Masterminds

“When it comes to fun or comfort, we’ve got it all. We’ve got the stuff adults want too—a great school and great jobs. We’ve got the three Essential Qualities of Serenity citizens—honesty, harmony, and contentment.”

Elis again presents the basics of his community. He seems to be parroting a public relations blurb in this statement about the virtues of Serenity. However, the quote alludes to the level of indoctrination that the boy has experienced. No normal community abides by the three essential qualities he mentions.

“Malik is infuriating. But one of the things we learn in school is that anger is the emotion of a lesser person. So I just smile.”

Amber makes this statement about her least favorite person in the world: Malik. The novel sets the two teens up as polar opposites. However, future books in the trilogy show them united as a pair. In addition, this quote reveals Amber’s sanctimonious behavior early in the novel. She follows the rules without question, hoping to be a role model for less exemplary classmates like Malik.

“‘It was a diamondback, Tina,’ is my father’s response. ‘A little one, too—you know the venom is more concentrated in the very young! What was I supposed to do—get bitten myself?’ ‘If necessary,’ Mom replies readily. ‘You know how valuable he is.’”

Hector recalls an incident when he was three years old and was almost bitten by a snake. Without the proper context, he interprets his mother’s words to mean that he’s her cherished son. Much later in the book, he bitterly reframes this episode as evidence that he’s an irreplaceable lab rat.

“What could this special forbidden information possibly be? I can’t imagine keeping a secret from anyone, much less Amber, my best friend. It’s almost as if seeing it will open a hidden door I never even knew existed.”

Tori has just learned that Randy may have left a secret message for Eli. Like all the clones, she has been conditioned to demand transparent honesty in herself and others. However, this quote reveals the degree to which she’s intrigued by secrets and mysteries. Her choice of the phrase “a hidden door” is more accurate than she realizes. Randy’s note indeed opens a hidden door to the research lab where all the secrets are stored.

“On December 16, 1773, American colonists met with representatives of the British government in Boston to discuss turning the thirteen American colonies into a separate country. Tea was served.”

Eli reads an internet article about the Boston Tea Party. Of course, this is the censored version created especially for the youngsters in Serenity. This version of the event sounds absurd, yet Eli accepts it without question. Soon, a lightning strike shows him what the real internet has to say on the subject of the American Revolution. That lightning strike marks the start of Eli’s own inner revolution.

“Even if we lived in a city, with millions of mothers in it, mine would still be the most annoying. I just want to twist out of her suffocating embrace. But I don’t, because she has a point. I shouldn’t care about Eli, but I do. What choice do I have? In Happy Valley, we’re all basically stuck with each other.”

Unlike Hector’s mother, who is clinical and detached, Malik’s mother is cloying and sentimental. In this passage, she’s trying to tell her son that Eli will recover after his stay in the hospital. As much as Malik likes to distance himself from his surrogate mother and his classmates, he recognizes the uniqueness of his position. The kids in Serenity are unlike youngsters in any other community in the world. Because of their isolation, they have nowhere else to turn.

“I write Feel better, man, but what I really want to say is Be careful, Eli. I don’t like what my father said. And maybe Randy’s not such a wing nut after all. What if I’ve spent so much of my life complaining about how small and boring and one-horse Serenity is that I’ve missed the forest for the trees? This place is messed up, and nobody knows it better than me.”

Malik initially mocked Randy’s letter and dismissed Eli’s doubts. After overhearing his father, the doctor, threatening to make Eli forget everything, however, Malik begins to believe that something is wrong with Serenity. He’s reconsidering his stance in relation to his hometown. Serenity isn’t boring because nothing ever happens. The town’s boring facade was deliberately cultivated to hide crimes. Malik is about to get more excitement than he bargained for.

“There is no feeling quite so lonely as learning you have no one who will always be on your side. It’s the ultimate loneliness because you are exactly that: alone. My sole ally, my only friend, is my mind.”

Eli comes to this disturbing conclusion while in the hospital for the second time. Hammerstrom and Dr. Bruder are trying to feed him medication to make him forget Randy’s letter and the Boston Tea Party. The trust in authority that Eli demonstrated in the early chapters is completely gone. He has yet to forge an alliance with the other clones, which is why he declares himself alone. He’ll soon find that he isn’t.

“‘…one nation under God, indivisible, with unity and gladness for all.’ We’re just finishing the Pledge of Allegiance when Eli walks into the classroom.”

