Discussion of "The Unknown - Chapter 4: Familiar Faces" by sword

Nicely written, sword. I can see you put a lot of work into this chapter and it shows. Your Maribel and Robert reunion is written tenderly and with finesse.
My criticisms come in for the part that's nearly universal in all the chapter 4 entries which I now think of as The Explanation. We've all attempted it, with varying degrees of success. Yours was certainly interesting, turning Hiram, Pete and Robert into agents, connecting the crop dusting with the children, and bringing in the element of chemical toxins and hallucinations.

But you lost me on plausibility in several areas too. 20% of the fatally infected DeKalb County were Agents? 20%? That sounds like thousands, or tens of thousands of Agents in one little County.

Maribel and Robert were both Top Agents and were kept in the dark about each other? Was this standard practice for the DeKalb Agents, that none of them knew each other? Doesn't sound very effective.
Maribel doesn't recognize Pete (whom she greeted regularly for a year as schoolteacher Ms. B.) as Phil the Mailman from DeKalb, Iowa?
You explain why they faked the Robert's and Danya's deaths, but not why they kept it a secret from Maribel for 10 years. (Actually a dozen years, but lots of authors made this mistake, probably because Nash can't count and set Iowa in Summer '97.) When Maribel challenges Robert on this, he evades the question, distracting her with a grown-up Danya. I felt cheated there, but Maribel falls for it.
Despite my nitpicks, your efforts come through, and I think you put together a very decent chapter. Well done!

1. On the 20% figure, we're never told how many people are in these towns, so I've thought of it as all relative, and Maribel herself talks about being assigned to "small" towns:

Chapter 1:
"Why I had been chosen for this task was beyond me. It seemed that my gift of discernment and ability to adapt had caught the attention of someone in authority. And I suppose I had agreed to it as a way of punishing myself for surviving the attack on my own small town so many years ago, while my husband and daughter had not."

Chapter 3:
"A precursory look informed me the seat adjustment was motorized, which removed any hope of me slamming back into his lap. One of the reasons I enjoyed small town assignments was my technological savvy was always more advanced than the locals. The mayor’s new car negated that advantage."

I tried to start out with a low number of infected townsfolk at first so I thought 40% (actually I said over 40%) would be reasonable, and then reduced that number to 20% to represent the Agents. Out of that 20%, some were killed and some where injured, but survived; this is an even smaller number of fatalities.

2. Think of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, both of those two were kept totally secret from the other and it seemed pretty effective on-screen.

3. Maribel doesn't recognize Pete at first because when he speaks, he is in the shadows. She only hears his voice and immediately thinks of Phil because of the stress of the situation. That's why I tried to reveal him slowly ("His legs. His waist. Then his face") and build up to the big reveal. Then after he is fully in the moonlight, she realizes who it is at the same time he tells her; a simultaneous revelation!

4. I wanted to leave some things "unknown" for the last chapter and didn't want to reveal everything, plus, at that point, there had been a lot of explanation and I felt like a lot of time had passed. So I figured I'd better get on with the story and not bore the readers.

5. Time frame: I've actually tried hard to keep up with this element of the story. We're told in Chapter 1:

"It seemed too risky to pull an identity from a place I’d lived. Granted, even I had a hard time keeping track of all my residences – sixteen abodes in a dozen years does that to a person..."

"All my residences" told me that she was saying she'd been an Agent for twelve years total. Okay, then in Chapter 3:

"A hand helped me from the sedan as the mayor let himself out. I looked into eyes I hadn’t seen in more than a decade. 'Robert?'"

The key words I saw were "more than a decade", hence the constant reference to 10+ years. But now that you mention it, I didn't even notice the discrepancy in the previous winning chapter of "more than a decade" and 1997. If the story is set in 2007 instead of 2008, that would be 11 years past (more than a decade), but that would mean Maribel would have been an agent for only one year at this time.

Side note: At first, I couldn't figure out if Ms. B. was an Agent at the time the 1997 scene took place, but then I realized she was when I read the line:

"Phil the mailman delivered a telegram that required my signature. Departmental stuff."

The Departmental reference clearly shows she was and Agent at this time.

I hope this explains my thought processes. Out of curiosity, how did this chapter compare with my last one in the series? It took me two days to write, proofread, and constantly rewrite and revise for story continuity (mine within the chapter and that within the story thus far). I hope my effort shows. If nothing else, that will have been worth it.

Thanks for the comments. Keep 'em coming and I'll try not to give such long answers next time, lol.

P.S. I knew there was something wrong with my 40% and 20%... I wrote the % sign in the chapter before the numbers (%20 & %40)! Funny how you know something's wrong; it's on the tip of your brain, but you can't quite get it! Go figure!

