First of all, I apologize for the perceived lowering of quality of the previous two parts of this spork. This isn’t an excuse, but I really don’t know that much about firearms so I made quite a few mistakes in my criticism. Let us hope this doesn’t happen again.
This chapter opens with a short excerpt from an old newspaper article from the “real world” — that is, from before John and Joy’s tampering with history. Dated to September 1915, it describes the anarchy in Mexican society following the revolution five years earlier. Rummel is quite clearly using this to show how bad revolutions are and that this is something his protagonists should prevent. While I agree that many horrible things happened in Mexico in the early 20th century, Rummel is forgetting one thing: all revolutions are like that. More importantly, even the American Revolution, which Rummel considers one of the greatest events in human history, was like that. It would not have been fun to be a Loyalist or an unaligned civilian at the time of the American Revolution. First, it was a frickin’ war. Second, both the redcoats and the Continental Army were fond of pillaging random villages and doing unspeakable things to the inhabitants. The Americans were not as squeaky-clean as people like Rummel would have one believe. Now, the only reason I mention this is because Rummel is clearly implying that all other revolutions were corrupted attempts at emulating the United States. While there may be a grain of truth to that,1 it doesn’t change the fact that the Mexican revolution was fought to overthrow a dictator, and John and Joy do not believe the Mexicans capable of doing such a deed by themselves.
It is in this chapter that John and Joy finally get off their lazy asses and get on the train to Mexico City, but not before John complains about the long distance. Let me reiterate that it has been more than 200 pages since the start of the book.
Again, our so-called heroes are so insecure about their safety that they feel the need to carry enough equipment to defeat a regiment with them on the train,2 and John is awed by the old-fashioned steam engine. He has been living in the past for several years, and has traveled long-distance on several occasions. Wouldn’t he have seen one up close before? In fact, Rummel gives more detail to the train than to anything of importance.
The main characters do not do the research on Mexican weather and so are surprised when all their weapons and armor exacerbate the hot and humid temperature outside, making an already stuffy train ride even more unbearable. They aren’t the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, are they?
On the train, John brushes up on his Mexican history by reading a book on the subject. There is stupid, and then there is what he just did. What he has is a modern history book, that talks about the world after the early 1900s. If John had lost that book, and somebody had found it, then they would have knowledge of their future, and would be able to compromise the protagonist’s mission. Shouldn’t a time traveler avoid this sort of risk?3
John muses about his life, and according to him, Joy says that he is equivalent to a first-degree black belt in karate. Not only do I doubt this for reasons already stated, but would Joy ever admit to anybody other than herself being competent in anything? I don’t think so.
Clickity-clack, clickity clack. . . . (page 202)
The first sign of amateur writing is to write out sound effects. The second is to be inconsistent with your punctuation. An ellipsis has three periods. No more, and no less. This is not that difficult to understand.
John claims to have lived a civilized life, and to have never gotten into any sort of fight before. He even claims that Tor’s groupies should have chosen a Green Beret or a Navy SEAL to team up with Joy.4 He also talks about how much he cares for the people who are hurt or die in vehicular crashes and how oh-so sentimental he is. But here’s the thing: we don’t see any of that! All we’ve seen of John so far is that he is a shameless pervert who has spent the last few years of his life training under a psychopath to kill people. If Rummel really wanted us to empathize with John, he would have shown us that he is allegedly just a big softie, possibly even before getting involved with Tor’s groupies, instead of telling this to us in what comes off as a desperate attempt to get us to like him.
He also thinks about all of the horrible things that could happen to them if they were to be caught. This is the only time that the characters will acknowledge the consequences of their failure. It’s as if they know they’re Sues.
Interestingly, John points out that not even the U.S. government would be willing to help them. In fact, the federal government would arrest them if they knew what they were trying. That is because what John and Joy are doing is basically filibustering,5 which is incredibly illegal. It’s tantamount to forming one’s own private army and taking over the government of a country. This is another thing we should add to their list of crimes. However, John is upset by this fact, because to him, what they’re doing is so clearly right that the government should back them. I am not amused.
If I was going to worry about one thing, why not everything? What about all the other things we planned to do? Would we survive them also? I knew my probabilities. Although the risk of death or some other personal disaster may be the same, when one took into account all the risky things we would do, then the probability was high that we would get creamed. On each toss of a coin, the probability of heads is the same, but in ten or twenty tosses, it is very unlikely that one will get heads for every toss—that we would survive each risk-filled intervention. (page 203)
Keep this in mind when they survive them all. It’s a good thing my Sue-dometer is in repairs right now, because this would break it again.
There is then a cryptic line which suggests that the interventions are not what will do them in. If you were paying attention in an earlier chapter where Rummel revealed ahead of time that Joy will die, you can see where this is going.
And with John trying to console himself, the chapter ends. Rummel really has a knack for drawing this out for as long as possible.
Footnotes
1 I can think of at least three real-life revolutions that were coopted by the powerful to become atrocities in their own right.
2 Clearly security was lax to nonexistent back then.
3 I guess a certain somebody has never seen Back to the Future Part II.
4 Though he’s probably right about that one. I don’t think that a Green Beret or Navy SEAL would tolerate Joy’s behavior.
5 Not stalling in Congress; I mean the other definition of the word.
Taku on 12 February 2013, 21:38 said:
Wait, what? I feel like this should have had more of a focus in the book.
Three shall be the number thou shalt write, and the number of the writing shall be three. Four shalt thou not write, neither write thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.
NeuroticPlatypus on 12 February 2013, 21:49 said:
Actually, some grammarians say to put four dots if it’s the end of a sentence (so, an ellipsis and then a period). I don’t know if that’s what’s being done here or not, and that rule has always confused me anyway.
Brendan Rizzo on 12 February 2013, 21:59 said:
Yes, but the modern consensus is that the ellipsis always has three periods, no matter what. Even if he cut him some slack here, he still has inconsistent hyphen usage.
Pryotra on 12 February 2013, 22:22 said:
You know, the fact that he moans about how sad it is that people are hurt in car accidents is made more amusing/hypocritical when one remembers how Joy likes to try to run people off the road.
I wish they’d be killed in Mexico. People disappeared there all the time. It wouldn’t be unusual.
NeuroticPlatypus on 12 February 2013, 22:36 said:
That is good to know, actually.
I didn’t even notice that. That’s just odd.
Epke on 13 February 2013, 08:34 said:
… Get on with it, Rummel! This stalling is infuriating!
But… wait… the Mexicans succeeded in their revolution: they established their constitution in 1917, so they did manage on their own. Why are Joy and John going to “help” if it won’t alter history?
Er… that’s inconsistent with the first chapter where he’s at the WWC when the planes crash into them, and everything since.
Brendan Rizzo on 13 February 2013, 14:03 said:
The most charitable interpretation is that they want to stop the assassination of Francisco I. Madero and the resultant coup d’état of Victoriano Huerta, after which point all hell broke loose. However, this isn’t perfectly consistent with their later actions.
Also, Rummel may well be of the opinion that Mexico was a de facto dictatorship for many decades afterwards because of political corruption and the fact that the same political party continually won federal elections for about seventy years.
LoneWolf on 13 February 2013, 23:21 said:
I think that Cardenas is probably too leftish for Rummel’s tastes.
LoneWolf on 13 February 2013, 23:25 said:
I wonder if Madero is too leftish for him, too.
Brendan Rizzo on 13 February 2013, 23:51 said:
Oh, Cárdenas would certainly be too left-wing for him. You’ll see his opinion on Madero later.