Tori has been worrying about Eli during his second absence from school. In this passage, she rattles off the Serenity version of the Pledge of Allegiance. The words that have been altered are immensely significant. “Unity and gladness” are poor substitutes for “liberty and justice.” The absence of those specific words implies that Hammerstrom’s ideal community offers no room for independence.

“It’s funny—we’ve snuck out, trespassed on factory property, hunkered down like criminals, hidden from the Surety. Yet Malik’s words scare me more than anything else that’s happened tonight. It doesn’t make sense. The risky part is almost over. Why am I suddenly unable to control my runaway breathing? Maybe it’s this: nothing is over. This is just the beginning.”

Eli makes this statement after the clones successfully climb the roof of the factory and Malik says that they must find a way in. They’re still on the roof, but they’ve demonstrated daring and resourcefulness to have come this far. Perhaps Eli feels a sense of foreboding about what they might uncover once they enter the factory. He’s right to be afraid. His life will never be the same again.

“The others didn’t pick me to be part of this group; I had to sneak my way in. But now that I’m here, I’m going to prove that I can get the job done as well as anybody. Even if we don’t understand exactly what that job is supposed to be.”

Hector has always been a bit of an outsider. He states that his parents don’t care much about him. He knows that his classmates laugh at him for tagging along after Malik. His small size makes him a target for Malik’s mockery. However, Hector decides to prove his usefulness. Once the group finally slips into the building, his small size and quick thinking save everyone. Hector’s assessment of his own value is correct.

“On the next screen, where the Times of London is displayed, Terrorist Bombing Rocks Mayfair has been cut. However, Buckingham Palace to Get Spring Cleaning is totally okay. ‘This is how the Pax chooses what to print?’ I whisper in awe. ‘By taking out any bad news?’ Eli nods. ‘They do it to the internet too. No Revolutionary War, just tea.’”

The clones have found a room in the factory where the local newspaper, Pax, extracts stories from around the world. All mention of crime is censored. Eli’s wry observation is an indicator of how Hammerstrom has trivialized a pivotal moment in American history. His motivation for doing so isn’t simply to protect the clones from any mention of violence. He never wants them to consider the notion of rebellion lest they one day want to free themselves from his control.

“‘But we learn about wars too,’ Tori reasons. ‘And crime.’ ‘Only as an example, to show how much better things are here,’ Eli explains. ‘The Boston Tea Party was a rebellion. Think about the Essential Qualities—honesty, harmony, contentment. Nothing about questioning authority, or fighting for your rights.’”

This quote echoes the preceding one. Here, Eli explicitly points out the motivation for the censorship in Serenity. For the clones to question authority or fight for their rights would mean the end of Hammerstrom’s grand experiment. In fact, the third book in the trilogy builds to a rebellion much like the one that the doctor fears.

“Eli’s voice is strangled as he quotes from Randy’s letter. ‘Some of us are special.’ He takes out his iPad and circles the room, meticulously photographing every whiteboard, and the long conference table, which is covered with papers. I don’t feel special. I feel violated, invaded, and extremely creeped out. I feel like I’m some kind of lab rat!”

Hector makes this comment as he takes in the massive amount of data collected about him and the other clones. Throughout the novel, he finds himself isolated from his family and his classmates. Now, he even feels isolated from humanity itself. At many future points, he articulates his feelings of alienation and exclusion. In the novel’s finale, he’s even excluded from escaping with his friends because they think he’s dead. Future books prove this assumption false, but Hector’s sense of alienation remains for a long time.

“I know violence is bad, but I could smack Randy Hardaway. His note has become like a virus spreading among the kids in this town. If it can affect Tori, it can affect anybody. ‘I don’t even know you anymore, Tori. Can’t you see this Randy thing is poisoning everyone?’”

At this point, Amber is still Serenity’s biggest booster. Like pillars of the community everywhere, she finds value in conformity and loves to follow the rules. From her perspective, Randy’s letter is a virus that threatens the status quo. She rejects the notion that he might be right because contemplating such a possibility would change her world. She still likes Serenity too much to want anything to change.

“Project Osiris was never abandoned. Felix Hammerstrom changed his name and went ahead and did it in a place so far off the grid that no one would ever find out about it. Project Osiris is us.”

