The page in question is actually a clinical description of a murderer and necrophiliac's crimes. Let's choose to believe that Hubbard isn't suggesting that's what Miss Simmons is into, and instead is sticking to his guns and refusing to study the heresies of psychology. Not that this stops him from authoritatively denouncing it, of course.
After a lot of screaming and lamps falling off tables and chunks of plaster dropping from the ceiling, Miss Simmons is finally sated.
And that's that. The Countess Krak, through the miracle of mind-control technology, has turned a near-rape experience into... a gang-rape, but it's okay, the victim liked it. Yay?
Wait, we can't end the chapter without a cliffhanger.
But no sirens, evidently. No sirens to get other cars out of the way as the police speed to stop a murder. On the other hand, imagine how awkward it would have been if they'd shown up a few minutes earlier!
And they don't have radios, and weren't briefed on the way on where they were going, despite being tipped off in advance.
There's a man out there that makes Soltan Gris all tingly.
Well, this could be exciting. I mean, what's Krak going to do to get out of this mess, make each of the cops grab one of those little black squares to paralyze them?
Back to Chapter Four
After using her Scroll of Paralysis to disable the lascivious Doctor Kutzbrain, the Countess Krak returns to the apartment bedroom where Miss Simmons is still sprawled on her bed. Somehow the mind-controlled woman has managed to undo the front of her bathrobe to expose herself, presumably for the reader's enjoyment.
Krak sends the hypnotized woman back to the incident in Van Cortlandt Park, convincing Miss Simmons that she begged "Wister" to go away and that he left her alone. And then the eight men show up on schedule, and follow the Miss Simmons to a secluded section of the park. And Krak tells Simmons to let him do what she wants him to.
"Like it says in Krafft-Ebing."
"What is Krafft-Ebing?" asked Krak
Holy crap he finally did it.
in a puzzled voice.
"The books like Psychopathia Sexualis. Like Havelock Ellis' books or Sigmund Freud's. My father used to read them to me every night at bedtime. As a psychologist he said that all those nasty fairy tales were full of phallic symbols. Like putting thumbs in pies.
Or a princess getting pricked in a story involving a dwarf named Rumpelstiltskin. Or girls in Cinderella offering to let a prince try on their fur slippers (the French vair for "fur" sounds a lot like verre or "glass"). And let's not get started on all the rape in the original version of Sleeping Beauty.
And he said his daughter must read the same things they teach in kindergarten today because psychology is the best arousal-depressant for children as it pounds into them all the horrible things they must not do. He did it to help my natural frigidity so I could be normal like the other children in my class."
So Father Simmons' brilliant plan was to use the very pseudoscience that turns college dorms into brothels and ordinary people into bands of nihilistic rapists to try and suppress his daughter's sexuality?
The sad part is that it was actually working until Krak undid it with mind-control.
The kicker is that, if you've bothered to glance at Krafft-Ebing's entry on Wikipedia, the man regarded women as sexually passive, and his work was pretty well eclipsed by the findings of Freud. Also, Ellis was quite progressive for his time regarding homosexuality.
Well, Krak makes the mistake of asking how Miss Simmons wants the scenario to unfold. The professor describes how she got/is getting knocked down in the mud, then mumbles a lot, and, ahem, really gets into her fantasy.
An interesting moment occurs near the end of it. Miss Simmons starts lecturing to an imaginary audience, saying "We will now take up page 92 of Krafft-Ebing. I am certain that your psychology teacher called it to your attention. Six of you form a ring. The other two . . ."
The hilarious twist is that the Psychopathia Sexualis is out of copyright and available online. The page in question is actually a clinical description of a murderer and necrophiliac's crimes. Let's choose to believe that Hubbard isn't suggesting that's what Miss Simmons is into, and instead is sticking to his guns and refusing to study the heresies of psychology. Not that this stops him from authoritatively denouncing it, of course.
After a lot of screaming and lamps falling off tables and chunks of plaster dropping from the ceiling, Miss Simmons is finally sated.
The Countess Krak shook her head. In Voltarian she muttered, "Well, I hope she got her fill! The slut!" Then she raised her microphone and said in English, "The men are going away now. They are waving good-bye. You see them walk up the trail and vanish. They were all very happy. Are you happy?"
"Oh, yes," came the muffled voice of Miss Simmons from the helmet.
"Anything worrying you?
"I'm nice and lovely dirty with the mud. But my leg fills a little strange."
"You broke it dancing for joy," said the Countess Krak.
"Oh, that's all right, then."
The Countess Krak now took a firm grip on her microphone. She said, "The incident you have just been through is the right one, the correct one, the one that happened. All other memories of that time and place are false and gone. You have just been through the true one. Do you understand?"
"Yes," said Miss Simmons.
And that's that. The Countess Krak, through the miracle of mind-control technology, has turned a near-rape experience into... a gang-rape, but it's okay, the victim liked it. Yay?
Wait, we can't end the chapter without a cliffhanger.
At that instant there were some shouts and car-door slams outside.
But no sirens, evidently. No sirens to get other cars out of the way as the police speed to stop a murder. On the other hand, imagine how awkward it would have been if they'd shown up a few minutes earlier!
Somebody shouted, "Get up there to apartment 21!"
And they don't have radios, and weren't briefed on the way on where they were going, despite being tipped off in advance.
I tingled! Grafferty!
There's a man out there that makes Soltan Gris all tingly.
Well, this could be exciting. I mean, what's Krak going to do to get out of this mess, make each of the cops grab one of those little black squares to paralyze them?
Back to Chapter Four
Friday, November 30, 2012
Part Forty-Two, Chapter Four - Changing Her Mind
Gris watches as the Countess Krak reaches the not-shabby apartment of Miss Jane Simmons, torn between the hope that the teacher isn't home, and that she is so Krak can be arrested for murder. She rings the buzzer and introduces herself as a "fellow teacher, from Atalanta University, Manco" here to talk about one of Miss Simmons' students, and the professor is all too eager to let Krak in without even asking "where the hell is Manco?" Or "your name, please?" Or "which student?"
Krak knows how to use an apartment intercom, but doesn't figure out that she's supposed to open the door right after it clicks after being remotely unlocked. She just shoves the foyer door open. 'kay. Gris meanwhile calls up Raht to confirm that Police Inspector Grafferty is on his way to deal with the situation personally - a single murder in New York City? He can "smell the headlines already."
Now, if you were paying very close attention (why?) to the chapter before last, you may have noticed that Gris stole Miss Simmons' glasses but didn't give them back at any point. So when she opens the door to admit the Countess she's basically blind as a bat. I'm not sure why this is important, because the woman has never seen Krak before, and if the Countess does what Gris thinks she will then Simmons wouldn't be able to identify her anyway. But whatever.
Simmons immediately starts ranting about an unnamed, despised male student of hers who she knows sabotaged the UN bill, indicating that nobody's told her that the guy who tipped her off about that fact was "A dirty, rotten, stinkin' FED!" Also, despite Simmons' hatred of this nameless male student, Krak either fails to make the connection to Heller or hears it as further proof that he and Simmons are madly in love. Then when the teacher mentions that the Tactical Police Force is after her, Krak is nice enough to offer Simmons some head protection - specifically a hypno-helmet, which she quickly drops on the teacher's head.
Krak guides the dazed Simmons into her bedroom and onto the bed. Miss Simmons' dressing gown falls open to give Gris a glimpse of the goods. Apparently she interrupted her change of clothes to let a visitor in for a chat without bothering to put on some sweatpants and a T-shirt. This is the ally Gris hoped would be able to destroy Heller once and for all, a woman who will invite a total stranger into her home, while blind and half-naked, so she can yell at them about how much she hates one of her students.
Krak adjusts Simmons' gown to preserve the other woman's modesty, gets the microphone you apparently need to properly hypnotize someone, takes off her cape and jacket, "the equivalent of rolling up her sleeves to get to work," and gets to work.
Asked! "Asked the Countess!" How do you spend a lifetime writing and not figure out that people don't usually "say" questions?!
I'm sorry, that just slipped out. I've been holding it in for a long time now.
Thanks for talking to yourself, by the way. Saves Gris the trouble of having to guess what you're thinking.
By Countess Krak Logic, if I narrowly avoided getting hit by a car during a walk, it was really a suicide attempt on my part with the added aim of getting the Church of Scientology to waive my entrance fees and let me join. Or perhaps an expression of my unhealthy automobile fetish and a ploy to seduce the guy who drives the tow truck.
Next Krak asks about the first time Simmons saw Heller, the memory of which makes the other woman go rigid and quivering and let out a muffled scream because "He is too good-looking." Krak of course concludes that this is a case of love at first sight, and asks if there's anything else. Simmons admits that she was dismayed to learn that the handsome devil was "a nuclear physicist major and had to be stopped." Because...
