Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl
Chapter 1: PART 2 Finally, the “””Story”””
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch
Ok, finally, we get to the opening chapter.
“Hey, anyone home?”
Cora blinked, shooting to attention. “Yes.”
Shooting to attention? I had forgotten her characters are always jerking about like malfunctioning robots.
She blinked again, trying to snap out of the mind fog that had been plaguing her all morning. The fluorescent lights in this conference room were the frequency of knives. “Scio has declined to speak.”
Sol shot her a millisecond of a glare, then faced the brigadier general seated on the other side of the conference table. “If he says he’s not going to talk to us, that’s pretty much that for the day.”
Cora is still the alien's mouthpiece, which is an easy job since they don't ever want to speak to anyone. VIPs from every guv'ment agency shows up to get reassured the aliens are behaving. I don't remember who Scio is, and I'm not looking it up. Besides, I'm expecting 12 pages of rehash coming soon anyway.
“I know it’s a strange situation,” said ROSA director Sevak “Dr. Sev” Ghasabian, flanked on his right by Cora’s aunt Luciana. A fiftysomething with sharp features and a head like a cue ball, he preferred Dr. Sev, just in case anyone was unclear on which degree he’d completed.
That's rich coming from Lindsay who trumpeted her 1 week at the #6 spot on the NYT Best Sellers list all over her social media, even at one point challenging some conservative to a debate noting her Best Seller status as credentials. I posted that somewhere in the Ncunt thread somehwere. Her official greeting at social events is, “Hi, Lindsay, best selling author and essayist, and you are?”
Another paragraph of woe is Cora, because all these heads of agencies want to talk to the aliens, but the aliens don't want to talk.
The brigadier general, a square-shouldered man who looked like a Boy Scout wearing age makeup, still ignored Cora. She wondered if it was because of who she was, since he was being noticeably dismissive to Luciana, too. Perhaps it was because they were members of the Ortega family, and her father, Nils Ortega, was presently the biggest force of chaos on this earth besides the aliens. Given that they were the only women in the room, it could also be shameless misogyny. Or both!
And there it is. Page 2. Wonder why it took so long to start the woke shit?
“But we have no way of verifying that, do we? I find it highly questionable that an unqualified teenage civilian is the only ‘communication intermediary’ between extraterrestrial intelligences and the American government.”
Yeah, no shit.
That lit an anxiety fuse inside her. She wasn’t a teenager, and no one was qualified to be a communication intermediary, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t pressed just about every insecurity button she had.
It's not that he doesn't want to deal with this walking emotionally unstable walnut, it's that he hates women.
“Yes,” she said, leaving it at that. She didn’t want to give this man any ammo to confirm his suspicions of how out of place she was here. She was a college dropout with no training and no certifications and was only given top-secret clearance after Ampersand’s refusal to communicate without her stretched for an entire week before they panicked and let her into the club. So here she sat, underqualified, underpaid, and completely unappreciated. But she kept on, kept enduring this workplace, not only because a recession that was rapidly tumbling into a depression meant that jobs were scarce but because it was the only way she could guarantee access to Ampersand. Not that it was doing her mental health any favors, since the space aliens were also the root of most of her ills.
Look I know these woke people are retarded, but why undercut your 'muh misogyny” by proving Cora is an unqualified nut? Why would this General or anybody want to deal with her?
And now a running inner monologue how she has to lie to her psychiatrist that it was hoomans that had kidnapped her and not aliens.
So she told the psych a story about being kidnapped by a human person, an ex of some sort. He had held her under threat of violence, and when she fought back, he stabbed her several times. She’d survived the ordeal, but now there were nightmares. Nightmares and panic attacks and random bouts of crying and irritability and all sorts of fun times that had not been there before.
This, however, was a gamble of a story to tell, because if someone were to ask to see the scars, she would be found for a liar, because there were none. Ampersand was very good at operating on the human body like it was a machine...
Oh, baby!
...stitching her ambulatory sack of meat and water back together like a mechanic would repair a car. Good as new, no one would be able to tell it was ever in an accident.
She's diagnosed with PTSD, because of course. We live in a world where people like Pushing Up Roses self-diagnoses with PTSD from weighing herself at the doctor's office. PTSD it's the default “it's not my fault I'm shitty” go to excuse.
Cora is prescribed Prozac, but she can't afford it, because libtard talking point # 12 “America's healthcare system is Hitler” and #13 “Drug companies are Hitler”.
ROSA did not offer benefits, and although still technically just below the poverty line, she now made too much money to qualify for California’s state-run health care system, MediCAL, leaving her in the limbo between with no health insurance.
See?
So Ampersand is also called Scio. Was that established in the last book? Does it matter? No. Maybe Lindsay realized “Ampersand” was dumb, or got tired of typing that out all the time and opted for a shorter name. I'm betting the latter.
