| #28: The Experiment |
Detailed Plot: Ax has acquired a television for use in his scoop, where he lives, and he has developed a taste for commercials and the soap opera The Young and the Restless. Through the TV, he's learning (and, in some cases, misinterpreting) much about human culture. Marco shows up while he's watching with Tobias one day, and he suggests they go buy a TV Guide to help Ax find better programs. But on the way there, they run into Erek, who tells them he thinks they should check out some recent Yeerk activity. The Yeerks have purchased a meatpacking plant and an animal testing lab, and because of their secretiveness, the Chee think these purchases are related. They decide to tell Jake and try to figure out how to investigate this. After explaining to Ax what an animal testing facility is, they fly out to this mysterious place using their bird-of-prey morphs. They see that it's very well protected by a domed force field, so they can't just fly in; they'll have to get in through the guarded security checkpoint, and they figure the best way to do that is to get in inside a truck. Discovering that a shipment of chimps is due the next day, they figure out a plan to get onto the delivery truck, get inside the truck, and morph the chimps. It doesn't go quite as smoothly as they'd been hoping it would, and Ax has trouble getting into the truck because he's quite heavy and doesn't have strong arms, but they manage to get inside. They free the real chimps and take their places in the cages. When they get to the facility, they're given collars and put in a holding room with other chimps, and then Visser Three arrives. Unfortunately Cassie had been in the process of morphing when that happened, so they needed a distraction and Marco comes up with the idea of throwing poop at Visser Three. They manage to draw his attention long enough to stop him from noticing Cassie. But the Visser isn't too happy about getting pelted with poop and orders them all to be killed--all of the chimps, explaining that this was going to get shut down anyway because the other facility had already been successful. After the humans leave to get Taxxons to eat them, the Animorphs morph to escape, and Cassie lets the chimps out of their cages. She doesn't want to leave them behind to be killed, and since she is so determined Rachel actually backs her up, so Jake resigns himself to following what they want to do and they all morph chimps to fight the Taxxons. (They don't want to let on that the actual "Andalite bandits" were there, because when they investigate the meatpacking plant next they don't want the Yeerks to be on their guard.) They stop the Taxxons from eating them by attacking one of them and forcing them to cannibalize the injured Taxxon, and then they scurry on into the lab. They're not able to really herd the chimps to safety, but they do all they can, and escape. Ax finds himself troubled by the treatment non-human animals were receiving in the facility. Next, Tobias and Ax investigate the meatpacking industry and find that there is no force field this time but a Gleet BioFilter keeps every animal out except humans and the bovine animals that are supposed to come through the main gate. They decide they have to acquire the specific animals that are expected (since these ones are tagged), and that some of the team will be riding inside the animals' nostrils as flies since the BioFilter doesn't kill animals inside other animals. At night, Tobias and Ax go to the feedlot where the steer and cows are kept and acquire the specific animals who are on the list for the next day. Rachel has an ear-punching device to use to attach and remove the tags. During the process of acquiring their morphs, though, they have to deal with drunk frat boys who come in to go cow-tipping. Ax ends up having to knock them out. The next day, Tobias and Ax do their morphs only to find out that Ax accidentally acquired a cow, so he has to switch and get a steer morph, and then he uses it. Being that their morphs come from DNA, they are not neutered when they morph, so they are in no way docile and can't stand to have another bull in the same area. Tobias and Ax try to fight each other and Cassie manages to calm them, and also gets their ear tags on. When the Controller farmhands come to take them to the meatpacking plant as scheduled, they notice that they aren't castrated, and so Marco has to go into gorilla morph and knock them out, after which Jake and he steal their clothes and drive the truck, posing as the men. Rachel and Cassie hide inside Tobias's and Ax's noses, as flies. And Marco's driving almost causes a wreck. After getting inside the slaughterhouse gate, Marco and Jake also assume fly morph and hide in Ax's and Tobias's noses. The Controllers who unload them are suspicious when they see bulls instead of steer, but even though they briefly suspect Andalite bandits, they decide it would just be too stupid of an Andalite to morph a steer or bull and walk into a slaughterhouse. Which, of course, is exactly what they're doing. The fly-Animorphs leave the nostrils of Tobias and Ax, leaving them in the dark and unsure of what's going to happen. But then they end up being led into the slaughtering area and Ax is almost shot before Rachel saves him. They run to another area of the slaughterhouse and