Wait, what? A psychologist is trying to indoctrinate someone against sex? Why?
...You know, that's a pretty good time to put your foot down and call for an end to explosions.
So after that startling revelation, Krak reprograms Simmons to believe that she was really feeding her ass-sploded dog some milk, she does not get any pleasure from animal abuse, and that her father was "totally wrong. Accept it."
So Psychology uses hypnotism and other methods of indoctrination to program people to believe lies. Then a good guy, Krak, comes along and uses hypnotism to indoctrinate someone to believe otherwise. She takes advantage of a person's trust, gets them under her power, digs into their past, and then convinces them that everything they ever knew was a lie, using brute force to alter their behavior when they are at their most vulnerable. And this is okay because she's rescuing them from the falsehoods of psychology.
Hubbard is rubbish at satire, but pretty good at unintentional allegory. The only thing missing is that Krak didn't charge Simmons for any of this.
Krak gets back on topic, mentally taking Miss Simmons back to her first meeting with Heller and convincing her that what she really thought was that she wasn't good enough for Heller (because honestly, who is?). She moves on to the day of the near-rape, but is interrupted by a knock on the door, and so tells the hypnotized woman to lie quietly and ignore everything. She answers the door - I guess pretending no one is home isn't an option - to reveal "DOCTOR KUTZBRAIN!"
What an... amazing and unexpected twist. We last saw the guy back at the beginning of Book Three, I believe. The long-ignored Grafferty is making an appearance this book as well. Now we just need Jimmy "The Gutter" Tavilnasty to come back from the dead to complete the Blast from the Past trifecta.
Doc Kutz greets Countess Krak as "Lizzie Borden!" because when it comes to pop culture references, the older the better, and then pushes his way inside.
This psychologist seems fine with getting some. Could there be dissent within the ranks of the damned? Differing points of view and opinion, different methodologies, something that might take away our ability to make sweeping accusations against the profession, something that might undermine the author's presentation of them as a monolithic conspiracy that controls the world?
Naaaaah.
I always assumed when Hubbard was accusing psychologists of raping their patients, he meant while their victims were doped up on something. But I guess all they have to do is walk up to a random woman and say "hey, you're cute, I'm a psychologist, spread 'em." I've still got a lot to learn, I see.
Gris assumes that Krak's about to stomp Kutzbrain to death for propositioning her, which is fine with him because he wants Grafferty to find corpses. But instead Krak reaches into her plastic shopping back, pulls off a black roll of some perforated material, tears off a square, and tells the doctor to hold onto it. He does so, while Krak retrieves a dynamo with a plunger on it... why do an increasing number of alien devices use plungers to activate? Anyway, she hits it.
Alright, I've got a few questions:
1. How the hell does this thing work? What is in the "black patch" that immobilizes someone, and why does it need to be physically on them to function?
2. Gris is able to recognize this, indicating that he examined the Eyes and Ears goods at some point and even flipped through some instruction books, but he left this amazingly useful device behind rather than thinking of a way to put it to use, perhaps as a way to immobilize Heller and Krak after sewing two of those patches into their clothes.
3. "Obtain evidence photographs?" That is the best use the devious minds at the Apparatus can find for something that immobilizes and incapacitates people without leaving any memory of the event? So what, they freeze someone and take pictures of them? And the freezing helps when it's dark somehow?
4. Why has nobody used one of these amazingly useful devices before?
Let's end this bloody chapter. Kutzbrain is now asleep on his feet, so Krak heads back to finish her job on Miss Simmons. Meanwhile Gris is gloating that the police are "howling on their way" to arrest her for... murders that she hasn't actually done yet. And she's in a situation where she can program the witnesses into defending her as a friend until the police leave, then kill them at her leisure.
Do you ever get the feeling that Gris doesn't quite think things through?
Back to Chapter Three
Krak knows how to use an apartment intercom, but doesn't figure out that she's supposed to open the door right after it clicks after being remotely unlocked. She just shoves the foyer door open. 'kay. Gris meanwhile calls up Raht to confirm that Police Inspector Grafferty is on his way to deal with the situation personally - a single murder in New York City? He can "smell the headlines already."
Now, if you were paying very close attention (why?) to the chapter before last, you may have noticed that Gris stole Miss Simmons' glasses but didn't give them back at any point. So when she opens the door to admit the Countess she's basically blind as a bat. I'm not sure why this is important, because the woman has never seen Krak before, and if the Countess does what Gris thinks she will then Simmons wouldn't be able to identify her anyway. But whatever.
Simmons immediately starts ranting about an unnamed, despised male student of hers who she knows sabotaged the UN bill, indicating that nobody's told her that the guy who tipped her off about that fact was "A dirty, rotten, stinkin' FED!" Also, despite Simmons' hatred of this nameless male student, Krak either fails to make the connection to Heller or hears it as further proof that he and Simmons are madly in love. Then when the teacher mentions that the Tactical Police Force is after her, Krak is nice enough to offer Simmons some head protection - specifically a hypno-helmet, which she quickly drops on the teacher's head.
Krak guides the dazed Simmons into her bedroom and onto the bed. Miss Simmons' dressing gown falls open to give Gris a glimpse of the goods. Apparently she interrupted her change of clothes to let a visitor in for a chat without bothering to put on some sweatpants and a T-shirt. This is the ally Gris hoped would be able to destroy Heller once and for all, a woman who will invite a total stranger into her home, while blind and half-naked, so she can yell at them about how much she hates one of her students.
Krak adjusts Simmons' gown to preserve the other woman's modesty, gets the microphone you apparently need to properly hypnotize someone, takes off her cape and jacket, "the equivalent of rolling up her sleeves to get to work," and gets to work.
"What were those eight men going to do to you in Van Cortlandt Park?" said the Countess,
Asked! "Asked the Countess!" How do you spend a lifetime writing and not figure out that people don't usually "say" questions?!
I'm sorry, that just slipped out. I've been holding it in for a long time now.
leaning back in her chair.
Muffled, "Rape me. All eight of them. They were going to rape me hour after hour."
The Countess lowered her microphone and pushed it into her shoulder. "I thought so," she muttered in Voltarian.
Thanks for talking to yourself, by the way. Saves Gris the trouble of having to guess what you're thinking.
"A real rape-crazy slut. The whole thing has been just a pose to steal Jettero!"
By Countess Krak Logic, if I narrowly avoided getting hit by a car during a walk, it was really a suicide attempt on my part with the added aim of getting the Church of Scientology to waive my entrance fees and let me join. Or perhaps an expression of my unhealthy automobile fetish and a ploy to seduce the guy who drives the tow truck.
Next Krak asks about the first time Simmons saw Heller, the memory of which makes the other woman go rigid and quivering and let out a muffled scream because "He is too good-looking." Krak of course concludes that this is a case of love at first sight, and asks if there's anything else. Simmons admits that she was dismayed to learn that the handsome devil was "a nuclear physicist major and had to be stopped." Because...
Miss Simmons looked to be in torment. She shouted, "THERE MUST BE NO EXPLOSIONS!" Then in lower volume, muffled by the helmet, "My father held the chair of psychology at Brooklyn University. He said explosions were substitutions for sexual (bleepulations) and a girl must be frigid, frigid, frigid to protect herself." She was stiff, stretched out now like hard marble, totally rigid.
Wait, what? A psychologist is trying to indoctrinate someone against sex? Why?
Krak spoke into the mike, "When did he say that?"
"When he caught me putting firecrackers in the dog's (bleep)."
...You know, that's a pretty good time to put your foot down and call for an end to explosions.
So after that startling revelation, Krak reprograms Simmons to believe that she was really feeding her ass-sploded dog some milk, she does not get any pleasure from animal abuse, and that her father was "totally wrong. Accept it."
Simmons suddenly relaxed. She whispered, "I accept it. Oh, I am SO glad that was really what happened. Then my father must have been wrong about everything."
"Right," said the Countess Krak, villainously undoing in a breath what that poor, laboring psychologist father had devoted his whole life to build up. What a destructive Manco Devil that Krak was!
So Psychology uses hypnotism and other methods of indoctrination to program people to believe lies. Then a good guy, Krak, comes along and uses hypnotism to indoctrinate someone to believe otherwise. She takes advantage of a person's trust, gets them under her power, digs into their past, and then convinces them that everything they ever knew was a lie, using brute force to alter their behavior when they are at their most vulnerable. And this is okay because she's rescuing them from the falsehoods of psychology.
Hubbard is rubbish at satire, but pretty good at unintentional allegory. The only thing missing is that Krak didn't charge Simmons for any of this.