Eli has just accessed the real internet to search for information on Hammerstrom’s previous experiment before his funding ended. The boy is horrified to realize that his surrogate father has been covering his tracks by creating lie after lie. Rather than an intellectual exercise debating the merits of nature versus nurture, Project Osiris now has personal resonance because it involves the lives of 11 human beings. Eli personalizes the clinical by referring to the experiment as “us.”

“‘I can’t leave my parents,’ Tori barely whispers. ‘We don’t have parents,’ Malik informs her. ‘We have zookeepers.’ It hurts to hear it, even for me. My mom and dad should be the easiest of all to walk away from. But it doesn’t work that way. They’re not our real parents, but they’re the only ones we’ve ever known.”

Hector listens to the others debate when and how to leave Serenity. As always, Malik cuts to the chase in his reductive assessment. He has always felt stifled by his surrogate parents. Conversely, Tori has been cherished by hers. In both cases, the surrogates were highly demonstrative, and Hector once again casts himself as the outsider. In addition, the quote reveals his desire to belong, even among people who don’t want him. This is a key motivator that drives much of his behavior throughout the trilogy.

“My father isn’t a mayor and a principal, he’s a scientist—a mad scientist. And he isn’t even my father. What he really is, I now realize, is the world’s greatest liar—his name, his wife, his town, his plastics factory, his newspaper, our so-called education, where one fact in ten might be true. The longer I think about it, the more lies I see, swirling around me like a fog.”

Eli is registering the number of ways in which Hammerstrom has betrayed him. Aside from the personal repercussions for his clone son, the doctor has built an entire career predicated on lies. Ironically, he studies criminal behavior in others when his very research is a criminal activity of the most insidious kind. He has stolen lives.

“Everything is in perfect order, from my frilly pajamas to my canopy bed. I refuse to look at it. Everything I thought I understood has just been upended. You might as well repeal the law of gravity, too, so I can’t trust that my next step won’t send me hurtling off into space.”

Amber has finally admitted that she’s a clone. This truth is more devastating for her than for any of the others because Serenity was such a good fit for her temperament. The analogy to gravity is apt. Now that her personal reality has been completely overturned, her sense of being grounded in the real world has been destroyed. She feels as if her life is in free fall.

“The amazing part is that her cheerleading doesn’t stop. What’s new is that instead of being for the town, now she’s against it. Suddenly, she hates Happy Valley as much as she loved it before. It almost doesn’t matter how she feels, just how much. Hey, I’m not complaining. I’m with her 100 percent. This might be the first thing we’ve agreed on in thirteen years.”

Malik makes this rueful comment after observing Amber’s about-face. She feels more betrayed than the rest, and her wrath is commensurate with her sense of loss. In addition, this quote shows the alignment that eventually develops between Amber and Malik, who has always been her polar opposite. They’re now united in their hatred of Serenity.

“So, yeah, maybe they love me, but that’s beside the point. They lied to me, all the while claiming that nothing is more important than honesty. I’ve been pumped up with so many lies that when you take them away, there’s nothing left and I’m an empty shell. I’ll never forgive them for that.”

Amber makes this statement as she thinks about leaving her family. Like Tori, she had surrogate parents who mimicked real parental affection quite successfully. However, Amber rightly points out the hypocrisy of preaching honesty while building a world of lies. Having lost her previous identity, she doesn’t yet know how to build a new one. The people who should have been her guides in doing so are her enemies. This is the greatest source of her rage.

“The match ends 4–4. The audience goes wild. In Serenity, we love ties because nobody goes home disappointed. That’s harmony and contentment for you. As for honesty…two out of three ain’t bad.”

Amber observes her final Serenity Day celebration before the clones leave town for good. She previously loved the festivities but now sees them for the facade that they are. She recalls the three Essential Qualities during a day when the entire community comes out in support of those principles. However, Amber can see through the act now and acidly observes that honesty doesn’t exist in Serenity.

“He isn’t my father anymore. Technically, he never was, any more than the United States was created at a real tea party. He thought he could hide the idea of rebellion from us, and in the end, he got more rebellion than he knew what to do with.”

This is Eli’s final comment in the novel on the subject of rebellion. He once again refers to the tea party and the American Revolution in relation to his own dilemma as one of the disenfranchised. Like the colonists who protested taxation without representation, Eli has a right to complain of injustice and is prepared to stage a rebellion to correct that wrong.