find the others attacking human-Controllers, but Hork-Bajir are arriving and they are very much outnumbered. Rachel's grizzly bear is formidable, but by the time they fight their way through the enemy and get to the door they were aiming for, they find Visser Three has arrived. Rachel keeps trying to get through the door while the others fight. Ax manages to wire the keypad attached to the door and they get through it, mangling it on the other side to keep the Yeerks out for the time being, but what they find in the room is a bit more frightening. They find humans in cages, in bio-stasis, and they are all labeled as having responded successfully to "Project Obedience." Ax accesses the computer in the room and finds that Project Obedience was tested on chimps then applied to humans, and it works well in erasing free will in humans. It's being used at the slaughterhouse to mix it into the food supply and make people unable to resist the invasion. All of the documentation says the formula was one hundred percent effective, but Cassie points out an inconsistency: If that's the case, what are the "successful" experimental humans doing in cages in bio-stasis? She claims it can't be done--you can't turn off human free will--and shortly after that a human-Controller bursts in and threatens the Animorphs. When confronted, he admits that the results were faked, and that he needs to escape with them because Visser Three will kill him anyway when he reveals the falsified records. They had no choice but to lie to the visser because he wouldn't stop demanding results without understanding that his request was impossible. After releasing the caged humans from bio-stasis (and their cages), they ask the scientist whether the formula actually worked on chimps and whether they're sentient. The scientist doesn't know. They leave the slaughterhouse by way of the scientist's instructions, and the next day they discuss how silly their mission was since the Yeerks' plans had failed on their own. Of course, Cassie finds it a victory because they freed chimps and humans. Ax eats a cinnamon bun at the mall, and, inexplicably, some of the others crave hamburgers and eat them, despite having seen firsthand what happens in a slaughterhouse. Narrator: Ax New known controllers:
New morphs acquired:
Cassie: Chimpanzee Marco: Chimpanzee Rachel: Chimpanzee Ax: Chimpanzee, cow, steer Tobias: Chimpanzee, steer Notable: This book is ghostwritten by Amy Garvey. Ax has a photo of a cinnamon bun in his scoop. Bodily functions aren't discussed very often in the Animorphs books, despite its being a kids' series (which usually tempts authors into making gross-out jokes). Every once in a while Animorphs involves bird poop or something like that, but in this book we have the Animorphs throwing monkey poop as a weapon while in chimpanzee form, as well as another mention of a real chimp peeing. A rather odd first, but a first all the same. If part of their plan rested on becoming specific animals--to the point where they tagged themselves to specifically replace those animals--it seems unlikely that Ax would accidentally acquire a cow first, then not have to seek out a particular steer to become. It seems sloppy. Especially since they could have just all hidden inside cows' noses in fly morph if that's what most of them were going to do. Having two of them in the morphs of animals that could easily get slaughtered in that environment seems so pointlessly dangerous that it reads like it was a situation deliberately created to induce suspense. Despite their moral objections to morphing sentient creatures, it seems Jake and Marco should have acquired and morphed the Controllers instead of just stealing their clothes. If they wanted the mission to go without a hitch, this seems like a risk they should have taken. The group elects Marco to drive the truck "because he has experience." The only other experiences he has involved very bad driving and accidents. It seems very impractical to let him drive again. This also causes something else that's pretty much unprecedented so far: Marco mentions being given the finger in response to his driving. Obscene gestures aren't usually referred to in these books. Best lines:
Marco: "Watching a soap, huh?" Ax: Lips form an open hole in the bottom third of a human face. The hole is used for eating and for forming mouth sounds. As well as kissing, spitting, vomiting, and belching. Humans do a great deal with their mouths, most of it rather pointless.
Marco: "How about putting on a shirt?"
Marco: "How about if we just forget all about this and don't tell Jake, and we all go to the mall and see how many cinnamon buns Ax can eat before he explodes?" Ax: And we are not dead yet. If I were dead, I could hardly be expected to be communicating. That was humor. I believe. Ax: Few humans were visible. But we saw a great deal of garbage. Garbage is an important human product. Ax: "Please make every effort not to drop me!" Ax: According to Marco, this is known as "Gooberville" or "The Middle of Nowhere." The feedlot was at the vague border of the suburbs and Gooberville. Slaughterhouse Controller: "I think an Andalite could figure out how to drive a truck. Besides, even an Andalite isn't stupid enough to morph a steer or even a bull and walk into a slaughterhouse. They'd have to be idiots."
|