Krak gets back on topic, mentally taking Miss Simmons back to her first meeting with Heller and convincing her that what she really thought was that she wasn't good enough for Heller (because honestly, who is?). She moves on to the day of the near-rape, but is interrupted by a knock on the door, and so tells the hypnotized woman to lie quietly and ignore everything. She answers the door - I guess pretending no one is home isn't an option - to reveal "DOCTOR KUTZBRAIN!"
What an... amazing and unexpected twist. We last saw the guy back at the beginning of Book Three, I believe. The long-ignored Grafferty is making an appearance this book as well. Now we just need Jimmy "The Gutter" Tavilnasty to come back from the dead to complete the Blast from the Past trifecta.
Doc Kutz greets Countess Krak as "Lizzie Borden!" because when it comes to pop culture references, the older the better, and then pushes his way inside.
As soon as he was in, he said, "I just stopped by to tear off a little (bleep). I always visit my patients in times of stress, namely mine."
In a disgusted voice the Countess Krak said, "Really."
Kutzbrain was taking off his overcoat. He said, "Nothing like a little psychiatric therapy to cheer one up."
This psychologist seems fine with getting some. Could there be dissent within the ranks of the damned? Differing points of view and opinion, different methodologies, something that might take away our ability to make sweeping accusations against the profession, something that might undermine the author's presentation of them as a monolithic conspiracy that controls the world?
Naaaaah.
The Countess said, "Do you live with Miss Simmons?"
"Oh, no, no. I'm Doctor Kutzbrain, her psychiatrist at the University Hospital. But I'm impartial. I spread my professional skills around. I don't think you've been an inmate of my ward yet, Borden, but you're a real looker so I'll make sure you soon will be. So just lie down on that sofa and pull up your skirt and we'll get into the preliminary professional psychiatric examination. If it feels good enough, I can get you into the ward instantly. Those look like nice (bleeps) under your shirt. But they need a (bleep) erection test."
I always assumed when Hubbard was accusing psychologists of raping their patients, he meant while their victims were doped up on something. But I guess all they have to do is walk up to a random woman and say "hey, you're cute, I'm a psychologist, spread 'em." I've still got a lot to learn, I see.
Gris assumes that Krak's about to stomp Kutzbrain to death for propositioning her, which is fine with him because he wants Grafferty to find corpses. But instead Krak reaches into her plastic shopping back, pulls off a black roll of some perforated material, tears off a square, and tells the doctor to hold onto it. He does so, while Krak retrieves a dynamo with a plunger on it... why do an increasing number of alien devices use plungers to activate? Anyway, she hits it.
Doctor Kutzbrain stood straight up. He went utterly rigid. His face went blank. He was fixed in place like an awkward statue!
Oh, my Gods! One of the Eyes and Ears of Voltar devices she had filched from the Afyon hospital! I remembered it. It was a remote-controlled rig. When one had one of those black patches planted on him and the device was activated by the tiny dynamo, the person went rigid and blank and stayed that way as long as the dynamo ran, and when it was cut off the person returned to motion without being aware of the halt. According to the directions I had fleetingly seen, they used it to obtain evidence photographs in low-level light conditions. But she was simply using it to immobilize Doctor Kutzbrain.
Alright, I've got a few questions:
1. How the hell does this thing work? What is in the "black patch" that immobilizes someone, and why does it need to be physically on them to function?
2. Gris is able to recognize this, indicating that he examined the Eyes and Ears goods at some point and even flipped through some instruction books, but he left this amazingly useful device behind rather than thinking of a way to put it to use, perhaps as a way to immobilize Heller and Krak after sewing two of those patches into their clothes.
3. "Obtain evidence photographs?" That is the best use the devious minds at the Apparatus can find for something that immobilizes and incapacitates people without leaving any memory of the event? So what, they freeze someone and take pictures of them? And the freezing helps when it's dark somehow?
4. Why has nobody used one of these amazingly useful devices before?
Let's end this bloody chapter. Kutzbrain is now asleep on his feet, so Krak heads back to finish her job on Miss Simmons. Meanwhile Gris is gloating that the police are "howling on their way" to arrest her for... murders that she hasn't actually done yet. And she's in a situation where she can program the witnesses into defending her as a friend until the police leave, then kill them at her leisure.
Do you ever get the feeling that Gris doesn't quite think things through?
Back to Chapter Three
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Part Forty-Two, Chapter Three - I'd Wonder About Brain Damage from the Fumes, But Who'd Notice?
It looks like the Countess Krak has found herself in a love triangle and is gearing up to murder the hypotenuse, Gris' "ally" who he's counting on flunking Heller out of a single, worthless, mandatory college course, thereby stopping him once and for all.
Yeah, he's not too worried about this for some reason. In fact, Gris actually feels a "surge of hope" and wonders if he could use this to get Krak arrested for murder.
Krak calls up Empire University and asks about a Miss Simmons, leading the guy on the other end to run a computer search and figure out which of the eighteen thousand students and five thousand faculty members Krak is... talking... about... how does Gris know those figures? I have to go on Wikipedia to see how many people go to my local college, but Gris spouts the facts off the top of his head. Does he use all the parts of the brain he should be devoting to his job on nigh-useless trivia?
Krak's boyfriend has stridently insisted that he hates Miss Simmons. Someone else has confirmed that Simmons wants to expel Heller. And so the logical conclusion is that Simmons and Heller are absolutely in love? So Krak's going to go do something about it?
I guess it's kind of refreshing. Back in book one I was worried that Krak was going to turn into another Chrissie, a woman-shaped plot device serving only to motivate the main character. Instead she's a bit of a psycho.
Said psycho suits up in red gloves, boots and suit, making Gris instantly assume Krak is planning murder, and therefore making me assume that Krak will not be planning murder because if Gris assumes one thing the opposite tends to happen. Then when he sees her pack a hypno-helmet, Gris arrives at the conclusion that Krak is going to hypnotize Miss Simmons into writing a suicide note to cover her tracks. In Gris' defense, he's in a badly-ventilated closet filling with paint fumes. So this is a chemically-induced inspiration rather than a sudden plot-mandated "INSPIRATION!"
Krak getting dressed to kill, rather than merely expressing her intent to kill, finally motivates Gris to act. Unfortunately, the workers renovating the apartment have put furniture in front of the closet door, so just when he finally resolves to haul himself to his feet, he can't leave. After a sudden attack of claustrophobia, Gris remembers that he has a radio, and that he also has to turn it on before he uses it.
He gets Raht and orders the vastly more competent and resourceful agent who is inexplicably ranked lower than him to ring up Police Inspector Bulldog Grafferty, last seen dripping with tomato sauce, and tip him off that there's about to be a murder at Miss Simmons' address. Raht keeps Gris talking long enough to read the radio and learn he's calling form Rockecenter Plaza, but agrees to carry out Gris' orders.
Wait, who are we supposed to be rooting for right now?
On the one hand we have Gris, who is a murderous rapist and an annoyingly idiotic Bad Guy. On the other is the Countess Krak, who is also comfortable with killing people, manipulates others with mind control, thinks rape near-victims were secretly asking for it, and is currently going behind her boyfriend's back to neutralize a wholly imagined threat to their relationship. Both criminals, both misogynists in their own ways, both living in their own delusions.
So put it that way and it doesn't matter who wins here, and on top of that I don't emphasize with either character. The only question is how this farce will affect Heller's mission, and since I don't emphasize with Heller either (though for different reasons), I again don't care.
Mission Earth: book after book of characters I don't like doing things that don't matter.
Back to Chapter Two
Oh, I would have to watch this carefully.
Yeah, he's not too worried about this for some reason. In fact, Gris actually feels a "surge of hope" and wonders if he could use this to get Krak arrested for murder.
Krak calls up Empire University and asks about a Miss Simmons, leading the guy on the other end to run a computer search and figure out which of the eighteen thousand students and five thousand faculty members Krak is... talking... about... how does Gris know those figures? I have to go on Wikipedia to see how many people go to my local college, but Gris spouts the facts off the top of his head. Does he use all the parts of the brain he should be devoting to his job on nigh-useless trivia?
The Countess confirms that the Jane Simmons she's looking for teaches Nature Appreciation.
"Does she have a student named Jerome Terrance Wister?"
"Thank God for computers. Yes, ma'am. But it says here that she's recommending he be expelled."
"Dangerous stuff, hate," said the Countess.
"I beg pardon?"
"I said, what is her home address so I can advise the nest of kin?"
Krak's boyfriend has stridently insisted that he hates Miss Simmons. Someone else has confirmed that Simmons wants to expel Heller. And so the logical conclusion is that Simmons and Heller are absolutely in love? So Krak's going to go do something about it?
I guess it's kind of refreshing. Back in book one I was worried that Krak was going to turn into another Chrissie, a woman-shaped plot device serving only to motivate the main character. Instead she's a bit of a psycho.
