Plot: 6/9. The story revolved around a disturbing first contact and an unsettling mystery of the reason why the Chid was categorized as forbidden.
In order to mend Wessel’s split body, Ruiger and Brand expected a favor of Chid, a species famous for their racial talent in surgery. But for some unknown reason humanity were forbidden by their authority to contact with those aliens.
One indigene there proposed the medical operation in the remuneration of a sport game with the duo who agreed immediately and perfunctorily for a schemed backtrack on their promise. During their waiting time, humans ambulated in Chid’s bizarrely lurid garden where automated origin-like animals bode ill for the eerie consequence of this treatment:
Wessel came back in time yet with his moveable brain chasing after his decapitated body. No wonder shuddering at the sight of a clambering brain, Ruiger and Brand barged into the medic’s house with guns and self-righteous indignation.
The Chid nevertheless turned this intrusion to advantage by vivisecting them both and making a bet on their pursuit race.
Incapable of catching up with their cliff-bound bodies to keep their body and brain together, their last chance of survival in the vestigial form would be that exotic forest.
Core: 4/9. I always love the first contact. But I would give a higher score if lead characters couldn’t be such gormless boors.
Character: 3/9. I would give a higher score if lead characters couldn’t be such gormless boors since I nonchalantly thought they were asking for trouble and their final doom.
- They made their promise easily with the intention of backtracking on it without properly returning aliens’ favor.
- They visited aliens’ gardens without permission.
- They decided to pumped the alien full of lead upon finding their friend was no longer an integrate organism despite his original condition of an absolute death.