Plot: 5/9. I would have rendered a higher score if there had existed more unpredictable suspense, fewer unbearable shifts in perspective, less unnecessary detail, and last but not least, fewer disgusting idiot plots. Therefore, welcome to my blacklist, Alexander Boldizar!
An NYPD officer named Paskalakki wanted to search the protagonist’s bag, an action that the protagonist deemed an illegal request and therefore refused. Paskalakki’s subsequent arrest provoked the protagonist to defend himself by instinct.
So it was too late when he realized that, with the ability of precognition, he directed Paskalakki to injure Gilny’s throat, arranged Gilny to shoot Paskalakki and obtained Gilny’s gun to point at Paskalakki. He treated Gilny and Paskalakki before fleeing.
(Idiot plot: After gaining consciousness, he should have stayed in the train and phoned his lawyer immediately, because he had already gave the brutal police a lesson as well as protected himself from his humiliation.)
Four cops were summoned to deal with Preble. But again Preble used his superpower to let the police went down from each other’s shots. He then handcuffed four policemen and threatened Frank to tell the captain that he didn’t want any other policemen after him used guns.
(Idiot plot: The protagonist should have run as quickly as possible rather than believed that the police would accept his hypocritical suggestion.)
after getting away from the police , the protagonist informed his wife and Fish of the situation at home. According to the felony murder law, the protagonist could be responsible for the possible deaths resulting from the police shooting each other. As the newspaper declared a policeman’s futile rescue from death, Fish estimated Preble’s odds to be about 50-50 for a murder charge and a little worse for assault and manslaughter. Since Jane wanted the protagonist to stay and fight rather than run, the protagonist surrendered himself to the police accompanied by Fish acting as his lawyer.
The captain, Bigman of NSA and the public were dumbfounded at the fact that thirty-seven cops emptied their clips without even hurting the protagonist, and nineteen cops went down so bizarrely that the video looked choreographed beforehand. They all at first saw it as the corruption or incompetence of the cops en masse.
At the police station, Fish blamed the police for the incompetence and protected the protagonist from being interrogated by the police so as to confess against himself accidentally under deep pressure. However, Bigman forced Fish to get out of the room unconstitutionally and interrogated the protagonist about superpower.
(Idiot Plot: The protagonist should have immediately claimed that he would say nothing if his lawyer was absent.)
The protagonist feared that the government would do tests on his son and therefore denied it again and again until Bigman threatened him blatantly with the protagonist’s family.
(Idiot Plot: Is it possible that American agency detained and tortured innocent American citizens? By the way, considering the fact that Bigman believed in supernatural things, the protagonist should have also cursed that Bigman’s relatives—especially his daughter—would suffer the consequences of Bigman’s inhumane and merciless torture on a innocent baby. And he should also have waited for the result of the debate between Crumb and Bigman.)
While Crumb was arguing with Bigman against the idea, the protagonist attacked Crumb, used a guardian’s gunshot at him to break his handcuff, shielded the bullets with a hostage wearing bulletproof vest, and fled from the station. This time he began to shoot the police’s nonlethal body parts directly.
Pretending to be the director of NSA, the protagonist phoned the mayor and asked him to command all the police to back off. Then he asked the field agent to complete the radio silence until Bigman got there. After knocking down some cops, he put on one of their suit and bamboozled an agent that he should go upstairs to deliver another.
(Idiot Plot: If the protagonist really wanted to keep the safety of his family at this time, he should have abandoned his family immediately and obliterated all ties from then on, rather than approaching them and bringing danger to them. Without his approach, the next scene would never happen.)
He subdued all the agents around his home. One agent held a gun to his son’s head and claimed that he would shoot the innocent baby to keep other normal kids safe. On hearing that, the protagonist couldn’t help to annihilate that agent just in front of his son.
The protagonist led his family out of the building. He threw back grenades aimed at his family within the elevator and annihilated agents until her wife’s begged him to stop.
(Idiot Plot: By bringing his whole family along with him, not only did the protagonist put his family at greater risk, but also he decreased his odds of escape. Did he really realise that he was a fugitive now?)
NSA Director Ronald Stone, at the same time, succeeded in persuading the president of United States to believe the protagonist’s was such a big danger that it was necessary to bomb the protagonist’s building and vehicles.
(Idiot Plot: Does the president have the authority to bomb domestic locations containing numerous innocent US citizens nearby without publishing the declaration of a national emergency first? By the way, it was ridiculous that the president acted like a puppet of NSA.)
Bigman consulted neuroscientist Dr. Sweeney on the possible mechanisms behind the protagonist’s superpower. The doctor supposed the protagonist’s abnormal number of thalami and cortical layers might account for his superpower and even made him a new species beyond homo sapiens.
By hijacking vehicles from passersby, the protagonist and his family stole into Canada illegally and settled into their new life at Fish’s old house in Churchill, Manitoba, for a long time.
One day when the protagonist killed a polar bear and skinned it outside, Bigman’s man took the opportunity to abduct his family with a helicopter.
(It’s a bit sexism that the wife couldn’t use a gun to defend herself. What if she had encountered a polar bear alone outside? Would she have just waited helplessly for the rescue?)