Said psycho suits up in red gloves, boots and suit, making Gris instantly assume Krak is planning murder, and therefore making me assume that Krak will not be planning murder because if Gris assumes one thing the opposite tends to happen. Then when he sees her pack a hypno-helmet, Gris arrives at the conclusion that Krak is going to hypnotize Miss Simmons into writing a suicide note to cover her tracks. In Gris' defense, he's in a badly-ventilated closet filling with paint fumes. So this is a chemically-induced inspiration rather than a sudden plot-mandated "INSPIRATION!"
Krak getting dressed to kill, rather than merely expressing her intent to kill, finally motivates Gris to act. Unfortunately, the workers renovating the apartment have put furniture in front of the closet door, so just when he finally resolves to haul himself to his feet, he can't leave. After a sudden attack of claustrophobia, Gris remembers that he has a radio, and that he also has to turn it on before he uses it.
He gets Raht and orders the vastly more competent and resourceful agent who is inexplicably ranked lower than him to ring up Police Inspector Bulldog Grafferty, last seen dripping with tomato sauce, and tip him off that there's about to be a murder at Miss Simmons' address. Raht keeps Gris talking long enough to read the radio and learn he's calling form Rockecenter Plaza, but agrees to carry out Gris' orders.
I hunched down on the floor. I watched Krak's viewer with horrible fascination as she rode the subway to her appointment with doom. Hers.
There was every chance that I would soon be rid of that vicious female, the murderous Countess Krak.
Wait, who are we supposed to be rooting for right now?
On the one hand we have Gris, who is a murderous rapist and an annoyingly idiotic Bad Guy. On the other is the Countess Krak, who is also comfortable with killing people, manipulates others with mind control, thinks rape near-victims were secretly asking for it, and is currently going behind her boyfriend's back to neutralize a wholly imagined threat to their relationship. Both criminals, both misogynists in their own ways, both living in their own delusions.
So put it that way and it doesn't matter who wins here, and on top of that I don't emphasize with either character. The only question is how this farce will affect Heller's mission, and since I don't emphasize with Heller either (though for different reasons), I again don't care.
Mission Earth: book after book of characters I don't like doing things that don't matter.
Back to Chapter Two
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Part Forty-Two, Chapter Two - Trust
Gris doesn't know how to use a Manco God-damn radio.
Despite his success dealing "a blow that Heller would not soon forget and certainly could not possibly recover from" last chapter, Gris starts this chapter "frankly getting frantic" over his inability to raise Raht. So he makes one last try, slipping into a freshly-painted closet and inadvertently brushing up against one of the alien walkie-talkie's buttons. And the little red button lights up, and suddenly he can hear Raht.
Over four days in New York City, and Gris never pressed that button in his attempts to get the radio to work. Sure, Gris admits that he doesn't have a manual for the thing, but he never made a serious attempt to puzzle out its function, or wondered if maybe it had been turned off at some point. He also admits that these paired radios are designed to be "simple rigs" that even an Army general could use, and he still never figured out the bloody thing wasn't on. All so Gris can't rely on Raht when he arrives in New York, forcing him to have his horrifying encounter with Pinch and Candy.
And hang on a minute - this simplistic device can beam a signal from another continent, but not the super-advanced audio-visual bugs embedded in Krak and Heller's skulls? Those require a relayer?
L. Ron Hubbard's novels run on stupidity and contrivance. Those are the only things holding the plot together, the only way the author can get characters from one scene to the next.
Anyway, moving beyond the first page of this chapter: Gris raises Raht, who immediately proves how much smarter he is than Gris, and by extension how much better-suited he is to be the book's villain, by immediately realizing that Gris is lying when he claims to be calling from Africa because his signal's too strong and he wants that bloody stupid 831 Relayer turned off, so he must be within the two hundred mile signal range. Gris' cunning response is to turn the radio off and run away.
A half hour later the viewscreens are working again, so Gris starts checking on his asset and enemies. What does Hubbard think a psychologist does all day?
Just imagine how much less satisfying this story would be if Crobe didn't have X-ray vision. All Gris would be able to tell us is that the mad doctor's gaze was fixed on his patent's clothed crotch, rather than "exploring her genitalia at length."
Krak and Heller, meanwhile, are hanging out in their apartment, Krak reading a book on foreign recipes while Heller watches the UN proceedings on the TV. Heller explains how the Security Council works, i.e. one of five chunkheads can veto anything the rest of the world has agreed upon.
What's the message here? Does the author view women's movements as unnecessary? Is he showing Krak's naivete or suggesting how much more enlightened Voltarian society is? Is he encouraging females to be more like the Countess Krak? Stop picketing and start murdering, ladies!
Heller laughs when the news camera settles on a poster held by some women threatening that the UN will be boycotted at the Gracious Palms if the measure doesn't pass, dedicated "In Memory of Pretty Boy." And Krak is of course suspicious, and Heller is of course evasive and doesn't explain. And I'm going to assume that this is supposed to be quirky RomCom humor rather than an indicator of how dysfunctional Krak and Heller's relationship is (edit from the future: can't it be both?).
Things go bad when the Russian president of the Security Council, with his "big, square face and Mongolian eyes," calls the "waste-of-time" meeting to order and votes on this "silly nonsense."
I'd like to point out that Communist governments were pretty egalitarian (if not at the highest levels) and set quotas for female and minority representation. In fact, one of the most jarring things to come out of the end of the Cold War was the huge drop in female representation in Eastern European countries. Kinda like how Iraqi women had it better under Saddam Hussein's pseudo-communist Ba'ath regime but now have to wear hijabs and are afraid to go out alone, even though the new government is technically a democracy.
So dies UN Resolution 678-546-452, "WOMEN HAVE THE RIGHT NOT TO BE THERMONUCLEAR BOMBED AND NOT BE FORCED TO SHUT UP BY SLAPPING OR TORTURE," slain by those damned commies.
So Heller finally is forced to explain more about his mandatory Nature Appreciation class, and Krak accuses him of being infatuated with Simmons, and Heller declares "I HATE the hussy!", and Krak warns him to be careful about hate because "The poet says it is the closest neighbor of love," and I ask what poet?
Krak presses further, and Heller talks more - or Gris summarizes how Heller talks more - about how his teacher hates nuclear physicists in general and "Jerome Wister" the aspiring nuclear physicist in particular. Krak interprets the near-rape experience of last year as Simmons' attempt to lure Heller into a trap, and that the teacher "is the kind of woman who craves to be raped." Heller promises his girlfriend flowers and a trip to the theater and that he'll even get up first in the morning to turn up the thermostat if she would just shut up about Miss Simmons. And Krak says "Hmm" and goes into the next room.
I guess keeping relationship-damaging secrets is better than honestly talking about your issues, because the honesty thing just doesn't work. So guys, if your work brings you into repeated contact with a particular woman, even if you have no interest in her whatsoever, even if you outright hate her, do not let your girlfriend know about it because she'll just assume you're lying anyway and, in Krak's case, go do something drastic. Good to know, Hubbard, thanks!
Krak calls her friend Mamie Boomp and states that "it has happened" and she needs her advice now.
"I'm not an alien, by the way."
So Krak is out to get Miss Simmons because she's decided that her boyfriend is an unfaithful liar and won't let anything change her mind. But remember, she's a strong female character who women should emulate instead of loafing around expecting the UN to pass rights on their behalf.
Back to Chapter One
Despite his success dealing "a blow that Heller would not soon forget and certainly could not possibly recover from" last chapter, Gris starts this chapter "frankly getting frantic" over his inability to raise Raht. So he makes one last try, slipping into a freshly-painted closet and inadvertently brushing up against one of the alien walkie-talkie's buttons. And the little red button lights up, and suddenly he can hear Raht.
Over four days in New York City, and Gris never pressed that button in his attempts to get the radio to work. Sure, Gris admits that he doesn't have a manual for the thing, but he never made a serious attempt to puzzle out its function, or wondered if maybe it had been turned off at some point. He also admits that these paired radios are designed to be "simple rigs" that even an Army general could use, and he still never figured out the bloody thing wasn't on. All so Gris can't rely on Raht when he arrives in New York, forcing him to have his horrifying encounter with Pinch and Candy.
And hang on a minute - this simplistic device can beam a signal from another continent, but not the super-advanced audio-visual bugs embedded in Krak and Heller's skulls? Those require a relayer?
L. Ron Hubbard's novels run on stupidity and contrivance. Those are the only things holding the plot together, the only way the author can get characters from one scene to the next.
Anyway, moving beyond the first page of this chapter: Gris raises Raht, who immediately proves how much smarter he is than Gris, and by extension how much better-suited he is to be the book's villain, by immediately realizing that Gris is lying when he claims to be calling from Africa because his signal's too strong and he wants that bloody stupid 831 Relayer turned off, so he must be within the two hundred mile signal range. Gris' cunning response is to turn the radio off and run away.
