Insurgent Chapter 40

Tris and Christina meet the Erudite who are hiding out at Amity in their dorm room in order to share their Super Amazing Plan of Planitude to save the mysterious Erudite data. I can’t even remember what the plan supposedly is, only that they apparently have one.

Christina and I just finished explaining our plan, which sounded a lot dumber with more than a dozen Erudite staring us down as we talked.

I like to imagine Tris and Christina just basically stood there gurgling because that’s how much sense Tris’ plans usually make.

“Your plan is flawed,” Cara says. She is the first to respond.

“That’s why we came to you,” I say. “So you could tell us how to fix it.”

Translation: I came here so you could think of a plan for me.

“Well, first of all, this important data you want to rescue,” she says.

“Putting it on a disc is a ridiculous idea. Discs just end up breaking or in the wrong person’s hands, like all other physical objects. I suggest you make use of the data network.”

“The…what?”

Is Cara talking about putting the data on the Cloud? I wonder if Erudite stores all of their top secret information on Google Drive.

Insurgent explains the internet:

Cara looks back at me. “Many of the computers in the Erudite compound are set up to access data from the computers in other factions.That’s how it was so easy for Jeanine to run the attack simulation from a Dauntless computer instead of an Erudite one.”

“What?” says Christina. “You mean you can just take a stroll through every faction’s data whenever you want?”

“You can’t ‘take a stroll’ through data,” the young man says. “That’s illogical.”

I’m getting the sense that everyone from Erudite is basically just Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.

Cara suggest that they send the data to all the factions so it can’t be destroyed. She also goes on to say that some of the Good!Erudite will accompany Tris and Christina to help them navigate Erudite headquarters and to provide them with useful spy gadgets.

Gadgets like the Glass Breaking Thingamabob of Distraction:

“It emits a signal that you can’t hear, but that will cause glass to shatter.”

Gadgets like an everyday taser stunner:

Cara grins at him, and explains, “If I touched you with this stunner right now, it would be extremely painful, and then it would disable you. Fernando found that out the hard way yesterday. I made it so that the Amity would have a way of defending themselves without shooting anyone.”

Because I guess tasing is the most peaceful form of violence?

Tris muses over the the fact that her father never told her Erudite could be playful/critique their faction/help her even after she killed one of their brothers. No time for thwarting low and weird expectations, there’s a dumb plan to finish planning now that we’re armed with tasers and glass breakers!

The attack will begin in the afternoon, before it is too dark to see the blue armbands that mark some of the Dauntless as traitors.

Crazy thought, but what if the Dauntless traitors just remove their Evil Awareness Bands? This plan is deeply flawed.

As soon as our plans are finalized, we walk through the orchard to the clearing where the trucks are kept.

That was it?? The plan is just, “We’re going to attack people with blue armbands, aaaaand break!”

Tris and her faction variety pack head to Erudite to enact their vague plan in the Amity trucks.

Johanna hops down from the hood. In the back of the truck she was just sitting on is a stack of crates marked APPLES and FLOUR and CORN. It’s a good thing we only have to fit two people in the back.

Sweet ride, dudes.

I feel calm until we reach the fence. I expect to encounter the same guards who tried to stop us on the way in, but the gate is abandoned, left open. A tremor starts in my chest and spreads to my hands. In the midst of meeting new people and making plans, I forgot that my plan is to walk straight into a battle that could claim my life. Right after I realized that my life was worth living.

Tris: Shit, while I was making the plan I forgot that it was a completely terrible plan that is about as much of a plan as Justin Bieber is a respectable human being.

Does anyone else miss death wish Tris? I do a little bit. At least she didn’t care when her plans were fucking terrible.

No one is attacking them, so the gang figures someone tipped Jeanine off. Tris starts thinking about Erudite informants and gets to thinking about her brother. She asks Fernando (random Erudite #2) if he remembers Caleb.

“Caleb,” Fernando says. “Yes, there was a Caleb in my initiate class. Brilliant, but he was … what’s the colloquial term for it? A suck-up.” He smirks. “There was a bit of a division between initiates. Those who embraced everything Jeanine said and those who didn’t. Obviously I was a member of the latter group. Caleb was a member of the former.”

The chapter ends with a sort of melencholy moment that I like where Tris doesn’t reveal Caleb is her brother. Fernando suggests that Tris shouldn’t judge Caleb too harshly:

“I wouldn’t judge him too harshly,” says Fernando. “Jeanine can be extraordinarily persuasive to those who aren’t naturally suspicious. I have always been naturally suspicious.”

[…]

“Yeah,” I say. “So have I.”

This scene is so nice because Tris doesn’t give us a painfully on the nose explanation for why this is a poignant scene. It’s just a really nice way to highlight how different she’s always been from her brother and how she realizes she didn’t really know him at all.

My question is, is anyone watching Hindsight on VH1? I know I probably lost you at VH1 because you’re skeptical they can ever reclaim the magic that was lost when Rock of Love went off the air, but I really really love this new show. It’s a scripted show! Not another reality show! And there’s 90s songs in it constantly because the main character time travels back to her life in the 90s. It’s so good.