Wow, that was a well-reasoned rebuttal of my nits with accompanying citations. A writer after my own heart. :)
I concede on items 1 and 5, and thanks for pointing out the 10 year/12 year references. Let me address your other points, seriatum:
Item 2: I actually thought of the Smiths when I read that part of your story. But what's missing (or at least what I didn't catch) is why? In the Smiths, they were secret assassins working for different agency. Here they were "top" Agents working for the same agency. No reason is given why they were kept in the dark about each other.
Item 3: I get that Maribel didn't recognize Pete in the scene right away, but I'm still confused. Didn't Pete say he was Phil the mailman too? Didn't Maribel know Phil the mailman from DeKalb? Doesn't Maribel know Pete from her year in the most recent small town? How does she not connect that they are the same person? Further, in your scene the reveal starts like this: "And that's when a voice, a familiar voice from the past, spoke behind us." Pete's voice is familiar to Maribel from a decade ago, but not from that morning, and every other weekday morning for the last year?
Item 4: Leaving stuff for the next chapter is a tricky defense. Not because it's necessarily invalid here, but because it applies to every gap in every chapter. This is my personal feeling, but I think the reveal for Robert's playing dead should be made in chapter 4. But even if it's not, Robert's evasion here seems tactless, and Maribel falling for it makes me lose a little respect for the character. Again, this is completely subjective...just my take on that development.
This chapter was a marked improvement over the last chapter. You clearly did your homework and it shows; there are no discrepancies (at least none that I could see since you've pointed out the 10 year thing) to take away from the flow of the story. You've also done a much better job of moving the plot forward.
I hope you find my comments and nitpicking helpful, but if not feel free to ignore. :)

Dammit. I put together a complete comment and accidentally backspaced my way off the webpage. Pardon if this second take feels abbreviated; I know I've several to go.

I missed Maribel.

Even in the craziest moments (and she's already encountered plenty, what, with being a gunpoint hostage in the midst of a zombie parade), she reserves a fragment of her mind for cognitive plans. Her training prevails to the extent that she can multitask through whatever else is occurring. Felt unnatural when she was reduced to a shambling stutterer. Seeing a decade-old ghost-spouse regain flesh is disconcerting, but I wanted flashes of attempts to retain her sanity, her methodology.

Phil the mailman is Pete the janitor? Kudos for having the balls to be proud of it. Likewise for turning the kids into the bad guys. I'm not sure if I'm sold on either, but I thoroughly respect the go-for-broke approach.

C.H.I.L.D. feels like C.O.N.T.R.O.L., especially with everyone revealing they're an agent. (You'd think they'd cross paths at a Christmas party.) If 20% of the corpses in DeKalb were agents, either it's a sizeable operation based in Iowa (odd home) or it's a mini-op that was unfortunately located for it's biggest sting. I'm a little confused how many the body count entailed, which leaves me cloudy on CHILD's status. If there's a branch/beret dedicated for Infant lives, wouldn't there be a sibling operation for children/youth/adolescents/etc.?

Aw hell, if Maribel was the top woman of the operation in Iowa, wouldn't she be more an insider than she is?

"He waited for me to respond, and when I didn't--I couldn't--he continued further." Accurate assessment.

The death threat was the catalyst that reawakened the hallucinations/sickness?

Wow. You've no qualms about going big. Reintroducing Danya? Impressive. The reveal was huge, but as a hanger/lead-up for the final chapter, I'm not sure if another page wouldn't've benefitted your story. Here she is. This is what's up. And then, the plank for the following author to walk before jumping to the sharks.

Major credit for innovations. Dings for jumps I wasn't able/willing to believe. (3.5)

...and now that I've read the other comments, I'll admit I went to art college. 10, 12, 42, they're all the same number.