A half hour later the viewscreens are working again, so Gris starts checking on his asset and enemies. What does Hubbard think a psychologist does all day?
Crobe's came on first. He had some woman on a couch and was apparently psychoanalyzing her, for she was saying over and over how her three-year-old brother had raped her when she was sixteen. Crobe might or might not have been listening but his vision was exploring her genitalia in depth. He looked up once and, my, they had given him a beautiful office: whole shelves full of skulls and his psychiatric diploma framed in gold. But beyond noting that he was far from a lost resource and that Bellevue seemed to be providing him with its best facilities, I had no interest today in Crobe. I turned his viewer off so it wouldn't distract me.
Just imagine how much less satisfying this story would be if Crobe didn't have X-ray vision. All Gris would be able to tell us is that the mad doctor's gaze was fixed on his patent's clothed crotch, rather than "exploring her genitalia at length."
Krak and Heller, meanwhile, are hanging out in their apartment, Krak reading a book on foreign recipes while Heller watches the UN proceedings on the TV. Heller explains how the Security Council works, i.e. one of five chunkheads can veto anything the rest of the world has agreed upon.
"What is the measure, dear?"
"Women's rights," said Heller.
"Hmm," said the Countess. She got up and sat down again on a sofa near him. "I don't really understand why they have to have a law to give women rights. Women make their own rights."
What's the message here? Does the author view women's movements as unnecessary? Is he showing Krak's naivete or suggesting how much more enlightened Voltarian society is? Is he encouraging females to be more like the Countess Krak? Stop picketing and start murdering, ladies!
Heller laughs when the news camera settles on a poster held by some women threatening that the UN will be boycotted at the Gracious Palms if the measure doesn't pass, dedicated "In Memory of Pretty Boy." And Krak is of course suspicious, and Heller is of course evasive and doesn't explain. And I'm going to assume that this is supposed to be quirky RomCom humor rather than an indicator of how dysfunctional Krak and Heller's relationship is (edit from the future: can't it be both?).
Things go bad when the Russian president of the Security Council, with his "big, square face and Mongolian eyes," calls the "waste-of-time" meeting to order and votes on this "silly nonsense."
"We will now have the debate. I will be the first one to debate. So listen, Comrades: It is well known that the only workers who can be made to do any work are women. If the women did not do all the work, men would have no time to sit around and drink vodka. But," he fixed the other members with a ferocious glare, "you know and I know and everybody knows and Karl Marx who had an awful married life knew, too, that if you don't slap women they talk all the time, day and night. And if they talk, talk, talk, where goes the Five Year Plans then, right?
I'd like to point out that Communist governments were pretty egalitarian (if not at the highest levels) and set quotas for female and minority representation. In fact, one of the most jarring things to come out of the end of the Cold War was the huge drop in female representation in Eastern European countries. Kinda like how Iraqi women had it better under Saddam Hussein's pseudo-communist Ba'ath regime but now have to wear hijabs and are afraid to go out alone, even though the new government is technically a democracy.
And if they make the Five Year Plans fail they are counter-revolutionaries and ought to be thermonuclear bombed once and for all so we could have some peace. And that's all there is to it, Comrades. This resolution would undermine the already-undermined theory of Marxist Leninism. Russia votes against it--nyet, nyet, nyet--and spits on it, too. So there is no point in debating further or even voting, as a great power has vetoed it. Meeting adjourned!" And he got up and put on his fur coat and stamped out of the hall where a regiment of KGB guards got him into a helicopter and away.
So dies UN Resolution 678-546-452, "WOMEN HAVE THE RIGHT NOT TO BE THERMONUCLEAR BOMBED AND NOT BE FORCED TO SHUT UP BY SLAPPING OR TORTURE," slain by those damned commies.
"Oh, blast, blast those Russians!" said Heller. "The girls will be SO disappointed after all their hard work!"
"What girls?" said the Countess Krak, very alert.
"And there goes any chance I had with Miss Simmons!" said Heller. "Confound those Russians!"
The Countess Krak said, very loudly, "WHO is Miss Simmons?"
Heller came out of it. He looked at the Countess. "What?"
"I said, WHO is Miss Simmons?"
So Heller finally is forced to explain more about his mandatory Nature Appreciation class, and Krak accuses him of being infatuated with Simmons, and Heller declares "I HATE the hussy!", and Krak warns him to be careful about hate because "The poet says it is the closest neighbor of love," and I ask what poet?
Krak presses further, and Heller talks more - or Gris summarizes how Heller talks more - about how his teacher hates nuclear physicists in general and "Jerome Wister" the aspiring nuclear physicist in particular. Krak interprets the near-rape experience of last year as Simmons' attempt to lure Heller into a trap, and that the teacher "is the kind of woman who craves to be raped." Heller promises his girlfriend flowers and a trip to the theater and that he'll even get up first in the morning to turn up the thermostat if she would just shut up about Miss Simmons. And Krak says "Hmm" and goes into the next room.
I guess keeping relationship-damaging secrets is better than honestly talking about your issues, because the honesty thing just doesn't work. So guys, if your work brings you into repeated contact with a particular woman, even if you have no interest in her whatsoever, even if you outright hate her, do not let your girlfriend know about it because she'll just assume you're lying anyway and, in Krak's case, go do something drastic. Good to know, Hubbard, thanks!
Krak calls her friend Mamie Boomp and states that "it has happened" and she needs her advice now.
"[Heller] is so disturbed that I am absolutely certain he has become infatuated with another woman and it may hold him on this planet. We are not married yet. I MUST get him away. What should I do?"
"Scratch her eyes out," said Mamie, promptly.
"Hmm," said the Countess Krak. "Well, thank you. I was just checking to see how it was done on this planet. How is business?"
"I'm not an alien, by the way."
So Krak is out to get Miss Simmons because she's decided that her boyfriend is an unfaithful liar and won't let anything change her mind. But remember, she's a strong female character who women should emulate instead of loafing around expecting the UN to pass rights on their behalf.
Back to Chapter One
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Part Forty-Two, Chapter One - If This Book is the Answer, I Dread the Question
Know how Gris could totally derail Heller's academic career? Leak that "Jerome Wister"'s high school records have been falsified. He wouldn't have to destroy the identity altogether, just come up with another fake document showing that Wister really bombed out of high school, and it's only some bureaucratic mix-up that got him accepted to college. Ta-da, now Heller has to go back to school, instant comedy gold. It worked for Adam Sandler, right?
Just as a reminder, Gris is talking about making sure a college professor flunks Heller.
Gris arrives at Empire University and finds a wild-eyed Miss Simmons in the Puppet Building of the Teacher's College (?). She also doesn't have her glasses on, allowing Gris to introduce himself as a reporter from the Morning Press there to talk about the protests over the "women's thermonuclear rights" bill... wait a second, something is terribly wrong here. That newspaper name isn't lamely "satirical!" Shouldn't it be the Morning Pus or Moaning Press or Mourning Press or something? You're slipping, Hubbard!
While Simmons fumbles for her glasses (which Gris swipes and puts in his pocket), Gris insinuates that there are "black forces" at work. Miss Simmons asks if she's met him before, perhaps in a psychiatric ward, and Gris changes his story so he's now a PLO agent masquerading as a reporter. Simmons assumes she was in the same Psychology class as him.
This isn't the old "call them a made-up name and if they answer to it you know they're fake" trick. Miss Simmons just supplied Gris with the identity he's trying to masquerade as. It kind of undermines the deviousness of your secret agent when the person he's fooling is cooperating with his deception.
Anyway. Simmons rants about psychological "preindoctrination" to keep teachers cold and collected, then about how much she supports the Antinuclear bill, until Gris steers the conversation towards Nature Appreciation. Simmons starts hyperventilating when she remembers the terrible event of last year, and when Gris namedrops "Wister" she screams outright, stacks a bunch of chairs atop each other, and perches fearfully on her ramshackle tower. Gris claims that Wister is using all his wiles to make sure the anti-nuke bill is defeated, and Simmons spasms and falls to the floor.
Seeing how Gris just "pushed" Simmons to the floor, a mob of students rushes in and starts beating on him, and one even nabs his wallet and screams about the "dirty, stinking, rotten FED!" So they throw him down a staircase, but are nice enough to toss his wallet after him. Gris flees to take an express train home, sucking his injured hand but gloating over his mighty victory.
So long as nobody tells Miss Simmons that the man he was speaking to was not who he said he was, but "A FED!", causing her to doubt his entire story. Or that, having been unjustly flunked by a hostile teacher, Heller doesn't raise the issue with the university. This also assumes that Heller's allies, such as - just to pick a person at random - the Countess Krak, decide not to handle matters more directly.
