With the help of Melanie and Ptonomy, David dives into his memories to learn more about why he is different, but the journey leads to where he doesn’t want to go. Division 3 finds a way to draw David out into the open.
Spoilers for Chapter 2
On the road to nowhere
Picking up right where “Chapter 1” left off, David travels with Melanie Byrd and the others to Summerland, a facility where special people can be safe and learn to harness their gifts. Melanie explains to David the delusions and voices in his head are not a symptom of mental illness, but a side-effect of his abilities as a telepath and telekinetic. At first, David is scared and overwhelmed. He has not taken his meds in several days making the onslaught of voices too much for him. Dr. Byrd helps David to focus his mind by imagining a volume dial he can use to tune out the noise and focus on just one voice.
The next morning Melanie, David, and Ptomomy start with “Memory Work.” Ptomomy has the gift of walking around in people’s memories. Melanie to uses this gift as a tool to help others come to grips with their abilities during her “Talk Works.” In David’s mind, Melanie wants to pinpoint the time when David’s powers first manifested and see his memories thru the lens of someone who is developing powers, not a mental illness. Through this redefinition, he can learn to grow into his abilities and heal.
Memory Lane
The memories they focus on are David’s father reading him a bed time story when he was younger and a therapy session with Dr. Poole, a psychiatrist David was seeing before going to Clockworks. In the childhood memories, David’s parent’s faces are obscured from David, Melanie, and Ptomomy, as if he is repressing them. Both of his parents have passed on and it stands to reason he is suppressing the pain of his loss. The recollections of his mother are light and filled with love as she measures his growth on the wall. Things become more dark when David starts to talk about his father, the astronomer.
The three of them notice young David in the memory and adult David become upset while his father is reading a book The World’s Angriest Boy in the World. The book details a disturbing instance where someone is decapitated and death is referenced quite a bit. The room begins to shake as Melanie thinks this memory might be the first manifestation of his powers. I disagree, but I will get to that later.
The therapy session with Dr. Poole has David recounting the time he made his kitchen explode. David attempts to hide this moment from Ptomomy and Melanie, but they catch glimpses of the display of power. During the therapy session, there is another incident of significance as a closet door begins to slowly open as David and Poole talk. David is obviously terrified of what is hiding in the darkness as Poole tries to reason with his patient that it is just a room. A memory within a memory has David recalling vaporing with Lenny and seeing the Yellow-Eyed blobby man again. Melanie tries to get David to talk to her about this creature he keeps seeing, but he dismisses it as a delusion.
Alone in the Dark
Another service of Summerland is brain mapping by another Cary Loudermilk (the other Karry Loudermilk helped David escape Division 3). Studying how David’s brain works will help with controlling his powers. While in the machine, David begins to hear his sister, Amy, ask for him. Cary leaves David inside the MRI to get Melanie when he observes David’s brain lighting up in strange ways. Using Melanie’s volume dial technique, David tunes into Amy at Clockworks looking for him. The admins at the institution claim there was never a David Haller there, much like they did with Syd when David called looking for her.
With the Division 3’s tracker (known as The Eye) unable to find David after he escaped, the shady government group decide they need bait to lure him out. The Eye captures Amy as she is leaving Clockworks and take her to an undisclosed building. David witnesses this and becomes so frightened he sees the Yellow-Eyed man. His panic is so acute as he tries and fails to exit the MRI, David transports the machine into the woods outside of Summerland.
David decides he has to save his sister, but Syd knows Division 3 is setting up a trap for him. She convinces David to stay and become stronger so he can save Amy without being trapped.
Thoughts and Questions
It’s curious Melanie never uses the word mutant and neither has anyone else. FX has the rights to the word since they are owned by 20th Century Fox, but “mutant” has yet to be said on the show.
I don’t think the memory of the book, Angriest Boy, is where the manifestation of David’s powers began. I think the memory and the book is David’s way of coping with the real instance where David’s abilities started.
I love the “romance of the mind” between David and Syd. Inside Clockworks, it was a coping mechanism for the two lonely people. Now in Summerland, it is something more genuine. It helps they both have seen the world through one another’s eyes.
Syd has also seen the Yellow-Eyed man while possessing David. He works to keep the thing hidden from everyone else and it makes me wonder if he is Mojo, the Shadow King, or a dark secret inside of David.
The Shadow King, or Amahl Farouk, is a being of psychic energy that feeds on the worst of human nature and can possess people. He was spawned by the “first nightmare “of human consciousness at the dawn of humanity.
Till Next Week!
About the author: The Nerdling has an unhealthy obsession with books, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Star Wars. She finds hockey to be the best sport in the world (Go Dallas Stars!) and is working on her first novel, but mostly glowers at a blank screen. You can find her on Twitter @nerdlingstale
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