Here are the notes I took while reading your entry:
Making Lockley an agent is a fun move. And clever to make his attacking, hostile nature towards her be a façade for the children. I do wonder why he didn’t feel it was safe to explain everything on the car ride, once they were out of town, though.
Okay, I seriously laughed out loud at the return of Phil the mailman, whose name I still think sounds like something off of a preschool television show. I rather like your use of him! However, the twist that Phil the mailman is also Pete the janitor fell a bit flat for me. She was obviously good friends with Pete; how did she fail to recognize him as her old mailman when she immediately recognized his voice when he spoke here?
The sentence starting ‘Grainger, the town you just left’ was a bit convoluted. I had to read it a few times before I could make sense of it. There were a few other awkward sentences here and there, and some punctuation issues. You had a couple of semicolons that should’ve been commas (like after ‘I stood there now, taking it all in’). Ask anyone here – I’m a punctuation nazi.
I’m curious what’s so important in DeKalb county that almost half of its population is made up of agents, even with an active investigation going on. (Since, by your description, almost a quarter of the total population of the county was composed of agents – and that’s just the agents who died. It doesn’t count the agents who survived.)
You gave a clever explanation of the events in DeKalb (fake explosion to get her family out), but it’s somewhat dissatisfying. Why didn’t they leave her in the home and smuggle her out with Robert and Danya? Why was it so important to leave her in the dark and let her believe that her family was dead? Maribel started to ask questions along those lines, but they were brushed aside as ‘details,’ which seemed rather cold. I would’ve decked him for that, myself.
Tidy explanation of the children appearing and disappearing. The idea that the death threat had triggered the chemical in her, however, was a bit of a reach. Why would a verbal death threat cause this physiological reaction of a compound that had been dormant in her system for ten years? If Robert or Pete had said something about the compound being triggered by stress or fear, then it might make sense. As it is, there’s no real solid reason for the threat to make the chemical active.
I really liked how Robert calls her M. It adds a neat personal touch.
Pete’s explanation seemed to jump backwards and forwards in time, which got confusing – especially the line ‘So began phase one of the pullouts in ’97.’ The words ‘so began’ implies that the pullouts were because of what he said last, which in this case, was the foster parents in Grainger currently refusing to give up the kids.
Overall, I give you high points for creativity. Tying in the DeKalb events so closely to the current events was a great idea. However, the concept doesn’t quite work for me. You had two big reveals: one, that the chemicals were much more significant than just a farmer’s quarrel; and two, that Grainger’s big secret is that it’s an experimental foster community to care for orphaned children until blood relatives can be found. Both fall flat. The chemicals, which seemed highly significant at first (many agents were investigating, the makeup of the compound is unknown), became relegated to just back story, explaining why the kids are orphaned and why Ms. B had weird visions. The way the chemicals were introduced to the story seemed to give them a much higher position of importance than they actually took. And the big secret being an experimental foster community is not very strong. What exactly is the experiment – to see if a foster community can work? If so, why does that have to be such a big secret? And what was Ms. B’s purpose there? Why did they have to keep Ms. B’s reunion with Robert a secret from the kids when the parents are the ones causing problems? The suspense and intensity of the previous chapters seems a bit overmuch if the problem is just a bunch of foster parents who decided they want to keep the kids. Like I said, it’s very creative, but it doesn’t quite fit.
I gave it a 3.0.

10+? This is not a a text message. Spell out numbers, please. Ms. B’s breakdown, seemed a little out of character, but it’s hard to say how someone would really react in that situation so kudos for at least letting her show some emotion.

The ensuing ‘explanation’, however, makes me feel like I was just transported into a spoof of this very story:
The Agency sending in a bus and Lockley to take Ms. B to the same destination made no sense. Which you seemed to realize but instead of deleting, you proceeded with an explanation that made less sense, “We sent a bus to take you somewhere and then we were worried that the driver we assigned to take you there might get lost so we sent another guy to take you at gun point just to keep you on your toes.” Not a very efficient transport department.

Pete is Phil. There’s no mention of a disguise. Ms. B recognized the voice instantly in this one instance, but never had before? Never once, was like, “hey, that guy looks familiar,”. I would expect an FBI agent to have better recall.

I quote Nick Danger, “Well, now, the gum’s on the other shoe.”

That is a lot of FBI agents in one county in Iowa. For crop dusting? Then a death threat triggers latent symptoms of a past chemical poisoning? She’s kept away from her family? But for no apparent reason. No one seems concerned about how the crop dust affected civilians. Sucks to be them I guess.

How did I get into this parody and where’s the exit? I give you credit for being gutsy and inventive, but I just couldn’t make it work.

I was really excited to see Danya survive a chapter! It was refreshing to see her, and have Robert portrayed in a relatively positive light! The emotion in the opening was great. I liked the line “his eyes always gave me chills…” It was creepy in a good way.

I was thrown by Lockley being an agent – why he was taking her at gunpoint and all - but your explanation was logical.

However…

She recognizes Phil the mailman’s voice instantly, after over a decade, when she’s talked to him as Pete for a year and not caught on? I like the idea of connecting the two, but have a real hard time buying that she wouldn’t have recognized him sooner.

The whole huge foster family – while it’s an interesting idea, I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that she’s not caught on that every child she’s interacted with has recently lost a parent! And have all been placed in the town within the last year. Wouldn’t she have noticed the new faces?

The bit about the insecticide initially sounded like it was an instant thing, which made me wonder how it applied a decade later. Maybe if you said “Over time ‘it caused a fatal chemical reaction…’”. And while I’m happy to see a logical explanation for the disappearing children, but wonder how the stress of a death-threat (that I’d assume she’d come up against before as an undercover agent) would trigger her symptoms.

So, as much as I loved the idea of having Dayna around, I’m having a hard time believing the main plot of the chapter.