But yes, if none of that happens, then Gris has certainly "struck a blow that Heller would not soon forget and certainly could not possibly recover from." I mean, he has the advanced alien eco-friendly technology and made boatloads of money from the stock market, but he's gonna flunk Nature Appreciation! You can't save the planet without passing Nature Appreciation. How would you know what to save?
Back to Part Forty-One, Chapter Ten
I leaped aboard an AA train and soon was speeding north. My rendezvous with destiny would set of a chain reaction even Heller would be powerless to stop.
The roar, roar, roar of the pounding wheels carried me relentlessly forward, oblivious of the churning crowd. At last I was in action. My mission of vengeance would be fulfilled. Blood, red blood, would pay the awful price of putting me through the agonies which had spent my energies and lacerated my soul.
Just as a reminder, Gris is talking about making sure a college professor flunks Heller.
Gris arrives at Empire University and finds a wild-eyed Miss Simmons in the Puppet Building of the Teacher's College (?). She also doesn't have her glasses on, allowing Gris to introduce himself as a reporter from the Morning Press there to talk about the protests over the "women's thermonuclear rights" bill... wait a second, something is terribly wrong here. That newspaper name isn't lamely "satirical!" Shouldn't it be the Morning Pus or Moaning Press or Mourning Press or something? You're slipping, Hubbard!
While Simmons fumbles for her glasses (which Gris swipes and puts in his pocket), Gris insinuates that there are "black forces" at work. Miss Simmons asks if she's met him before, perhaps in a psychiatric ward, and Gris changes his story so he's now a PLO agent masquerading as a reporter. Simmons assumes she was in the same Psychology class as him.
"You did indeed," I said. "I sat right behind you and cheered you on all the way."
"Then your name is Throgapple," she said. "I always remember my classmates."
"Correct," I said.
This isn't the old "call them a made-up name and if they answer to it you know they're fake" trick. Miss Simmons just supplied Gris with the identity he's trying to masquerade as. It kind of undermines the deviousness of your secret agent when the person he's fooling is cooperating with his deception.
Anyway. Simmons rants about psychological "preindoctrination" to keep teachers cold and collected, then about how much she supports the Antinuclear bill, until Gris steers the conversation towards Nature Appreciation. Simmons starts hyperventilating when she remembers the terrible event of last year, and when Gris namedrops "Wister" she screams outright, stacks a bunch of chairs atop each other, and perches fearfully on her ramshackle tower. Gris claims that Wister is using all his wiles to make sure the anti-nuke bill is defeated, and Simmons spasms and falls to the floor.
Seeing how Gris just "pushed" Simmons to the floor, a mob of students rushes in and starts beating on him, and one even nabs his wallet and screams about the "dirty, stinking, rotten FED!" So they throw him down a staircase, but are nice enough to toss his wallet after him. Gris flees to take an express train home, sucking his injured hand but gloating over his mighty victory.
I had done it! Actually, it had worked perfectly.
If that bill passed now, she would jeer at Heller that it had gone through despite his most villainous plots. And if it didn't pass I could certainly guarantee that his life from there on out would be a hell not even he could live through.
So long as nobody tells Miss Simmons that the man he was speaking to was not who he said he was, but "A FED!", causing her to doubt his entire story. Or that, having been unjustly flunked by a hostile teacher, Heller doesn't raise the issue with the university. This also assumes that Heller's allies, such as - just to pick a person at random - the Countess Krak, decide not to handle matters more directly.
But yes, if none of that happens, then Gris has certainly "struck a blow that Heller would not soon forget and certainly could not possibly recover from." I mean, he has the advanced alien eco-friendly technology and made boatloads of money from the stock market, but he's gonna flunk Nature Appreciation! You can't save the planet without passing Nature Appreciation. How would you know what to save?
Back to Part Forty-One, Chapter Ten
Monday, November 26, 2012
Part Forty-One, Chapter Ten - Like the Last Ten Parts Never Happened
Chapter of Gris raping two women? Fine. Subsequent consensual sex with those women? Meh, skip it.
We jump forward some sixty hours later, after two days of noisy remodeling in Pinch's apartment, and two nights of noisy psychiatric deprogramming. But Gris is seething because his mission of "Stopping Heller was not making any progress, and it MUST, it MUST, it MUST!" He's done everything he can - he tried to raise Raht on the two-way, but the competent, dedicated agent isn't answering. Furthermore, Gris has also... uh... actually, that's it.
See, Gris has decided that he can't just call the Apparatus office in New York, because he's "on the run" and using a pay phone or land line from Miss Pinch's place is too dangerous. I can't say whether or not this is inconsistent with his earlier decision to not call the place because "they'd turn him in" because I'm not sure if Gris was referring to his supposed allies or Turkish eavesdroppers. At any rate, no, he can't take a cab over or anything. Much too risky. Mohammad might have gotten a tip-off from Zeus and picked up Gris' trail.
This leaves Gris in a lurch because those bloody 831 Relayers are still on, which means that he can't use the bugs he implanted in Heller and Krak's skulls because the signal's too strong, which is why every single time he goes to or from New York he has to get someone to flip the on-off switch on the stupid relayers on the stupid Empire State Building and why couldn't they put up a satellite?! Why couldn't they remotely turn the relayers on or off?! Why did the author decide to include this plot device?! What does it bring to the story?!
With nothing else to do, Gris goes for a walk and by chance notices the headlines on the New York Grimes: "WOMEN'S BOMB RIGHTS COMING UP AT UN SECURITY COUNCIL." And Gris realizes that, even though Heller's currently abusing alien technology to break the stock market and get all the funding he'll ever need, this is a real emergency!
You've never met her! She is not an ally if she doesn't know you exist!
We have gone back in time. We have returned to the "flunk Heller out of college" subplot.
Gris is back in New York, and has access to a steady stream of money courtesy of Rockecenter's coffers. Heller is winning big on Wall Street but Gris has decided this isn't as dangerous as the possibility of him finishing college, so we'll ignore that and focus on him masquerading as a student. If we had skipped everything from Pinch and Candy's torture sessions back in Part Thirty-Two to this chapter, would our current situation be any different? Heller won and lost Atlantic City. Gris gained and wasted a fortune. Heller got kicked out of the mob but made up for it by becoming a day-trader. Crobe showed up but got institutionalized.
The only meaningful change we've seen in the last couple hundred pages was that Krak is now on-planet. And Gris is also hung like a horse now.
Well. Gris figures that Rockecenter has an interest in stopping this dastardly "no-nuking" law since the man controls the world's uranium stockpiles, the value of which would plummet in the event of a "devastating and disastrous peace!" because there is no other conceivable use for uranium, nor would anyone continue to build and maintain nuclear weapons in the event someone else didn't abide by international law. So Gris goes to the Octopus building and wouldn't you know it but Mr. Bury is sitting right there, just through the door!
Mr. Bury is a lawyer, so he tells Gris to "take the stand" when he offers the alien a seat. He also thinks he's got the Wister case "pretty well into due process" by having Madison working on it, because "J. Warbler Madman" is worse than the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and "Wister" will be begging for death and so forth. The gist of it is, Bury won't take any action. He does ask for Gris' current address, and is surprised and impressed to learn he's rooming at Miss Pinch's apartment, especially since Bury had to cover up the murder of someone beaten to death there last month. Gris, finding no help, moves on.
Know what he didn't do? Try to get some money as the Rockecenter family "spi." He was just talking to the God-King of the World's second-in-command and Gris didn't try to fix his financial problems once and for all. Guess he's fine with continuing to prostitute himself out to a pair of former lesbians for a thousand dollars a night.
So Gris visits Madison, and is all angry because Madison had Dr. Crobe hauled away. But then the publicist counters that no-no-no, he didn't want Crobe taken as a patient, he had him taken to a psychiatric hospital to act as a doctor.
Hubbard thinks every psychiatrist is a brain surgeon, ya ken.
Shocking coverage of serial killers? Sensationalist features on the latest threat to public safety? War-mongering yellow journalism? Exposes on the meat-packing industry? Pointless and gross pieces about freak medical conditions?
Gris fails to show any interest in Crobe's condition and complains about the lack of results on Madison's part since the Atlantic City incident. Madison shows him tomorrow's headline, which will reveal that "Wister" is actually the descendant of the chief of the local American Indian tribe and therefore the legal owner of New Jersey. Madison hopes that this will lead to a repeat of the Battle of Wounded Knee, followed by a daring train robbery a week later because remember, we're going for a Jesse James image for the Whiz Kid here.
When Madison throws together a bunch of nonsensical references to decades-old events, he's a madman. When Hubbard does it, he's writing a satirical sci-fi epic.
Gris tries to get Madison interested in the "TRUTH!", the UN bomb ban vote coming up. He fails.
