Killing Time by Caleb Carr (Kwesi & Louize). Start Date: July 24, Tuesday

[kwesi 章英狮]

Book: Killing Time by Caleb Carr
Reading Buddies: Kwesi (Moderator) & Louize

Start: July 24, 2012
End: July 31, 2012

Description:

Meet Dr. Gideon Wolfe, expert criminologist of the new millenium. A professor at New York's John Jay University in the year 2023, he lives in an era that has seen plague, a global economic crash, and the 2018 assassination of President Emily Forrester. In this turbulent new world order, Wolfe's life and everything he knows are turned upside down when the widow of a murdered special-effects wizard enters his office.

The widow hands him a silver disc from her husband's safety deposit box, hoping that Wolfe's expertise in history and criminology will compel him to track down her husband's killers. The disc contains footage of President Forrester's assassination, the same video that has been broadcast countless times on TV and over the internet-with one crucial, shocking difference: This version shows that before the video was released, it was altered with sinister special effects.

This explosive discovery will lead Gideon Wolfe on an electrifying journey from a criminal underworld of New York to the jungles of Africa and on a quest to find the truth in an age when all information can be manipulated. With this novel, Carr has boldly established a new genre-future history-combining the best elements of mystery and thrillers with unique historical insight. Breathtakingly suspenseful, Killing Time unfolds as the work of a master novelist.

Reading Plan: (7 Chapters per day)

Day 1 (July 24, 2012): Chapters 1 to 7 - Louize
Day 2 (July 25, 2012): Chapters 8 to 14 - Louize
Day 3 (July 26, 2012): Chapters 15 to 21
Day 4 (July 27, 2012): Chapters 22 to 28
Day 5 (July 28, 2012): Chapters 29 to 35
Day 6 (July 29, 2012): Chapters 36 to 42
Day 7 (July 30, 2012): Chapters 43 to 47

[Louize]

Yay! Thanks Kwesi!!!

[kwesi 章英狮]

Welcome, welcome. I'll check the thread later tonight and I might follow the reading plan since I have to cope with school activities and the F2F this Saturday. Sorry for being slow. Haha.

[Louize]

Day 1 (July 24, 2012): Chapters 1 to 7

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"For it is the greatest truth of our age: information is not knowledge."

Our narrator is the historian and criminologist Dr. Gideon Wolfe. He started his story from a futuristic 2024. He was being pursued; of what, he did not mention yet. He said that he'd best start his story from the beginning...

"Someone must listen, and, even more important, someone must understand..."

Very poetic words, talaga. hehehe The story went back to 2023; when a widow handed him an encrypted disc. He commissioned his best friend's help, Max Jenkins, who in no time uncovered some government secrets. Ensued, Max was murdered; Gideon too, if he didn't have luck with him then.

Adding to the mystery, soon, Gideon found himself in a futuristic aircraft manned by scientists, who happens to be not just national fugitives, but some were also known to be dead. Parang Avengers ang peg ng characters and aircraft! hahahaha

Fast-phased 'yung story. Humorous din, so hindi boring. Very evident dito 'yung pagiging New Yorker ni Caleb Carr, his love of history, and psychology. You can very well relate Gideon's character with Caleb, both are historian.

(hide spoiler)]

[Louize]

Day 2 (July 25, 2012): Chapters 8 to 14

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"Mundus vult decipi" (The world wants to be deceived.)

Gideon's reaction to Larissa's flirtations is cute. It's funny when girls can intimidate a boy that way.

Moving on (well not much), Gideon observed as Larissa decimate their pursuers. Without halting though, they continue to fly until they reached the vast Atlantic ocean, and submerged. I am so deeply horrified by how Gideon described the ocean -filth was everywhere and there are no fish. This revelation shocked him, asking himself, "when did these all happen?"

Apparently despite the advancement of techno-info and internet, the government was able to hide the true state of the environment from the populace. The world had been deceived since it was given access to modern internet. By logging onto the internet, people believed that they are onto a vast system of truth and power. All along they thought that they are changing the world for the better by exchanging information. Little did they know that those information are fabricated truths. OMG, that subject is a lot closer to home, di ba?

Beyond that, something else scares me here. Malcolm (the leader) was very evasive in answering Gideon's questions. This paralytic is giving me the nerves. Why can't he just answer them already? I can sense some enigmatic psychosis coming from his direction. *crossing fingers*
(hide spoiler)]

[Louize]

Day 3 (July 26, 2012): Chapters 15 to 21

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Homo inexpectatus

Events happen that would have looked dystopian years ago but are actually sort of desirable today because, well, of the advanced technologies presented here.

To cut a long story short, the corporate "information technocrats" (Stephen Tressalian) bailed out the U.S. government, and in doing so, bought it. The results were that all legislative initiatives and resources were diverted to the expansion of the said market.

The conspirators go on to tell him that the information age is not about the freeflow of information, but what the "sexless custodians of information technology" approve of. Don't we already live in such a world?

Wolfe accuses of them of conspiracy theory, and they rebut him by saying that their cabal has already accomplished what they're accusing the gatekeepers of the internet of doing; they have pulled off huge deceptions upon the public. Their justification-

Human society is diseased, Doctor— this fatuous, trivial, information-plagued society. And our work?" He stared at the eerie, half-lit sky outside, growing calmer. "With luck, our work will be the antibiotic that spurs society to fight the infection." A nagging doubt seemed to tighten his features. "Assuming, of course, that we don't kill the patient …"

So, the conspirators are vent into using same info manipulations (hoaxes) to counter the governments and alert the public.