Anyway, broody brood Scio isolates himself from the group of aliens, because he and Esperas (one of the other head aliens that did stuff in the last book, that I'm not bothering to look up) are still having a tiff.
Wait, no. We're still going with Ampersand. Scio is his code name.
….
Why make this more complicated? As last time I'm not typing out Ampersand every damn time and shortening it to simply &.
Everyone looked at Cora, and she tried to blink away the nuclear explosion going off in extreme slow motion behind her left eyeball.
Calm the fuck down, Lindsay.
“Do we know why they won’t be in the same room together?”
Again everyone looked at Cora.
Oh, she knew why, all right. Unbeknownst to the other humans in the room, Esperas had a special hate-on for Ampersand owing to his failure to disclose his relationship to the leader of the group of Similars who had been hunting them last year, code name: “Obelus.” The same Similar who had nearly killed her.
“We think it has something to do with one of their cultural taboos,” she lied. “I’m not entirely sure.”
I'm not explaining this shit again. Go read my review of the first book. I'll be honest here, I'm not really trying to follow this stupid, convoluted plot. It's boring, and uninteresting. So, I might miss a “key” plot point here and there. But, really, does it matter?
The general wants to know why Esperas doesn't need a human translator like & does. Probably, trying to work out if they can just get rid of Cora.
“It’s a matter of preference,” she said. “Scio feels like he needs an impartial intermediary to speak for him to better ensure that his meaning is getting across in the way he wants.”
“And Esperas does not?”
Esperas doesn’t care , thought Cora. Esperas had the luxury of hiding behind his own Similar, his “heavy,” and no one could make him talk to anyone. It had been assumed last year that both of the Fremda group’s Similars, their only form of protection, had been killed by Obelus. Cora found out later that was only half-true, as Brako, the one who had been thought killed at NORAD, survived, and was now just fine.
“Esperas has never requested a human intermediary,” said Dr. Sev.
See what I mean about this meaningless plot? The general doesn't seem to understand this shit either. Almost like some part of Lindsay's brain is trying to get past the other wine soaked brain cells to tell her, this shit is stupid.
The general asks if Esperas ain't there, why don't & talk with them? And I ask, why doesn't the military go in strap that asshole down and waterboard him until he spills every thing he knows. Why the fuck is the military pussy-footing around this obnoxious uncooperative alien, who has knowledge of a possible hostile alien force? Why are they allowing Cora to dictate when and what information they get?
Stupid!
This guy was like a fork raking over the chalkboard of her nerves, and she could feel the beginnings of a meltdown. She tried to focus on breathing normally while Dr. Sev offered some placating half truth to General Brigadier. Not now , she told herself. Not now, not now.
We've raised such a fragile, and mentally unstable generation of young people.
So, Cora and the General go round and round, while Lindsay tries out the worst writing she can creatively contrive.
She could hear the blood thumping through her skull. She was genuinely beginning to worry this was a prologue to an aneurysm.
“Yes, but why ?” If her eyeball were about to explode, this man would be the detonator.
And then this, when the general presses for a reason why & won't talk with them.
“What is his reasoning?”
“I . . . I’m not sure,” she said.
“Come on, we know you have an excuse,” said Sol, frustrated. “Let’s hear it.”
In the three months she had been an employee at ROSA, Sol had never disrespected her that overtly. Even the brigadier general looked uncomfortable. Sol seemed to realize he’d stepped over a line, and corrected himself.
Uh... what? Did Lindsay forget to write something here? “Disrespected her that overtly?”
But the spiral had already begun, the last Jenga block holding the tower in place pulled out, and she was collapsing.
This fucking writing.
“He’s busy.”
“Busy doing what?” asked Sol.
“I don’t know. Excuse me,” she said, barely holding it together. “I need to use the restroom.”
“We’re not finished,” said Sol.
“Please excuse me.”
And then...
She didn’t make it to the end of the hallway before she started running. By then, the bomb had gone off, the tower was collapsing. She fled to the nearest single-stall bathroom and had only just shut the door behind her before her breathing turned into audible shrieking so loud that anyone passing by could hear it. She fell to the tile floor, wrapping her arms around her midsection, begging her traitorous windpipe to quiet down. Sol will hear it, he’ll hear it, and he’ll take your clearance! He’s been looking for an excuse to revoke your clearance, he wants you gone, stop stop stop! This was the third one inside of a week.
Her throat burned, her eyes watered, and she grabbed fistfuls of hair in the hope that the pain would provide some sort of stopgap, short-circuit the panic. She pulled and pulled, then dug her fingernails into her skull until she felt moisture on her fingertips. She was so deep in her own torment...