I guess this book of satire is telling things like it is, because I sure as hell ain't entertained by it.
In conclusion, Mr. Bury isn't going to do anything, and Madison isn't concerned with what's got Gris' panties in a knot.
Leaving him with nothing but his monopoly on oil, and psychology, and the world's banks, and the media, and drugs, and political power, and...
Heller saved her from being raped and she still blamed him for everything. Why are you so worried about her opinion? Why have you decided that his growing financial empire is less important than whether or not Heller passes this one class?
Has a flash of INSPIRATION ever ended well for Gris?
And so the book's villain sets off to solve a problem that only he is worried about with the help of an ally he's never met, instead of dealing with the much bigger problems threatening to overwhelm him without the help of the allies he actually has.
Back to Part Forty-One, Chapter Nine
We jump forward some sixty hours later, after two days of noisy remodeling in Pinch's apartment, and two nights of noisy psychiatric deprogramming. But Gris is seething because his mission of "Stopping Heller was not making any progress, and it MUST, it MUST, it MUST!" He's done everything he can - he tried to raise Raht on the two-way, but the competent, dedicated agent isn't answering. Furthermore, Gris has also... uh... actually, that's it.
See, Gris has decided that he can't just call the Apparatus office in New York, because he's "on the run" and using a pay phone or land line from Miss Pinch's place is too dangerous. I can't say whether or not this is inconsistent with his earlier decision to not call the place because "they'd turn him in" because I'm not sure if Gris was referring to his supposed allies or Turkish eavesdroppers. At any rate, no, he can't take a cab over or anything. Much too risky. Mohammad might have gotten a tip-off from Zeus and picked up Gris' trail.
This leaves Gris in a lurch because those bloody 831 Relayers are still on, which means that he can't use the bugs he implanted in Heller and Krak's skulls because the signal's too strong, which is why every single time he goes to or from New York he has to get someone to flip the on-off switch on the stupid relayers on the stupid Empire State Building and why couldn't they put up a satellite?! Why couldn't they remotely turn the relayers on or off?! Why did the author decide to include this plot device?! What does it bring to the story?!
With nothing else to do, Gris goes for a walk and by chance notices the headlines on the New York Grimes: "WOMEN'S BOMB RIGHTS COMING UP AT UN SECURITY COUNCIL." And Gris realizes that, even though Heller's currently abusing alien technology to break the stock market and get all the funding he'll ever need, this is a real emergency!
If that bill got through the Security Council now, Miss Simmons would be drooling all over Heller! Rather than flunk him out of Empire as she had promised, she would pass him! I would lose a vital ally I had counted on
You've never met her! She is not an ally if she doesn't know you exist!
to block his villainous rehabilitation of the planet, a plot that would ruin me, Lombar and Rockecenter.
We have gone back in time. We have returned to the "flunk Heller out of college" subplot.
Gris is back in New York, and has access to a steady stream of money courtesy of Rockecenter's coffers. Heller is winning big on Wall Street but Gris has decided this isn't as dangerous as the possibility of him finishing college, so we'll ignore that and focus on him masquerading as a student. If we had skipped everything from Pinch and Candy's torture sessions back in Part Thirty-Two to this chapter, would our current situation be any different? Heller won and lost Atlantic City. Gris gained and wasted a fortune. Heller got kicked out of the mob but made up for it by becoming a day-trader. Crobe showed up but got institutionalized.
The only meaningful change we've seen in the last couple hundred pages was that Krak is now on-planet. And Gris is also hung like a horse now.
Well. Gris figures that Rockecenter has an interest in stopping this dastardly "no-nuking" law since the man controls the world's uranium stockpiles, the value of which would plummet in the event of a "devastating and disastrous peace!" because there is no other conceivable use for uranium, nor would anyone continue to build and maintain nuclear weapons in the event someone else didn't abide by international law. So Gris goes to the Octopus building and wouldn't you know it but Mr. Bury is sitting right there, just through the door!
Mr. Bury is a lawyer, so he tells Gris to "take the stand" when he offers the alien a seat. He also thinks he's got the Wister case "pretty well into due process" by having Madison working on it, because "J. Warbler Madman" is worse than the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and "Wister" will be begging for death and so forth. The gist of it is, Bury won't take any action. He does ask for Gris' current address, and is surprised and impressed to learn he's rooming at Miss Pinch's apartment, especially since Bury had to cover up the murder of someone beaten to death there last month. Gris, finding no help, moves on.
Know what he didn't do? Try to get some money as the Rockecenter family "spi." He was just talking to the God-King of the World's second-in-command and Gris didn't try to fix his financial problems once and for all. Guess he's fine with continuing to prostitute himself out to a pair of former lesbians for a thousand dollars a night.
So Gris visits Madison, and is all angry because Madison had Dr. Crobe hauled away. But then the publicist counters that no-no-no, he didn't want Crobe taken as a patient, he had him taken to a psychiatric hospital to act as a doctor.
"Crobe seemed anxious to cut things, as all psychiatrists are,
Hubbard thinks every psychiatrist is a brain surgeon, ya ken.
so they gave him his own laboratory and a top job on staff. You didn't think I'd overlook a valuable asset like that, did you? Heaven forbid. What would the media do for horror if it weren't for psychiatrists?"
Shocking coverage of serial killers? Sensationalist features on the latest threat to public safety? War-mongering yellow journalism? Exposes on the meat-packing industry? Pointless and gross pieces about freak medical conditions?
Gris fails to show any interest in Crobe's condition and complains about the lack of results on Madison's part since the Atlantic City incident. Madison shows him tomorrow's headline, which will reveal that "Wister" is actually the descendant of the chief of the local American Indian tribe and therefore the legal owner of New Jersey. Madison hopes that this will lead to a repeat of the Battle of Wounded Knee, followed by a daring train robbery a week later because remember, we're going for a Jesse James image for the Whiz Kid here.
When Madison throws together a bunch of nonsensical references to decades-old events, he's a madman. When Hubbard does it, he's writing a satirical sci-fi epic.
Gris tries to get Madison interested in the "TRUTH!", the UN bomb ban vote coming up. He fails.
Madison gave an unamused laugh. "Truth? What does PR have to do with truth, Smith? News today is entertainment. Ask NBC, CBS, ABC, ask all the major papers. They'll tell you. News is the biggest entertainment industry in the world. Now let me ask you, how can you entertain anybody by telling the truth? Preposterous!"
I guess this book of satire is telling things like it is, because I sure as hell ain't entertained by it.
In conclusion, Mr. Bury isn't going to do anything, and Madison isn't concerned with what's got Gris' panties in a knot.
None of them really seemed to get the danger in that UN bill. If the Security Council passed it, Rockecenter would lose all his thermonuclear profit.
Leaving him with nothing but his monopoly on oil, and psychology, and the world's banks, and the media, and drugs, and political power, and...
The Octopus Oil monopoly on uranium claims would be worthless. Lombar would be raving. And even worse, that Miss Simmons would be slobbering all over Heller as a prize hero.
Heller saved her from being raped and she still blamed him for everything. Why are you so worried about her opinion? Why have you decided that his growing financial empire is less important than whether or not Heller passes this one class?
I was worried!
I paced.
Then INSPIRATION!
Has a flash of INSPIRATION ever ended well for Gris?
I would go and see Miss Simmons!
And so the book's villain sets off to solve a problem that only he is worried about with the help of an ally he's never met, instead of dealing with the much bigger problems threatening to overwhelm him without the help of the allies he actually has.
Back to Part Forty-One, Chapter Nine
Friday, November 23, 2012
Part Forty-One, Chapter Nine - The Healing Power of Rape
Gotta say, I find this chapter more disturbing than the last one.
Gris is annoyed enough to consider shooting his two unconscious rape victims, then looks down at himself and notices... yeah, the blood from what he did.
Acetaminophen, ho!
...
Right, now I'm ready to get past the second paragraph of the chapter.
So, before he slaughters the ladies he just raped, Gris decides to shower and erase the evidence of his previous crime, even though he usually doesn't make such attempts at personal hygiene. While he applies some... alright, gotta include the author's criticism of American body washes. It's random, it's pointless, it's Hubbard.
In this withering satire of modern society, the author pulls no punches - from magazines to fashion to soap products, nothing is safe from his scathing criticism!
As an aside, I bet someone could make a killing selling soap for "that not-a-virgin look" to insecure high schoolers.
While Gris bathes, he wonders where he went wrong. Despite applying de Sade's principles of "anarchic sexual violence" that Freud would later build upon, Gris failed to get Miss Pinch to divulge the safe combination. He considers killing the girls and disposing of their bodies, then hiring a moving company to open the safe for him after claiming he forgot the combination, but he wants to keep his trail covered. When he's all toweled off he decides to eavesdrop on the two for some hint of what to do next. Candy and Miss Pinch are discussing which of them should try and convince Gris to get them out of their desperate situation.