Chapters 19-20 were more revealing. Larissa narrated the horrors she and her brother endured from the hands of their parents. I agree with Gideon, you cannot help but feel empathy for the siblings, and agree with their reactions.

The rest of the chapters were a bunch of yada, yada, yada on techy stuffs and weapons.

And, yes, Gideon and Larissa are sleeping together. No shock there.
(hide spoiler)]

[Louize]

Day 4 (July 27, 2012): Chapters 22 to 28

(view spoiler)[
The ship's secret island lair are the St. Kilda archipelago, which are a bunch of cool ex-Scottish North Sea islands containing labs disguised as old ruins. It even contains the aforementioned ozone weapon, which they use to adjust the nearby climate whenever it gets too bad.

Gideon remembered the mysterious footage that Max had found on the disc the widow Price had given him. Larissa and Leon found him puzzling over it and helped him decrypt it. Here the real novel begins, uncovering the awful secret that renders Wolfe's world asunder- with a bit of Hollywood hacking, his friends discover the identity of that hazy silhouette of a figure visiting the Nazi death camps- Stalin.

Slayton and Gideon design a hoax over the next couple of days. For their next trick, they decide to craft the murder of George Washington: the doctors who had bled him to cure his throat infection were in the pay of "businessmen and politicians. Yet all this time, their leader have refused to immerge from seclusion, illness was the main (mummed) speculations among the group.

En route to the US, Leon alerted Malcolm and Gideon with their recent monitoring. Apparently, the Mossad thought the content of Price’s disc was authentic, and there was a fanatic who was unhinged by these false revelations. This fanatic was one of the Mossad’s operative and has a full copy of the false footages of Stalin. Malcolm called a conference, and admitted that he was the one who paid Price to make false footages of Stalin; but never imagined that Price’ will double cross him. Their only course of action is to find this fanatic and eliminate him before he spreads the footage.
(hide spoiler)]

[Louize]

Day 5 (July 28, 2012): Chapters 29 to 35

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“A single sentence will suffice for modern man: He fornicated and read the papers.”

Searching through Price’s Beverly Hills mansion, the group discovered that Price was in communication with Ari Machen, an Israeli film producer. As it turned out, Machen was an arrogant Mossad agent, and mole into Hollywood. Raiding his villa in Bel Air, they’ve interrogated him and extracted the name Dov Eshkol.

The team assembles a profile of Dov Eshkol, who isn't simply a master of disguise, but also a "brilliant researcher" who's collects data by the terabyte and is an excellent forger who defrauded the universal DNA database. He's also a psychopath who mutilated the bodies of his targets and engaged on personal vendettas against neo-Nazis, skinheads, and anti-peace Arab intellectuals. Eshkol's heading for France.

In France however, they discovered that Eshkol moved on. By cross-referencing from other databases, Eshkol’s new destination is Kuala Lumpur, into the Malaysian war. And although Gideon was so against it, Malcolm made an unarguable point that they must go.

After further cross-referencing, they discovered that Eshkol will leave Marseille as Vincent Gabon. All the way to Malaysia, Larissa expertly flew their ship alongside the Airbus carrying Eshkol. But upon arriving in Malaysia as volunteer from “Doctors Without Borders”, they discovered that Eshkol killed his escort after passing through the Allied checkpoints.

This espionage and moral dilemmas are getting exciting! hehehe
(hide spoiler)]

[Louize]

Day 6 (July 29, 2012): Chapters 36 to 42

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"... that destruction perversely but consummately intrigues the eye;"

The team found Eshkol in the hands of General Said, flayed and near death, in a bowling alley. They needed to play a ruse though to get Eshkol and the plutonium weapon out of there. Unfortunately, the ruse turned on them. With Eshkol’s training he was able to escape his captors, kill Leon Tarbell, and get the plutonium weapon back. Then, the fanatic was able to get himself a B-2 bomber.

Following the fanatic probed to be difficult since airborne the group was being followed and bombarded by the Allied forces. Along the way the group thought their quarry had crushed, but it proved that even with their advanced tracking system the bomber’s stealth device was able to mislead them. In no time, Moscow was nothing but scorched earth.

The group had moved on to solitude, and Malcolm went into a physical collapse. After his brief reprieve, Malcolm summoned Gideon. Their meeting turned into a heated argument after Malcolm made his Time Machine revelation -Gideon severing his association with the group and Malcolm dismissing him.
(hide spoiler)]

[Louize]

Day 7 (July 30, 2012): Chapters 43 to 47

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"Perhaps now he has returned the favor by destroying the very concept of Time;"

Gideon made his farewell to the group, but before he went he told the group what Malcolm was planning. He was afraid that Malcolm’s behavior and statements made him question the man’s sanity. But nobody objected to him leaving, not even Larissa whom he left crying.

The next chapters, Gideon related his adventures leading to Africa and Dugumbe’s tribe. He related how he had been eluding the in-coming ship carrying his old comrades; thinking they are coming to kill him.

As it turned out, the group was on his trail to get him back and make sense on how Malcolm disappeared. The biggest surprise was on how the next morning everything has changed. The once polluted Lake Albert is clean and gleaming. The land was teeming with wild (once extinct) animals. Whether Malcolm succeeded with his Time Machine, or he died, one thing was sure –he ended a mad world. (hide spoiler)]