Guys, if this is the focus of the book, then I'm not sure I'm going to finish this review. The first book was so retarded it was fun. This is just agonizing. I'm sure for people like Lindsay this shit is a normal part of their day, to me this is insanity. I'll continue for now.
Oh, Cora wonders if & can feel her pain, because here's some tech-babble for you.
Dynamic fusion bonding was what he called it, the way that members of an amygdaline “phyle” bound themselves to each other. Dynamic fusion bonding was the crux of amygdaline social structure, with members of a phyle called symphyles. Symphyles were bound to each other in the familial sense, if not the alien equivalent of the biblical one, which she was pretty sure would be the case if these guys hadn’t evolved past reproducing the old-fashioned way. Ampersand had told her that when he had attempted to fusion bond with her, he had expected it to fail, because he was a sleek and sophisticated 650-ish-year-old cyborg alien technocrat Oligarch Oligarch and she was a lowly human, a being of meat and hair. And yet now here they were, bound together, ’til death do us part.
The ability to sense each other’s “state” was also a part of the package, only there was no rhyme or reason to how intensely they felt each other. Sometimes he couldn’t sense her at all, sometimes it was, in his words, “ mildly debilitating .” She hoped now was not one of those times, hoped he wasn’t feeling his own alien equivalent of this tempest.
Fuck, Lindsay. They didn't bother with an editor with you, did they?
Side note: before Cora had referred to herself as “meat and water” here it's “meat and hair.” Weird.
Anyway, & sends her a mind message.
Dear one, come to me. ”
She tried to get words out, but they weren’t coming. She could barely comprehend what he was asking.
“ Dear one, come to me, I will stop it. ”
“I can’t,” she garbled. “I can’t. Someone will see!”
“ I can stop it. ”
“Someone will see!” she all but shrieked. “I’ll lose my clearance. Sol is always looking for an excuse to revoke my clearance, if they see me like this! If they see me like this!
& appears using those metal disks things from the book before.
It took a few dozen breaths before she could tear herself away from the wall, collapse onto the plate, curl into a fetal position, and let the liquid metal sweep over her, enveloping her in darkness.
She beams over to &'s crib.
she could almost see Ampersand standing over her—giant by human standards at over eight feet tall, even with his forward-leaning center of gravity like a silver velociraptor. Long clawlike fingers floated over her, a head that was somewhere between a dragon and a praying mantis looked down at her.
Again, I challenge you to try to imagine what this thing is supposed to look like.
“ Do you consent to be medicated? ”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
“Yes,” she pleaded. “Yes, please, make it stop, make it stop!”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
So he injects her with syringes from his fingers like Wolverine.
Then with both hands, he caressed her cheeks, then her temples, then ran his fingers through her hair. In doing so, he caught where she had made herself bleed with her fingernails. “ Why do you do this? ”
“I wanted . . . to make it . . . stop,” she said between breaths. “I . . . don’t know . . . I just . . . wanted . . . it . . . to stop.”
He’d already repaired the damage on one side of her head by the time her breathing slowed to something normal, which was so superficial he could do it with one hand.
They cuddle for a minute. Cora then gets worried about the security cameras.
“The cameras . . .,” she breathed. “You’ve still . . . They won’t . . .”
“ They will not see anything I do not allow. ”
She closed her eyes. He’d done this before; hacking human surveillance was old hat to him. She suspected that he spent most of his time outside of the complex with the people at ROSA none the wiser, but she had no idea where he went if he did. The few times she had asked, he evaded the question.
Shit this review is getting too long. Basically, & notes her PTSD is getting worse (no shit Sherlock) and he says he should have studied the problem sooner for a cure. Some therapeutic some chemical.
“ I will need to insert monitors, see how your brain chemistry changes over time, when you are at peace, and when you are frightened, when you have nightmares, and when you have panic attacks. ”
“You want to do that while I’m at work?”
“ You do not feel safe here. It should be in a location where you feel safe. And also where you can sleep. ”
“I suppose my apartment is as good as it gets.”
“ Then I will find you there tonight. ”
“And then what?”
“ And I will begin the study, and begin to arrange a therapeutic schedule. ”
The substance Ampersand used to calm her down had a way of also numbing her in all regards. But even through that fog, she felt like her heart might fall out of her chest in gratitude. If anyone could fix this, she knew, he could.
End of Chpater.
Good God! This is like reading the diary/manifesto of a crazy person.
Guys, I don't know if I can slog through this shit. I'm busy for the next couple of days, but I'll get to Chapter 2 when I can.
To Lindsay and her mob, book discussion is in the NCunt: Black Cocks Only thread, where you may REEEEE without censorship. A freedom of differing opinion that we grant and that you wouldn't.