When Gris makes his entrance, gun in hand, he sees the terror in their eyes, and Miss Pinch promises to give him his money if he unchains her, then leaves the room. Gris complies, sure that he can outsmart and murder her after he gets what he wants, but first takes care to tear out the phone lines and gather every weapon in the dungeon, not to mention any bottles of hot sauce or mustard or pepper from the kitchen. He takes Candy hostage as he leaves the room, then returns to find Pinch kneeling in front of the shut safe.
First time I read this part, I dropped the book and had to walk away for a while.
Gris has memorized part of the "Apparatus manual on hoodwinking" yet still fell victim to Utanc's scams and Ahmed's scams.
Thaaaaat's right. Psychology is all Freudian and turns colleges into brothels and normal people into bands of rapists and wants to make the world gay as part of voluntary human extinction, but doesn't actually know anything about sex. For all their screaming and fumbling in the other room after an exciting session of hitting Gris with a stick, Candy and Pinch have never had an
No, they haven't. There is no indication that such an event has taken place. Pinch's apartment is located in some strange mandatorily-gay alternate universe that has no effect on the rest of the planet.
Gris is alarmed at the girls' "treason," but Pinch spits on Rockecenter, psychiatry, and Psychiatric Birth Control and pledges her allegiance to the almighty penis. Gris protests that they can't expect him to live in such a foreboding dungeon, but the girls assure him that they'll redecorate, and let Gris come and go as he pleases, and again they'll be paying him a thousand dollars a day, so long as he services them every night. After making sure that no shackles or mustard will be involved, Gris agrees. The girls are overjoyed.
If you tell the waiter, I'm sure the staff will come out and sing an appropriate song for you. Goodness knows Hubbard has probably written one.
So there you have it. Psychology is a twisted false religion that turns people into monsters, but it can be cured by a half-decent dicking. Likewise, all those "lesbians" running around out there? A good rape will put them back on the right path. And most importantly of all, rape is fine if the victim decides she enjoyed it afterward. You're doing those girls a favor, really, even if they didn't want it at first.
Mission Earth is just full of positive messages!
Oh no! Just when we were rooting for you, Gris!
Back to Chapter Eight
Gris is annoyed enough to consider shooting his two unconscious rape victims, then looks down at himself and notices... yeah, the blood from what he did.
I was in the peculiar situation of having to get rid of the evidence before I committed the crime. One maidenhead murder was bad enough, but two in the row left enough evidence to convict me of the Jack the Ripper crimes. One forensic test and I'd be found guilty!
Acetaminophen, ho!
...
Right, now I'm ready to get past the second paragraph of the chapter.
So, before he slaughters the ladies he just raped, Gris decides to shower and erase the evidence of his previous crime, even though he usually doesn't make such attempts at personal hygiene. While he applies some... alright, gotta include the author's criticism of American body washes. It's random, it's pointless, it's Hubbard.
There was lots of soap in the bathroom: I am no expert on the subject, but the American soaps, with their penny-a-barrel "perfume," stunk worse than I did. They use violent odors to cover up the even more violent odors of their questionable ingredients, like rancid hog fat. I finally found an "oatmeal health soap" that said it was for "that virgin look." I began my shower.
In this withering satire of modern society, the author pulls no punches - from magazines to fashion to soap products, nothing is safe from his scathing criticism!
As an aside, I bet someone could make a killing selling soap for "that not-a-virgin look" to insecure high schoolers.
While Gris bathes, he wonders where he went wrong. Despite applying de Sade's principles of "anarchic sexual violence" that Freud would later build upon, Gris failed to get Miss Pinch to divulge the safe combination. He considers killing the girls and disposing of their bodies, then hiring a moving company to open the safe for him after claiming he forgot the combination, but he wants to keep his trail covered. When he's all toweled off he decides to eavesdrop on the two for some hint of what to do next. Candy and Miss Pinch are discussing which of them should try and convince Gris to get them out of their desperate situation.
When Gris makes his entrance, gun in hand, he sees the terror in their eyes, and Miss Pinch promises to give him his money if he unchains her, then leaves the room. Gris complies, sure that he can outsmart and murder her after he gets what he wants, but first takes care to tear out the phone lines and gather every weapon in the dungeon, not to mention any bottles of hot sauce or mustard or pepper from the kitchen. He takes Candy hostage as he leaves the room, then returns to find Pinch kneeling in front of the shut safe.
"What treachery is this?" I demanded.
Miss Pinch took her hands from behind her back. She was holding a thousand-dollar bill. She said, "This is yours if you don't do it." Fear was in her eyes.
It was time I found out what they were terrified of. "If I don't do what?" I grated.
It was Candy that answered, all in a babble, the accents of sheer horror, "YOU MIGHT WALK OUT THAT DOOR AND LEAVE! WE MIGHT NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN!"
First time I read this part, I dropped the book and had to walk away for a while.
I blinked. A new kind of trick. They had a trap out there and were using the negative ploy, page two million and three of the Apparatus manual on hoodwinking
Gris has memorized part of the "Apparatus manual on hoodwinking" yet still fell victim to Utanc's scams and Ahmed's scams.
Miss Pinch was talking. There was pleading in her voice. "Your money is still in the safe. By your signing a blank invoice I can even get you more. But this is all you can have right now. There are conditions."
"Yes?" I said uncertainly.
"You can have a thousand dollars every day if you will live here with us and promise to do that same thing every night."
"To both of us," said Candy. "Every night."
Oh, this was very suspicious. I said, "What about Psychiatric Birth Control?"
Miss Pinch said, "Anything that gets in the road of something that feels that wonderful can stuff it."
"To hell with Psychiatric Birth Control!" said Candy.
Miss Pinch said, "They have lied to us. We have been biting and scratching and smearing lipstick in that back room for years. We have followed the Psychiatric Birth Control texts exactly. We have even had consultations with the psychiatrist in charge of it. And no one, not once, has ever told us the sensation was supposed to come from down THERE! Isn't that right, Candy?"
Thaaaaat's right. Psychology is all Freudian and turns colleges into brothels and normal people into bands of rapists and wants to make the world gay as part of voluntary human extinction, but doesn't actually know anything about sex. For all their screaming and fumbling in the other room after an exciting session of hitting Gris with a stick, Candy and Pinch have never had an
"Orgasm?" I said.
"Oh, is THAT what an organism is?" said Candy.
"O-R-G-A-S-M," I spelled out for her. "Orgasm."
"Crikes, what a beautiful word," said Candy. "I know why people take up Christianity now, if that is going to Heaven."
"They lied to us," said Miss Pinch bitterly. "They simply told us that, to carry out Rockecenter's program to cut down the population of the world, we had to be lesbians. I was supposed to be the man-one and Candy was supposed to be my wife. We couldn't do anything else, as they've also turned all the males into gays and made it a crime to break up their marriages."
No, they haven't. There is no indication that such an event has taken place. Pinch's apartment is located in some strange mandatorily-gay alternate universe that has no effect on the rest of the planet.
Gris is alarmed at the girls' "treason," but Pinch spits on Rockecenter, psychiatry, and Psychiatric Birth Control and pledges her allegiance to the almighty penis. Gris protests that they can't expect him to live in such a foreboding dungeon, but the girls assure him that they'll redecorate, and let Gris come and go as he pleases, and again they'll be paying him a thousand dollars a day, so long as he services them every night. After making sure that no shackles or mustard will be involved, Gris agrees. The girls are overjoyed.
"Oh, goody!" cried Candy, clapping her hands. "Let's all get dressed and go to a restaurant and have a deflowering celebration."
If you tell the waiter, I'm sure the staff will come out and sing an appropriate song for you. Goodness knows Hubbard has probably written one.
"No," said Miss Pinch, looking at me with a cocked head, compressed mouth and hungry eye, "Let's stay right here and do it all over again. We've got the whole night. But I'm first this time, Candy. You can watch if you promise not to scream. I'M the one who gets to scream when I have another of those GORGEOUS orgasms. I'm getting breathless just thinking about it."
And that's how I got the safe open. In fact, three safes. Well, not exactly as I planned, but one must learn how to improvise. One must know how to go deeper into things than one might have, at first, intended.
One has to know when to take things lying down.
So there you have it. Psychology is a twisted false religion that turns people into monsters, but it can be cured by a half-decent dicking. Likewise, all those "lesbians" running around out there? A good rape will put them back on the right path. And most importantly of all, rape is fine if the victim decides she enjoyed it afterward. You're doing those girls a favor, really, even if they didn't want it at first.
Mission Earth is just full of positive messages!
Alas, if it had only kept up on a level with that night.
Oh no! Just when we were rooting for you, Gris!
Back to Chapter Eight
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