He pursued them in a hurry, unaware that he was rapidly losing heat in the cold weather. Shiatie Taget spotted the unconscious protagonist and sent him to the hospital.
Two days later he woke up and was informed that the frostbite had cost him his nose. Rejecting doctors’ advice on cosmetics, he stopped hiding, headed for the south, and decided to initiate a war.
Surprisingly, after losing the sense of smell, he could currently foresee more seconds in the future. He then scraped his tongue off in hope that abandoning the sense of taste could improve his superpower.
Although American helicopters kept dropping missiles on him, he got rid of them successfully and came to an underground laboratory where he bought many prosthetic noses to avoid the facial recognition.
Then he illegally traveled back to New York and sought out Fish for the advice first. Fish, who had been tortured by American agencies for three months previously, was glad to help the protagonist save the family, as long as the protagonist could help him change the world.
The protagonist sneaked into the headquarters of NSA and booked an interview with Bigman using his real name stupidly.
(An Idiot plot was so obvious that even the protagonist himself knew the foolishness.)
He arrived an hour earlier and exposed himself to the security deliberately until, moments later, he threw off them and headed for the helicopter on the top of the building.
However, he ended up catching Stone rather than Bigman. Stone phoned Bigman and White House about the location of the protagonist’s family and all of them refused to answer. The protagonist killed lots of soldiers and broke through the encirclement. Then the protagonist reached for the president for a negotiation. But Bigman ignored the president’s compromised commands so as to let his politburo took charge of America.
As the computer system didn’t permit the protagonist and the president to send nuclear missiles at domestic targets, the protagonist directly aimed them at Beijing and Moscow to threaten them to find his family or destroy Bigman.
Through tough investigation, Russia finally reported that the protagonist’s family might have died in an air accident. Fish pointed a gun at the weeping protagonist, in the hope of impeding the desperate protagonist’s attempt to destroy the human race.
Sensing the formidable future and wishing Fish’s survival at least, the protagonist countermanded his orders. Nevertheless, it was too late. China, America, and Russia bombed each other at last.
Actually, the protagonist’s family had survived at first thanks to his son’s precognition inherited from the protagonist. They were rescued by Taget and began their new life.
Core: 5/9. Both the anti-hero protagonist and the precognition are not uncommon. Despite its irrational solutions two sides facing confronts, what really shrines throughout the context is the logical distrust on the authority.
- Don’t try to be a smart ass in front of police.
- Or better, don’t even get close to the police.
- The American legal system seemed to be one of the most draconian one among modern societies.
- Even you can make the best of everything in every short time, you may still lose everything totally in the long run without a thorough, strategic meditation about the future.
- I don’t think felony murder law is reasonable, because it factors in the accidents or the chances and may insult the real victims of intentional homicides. Besides, it seemed as a convenient excuse to lay the blame for the incompetence and recklessness of the police on the accused.
- Fish’s theory of veiled power about law: The more people believe in law, the more likely extraordinary cases happen. Conversely, the fewer people believed in it, the more likely the authority obeyed it to preserve its legitimacy. It indeed sounds reasonable to me, since doubt is always the only way to discern truth from lies.
- How far is the government allowed to go in the name of the so-called national security? Do the nation or the agencies have the right to do everything illegal—like torturing innocent babies—under that justification? Are there any ways that could protect citizens from their evil hand?
- The violence was the last resort to deal with any problems, because once it begins, you will have to face the possible consequence of the constantly escalating situations.
Character: 5/9.
the protagonist
I would have given a higher score if the protagonist had been more intelligent, less emotional, and less selfish. Why did he insist on bringing his family and forcing his family to suffer as fugitives along with him? Why didn’t the protagonist threaten Bigman with Bigman’s family so as to get back his own family immediately?
What’s more, I was extremely curious why, judging from the context, the protagonist thought or cared more about his son than his wife.
Fish
- favour traditional chess
- a Hungarian
- an anarchist
- a lawyer and law professor
- paranoid
- I thought he had had a plan when he expressed to change the world after delivering a harangue of nonsense, but afterwards it turned out that, as a paranoid anarchist who had been tortured for months, he couldn’t even provide a fake ID for his friend! Disgrace.
Preble Jefferson
- champion in both chess-boxing and bullet chess
- could foresee an unstable window lasting nearly 5 seconds as long as he was not absent-minded or didn’t interact with human heavily
Captain George Crumb
Frank
- captain’s cousin-in-law
Paskalakki
- an officer in NYPD
Gilny
- an officer in NYPD
Jane Jefferson
- Preble’s wife
- I don’t understand why a woman with normal intelligence quotient will find it acceptable that her husband’s job is to gamble at casinos from time to time. Even if she knows her husband’s precognition, it is not a decent way to earn a living: Just imagine how to explain the father’s job to the son.
- By the way, why didn’t the woman fear when her husband suddenly killed agents in front of her and her son, like a cold-blooded monster?
Kasper Jefferson
- Preble’s son
Thaddeus “Thad Bigman” Yagbig
- the arch-enemy of the protagonist
- just a director of NSA
Ronald Stone
- head of NSA
- superior of Bigman and appreciate him