UnWholly

UnWholly is written in limited third-person, and Chapter 1 is from the perspective of Mason Michael Starkey. Juvies pick up Starkey, a stork, whose legally-obligated adopters decided he should be unwound. As the Juvey-cops pull him out of his adopted parent’s house, Starkey reveals his father’s extramarital affair to his mother.

Starkey’s narrative, like the narratives of other point-of-view characters, is interrupted with intertextual material—in this case, an advertisement for unwinding using Haven Harvest Services.

While in the back of the Juvey-cop car, Starkey envies Connor Lassiter (the protagonist from the first book) and pulls a knife out of his shoe. Once they arrive at the county lockup, Starkey reveals that he has escaped his handcuffs, slashes a Juvey-cop with his knife, and tries to run. A Juvey-cop catches him, but Starkey resists and takes the Juvey-cop’s gun. Only when he shoots the cop does he realize that the ammo is bullets instead of tranquilizers, which is illegal. When another cop appears, Starkey shoots him as well and escapes.

The narrative is interrupted by another advertisement, but this time for NeuroWeave, which is a process of implanting brain cells with knowledge. This implantation process replaces traditional education.  

Starkey changes his appearance and travels from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest, looking for the Anti-Divisional Resistance (ADR). On the street, he and another runaway talk about traps set by Juvies and “parts pirates,” private bounty hunters looking for children to unwind on the black market. After the kid insults storks, Starkey sets him up to be captured by the Juvey-cops.

There is an advertisement for sending teens for unwinding to BigSky Harvest Camp. After this interruption, the narrator reflects on Starkey’s history of theft—he often targeted people who discriminated against storks. The narrator also reflects on Starkey’s history of learning magic tricks and how this helps him take wallets and purses while on the run.

Next, Starkey steals a stun-wallet. This device allows members of the ADR to capture him. Another advertisement crops up, this one by the Neighborhood Watch about reporting AWOLs. Starkey then arrives at his first safe house—a sewer pump station. Starkey is popular there, due to his dramatic escape. He uses his popularity to get the storks more power.

Eventually, the ADR switches up the safe house memberships, moving AWOLs like Starkey to different locations. In each safe house, Starkey gains respect and grows as a leader. One form of secret transportation between houses is putting the teens in coffins with oxygen tanks and loading the coffins on a plane, a method the ADR uses to get Starkey and others to the Graveyard.

At the Graveyard—a collection of decommissioned aircraft in Arizona—Connor Lassiter speaks to the group. Starkey is disappointed by his hero and tries to encourage the crowd towards violence. Connor clarifies their resistance is non-violent. Disheartened, Starkey plots to take over the Graveyard.

Chapter 2 switches to the perspective of Miracolina Roselli. Her parents created her to save her brother’s life with a bone marrow transplant and promised she would become a tithe. Her parents begin to regret this decision as her 13th birthday—the day of her tithing—approaches.

The night before her tithing, the Rosellis watch scenes from Miracolina’s favorite movies. Miracolina chooses to go to school the day of her tithing; classmates and teachers are awkward or cruel. Other tithes that attend her school say goodbye, and she thinks about the tithe (Lev) who became a clapper (a suicide bomber) in negative terms.

After school, her parents cry, and her brother reminisces with her. They recall when she saw the Sistine Chapel. The harvest camp van arrives, and her parents say they’ve changed their minds—they haven’t signed the papers yet. Miracolina insists on being tithed and gets in the van against their wishes.

Her narrative is interrupted by an advertisement for Prop 46, which would reverse a ban on unwinding 17-year-olds.

On the way to Hollow Harvest Camp, the driver picks up another tithe named Timothy. They talk about being scared, he plays a video game, and she listens to music during the trip. In the woods, they encounter another Hollow Harvest Camp van that has been overturned on the side of the road. Masked figures emerge and shoot them with tranquilizers.

There is another advertisement, encouraging people to vote against a prop that would enact a six-month waiting period before teens can be unwound.

Miracolina, blindfolded, regains consciousness, and hears Timothy crying. When their blindfolds are removed, they see Levi Calder, or Lev, the tithe who became a clapper. He tells them they have been rescued. 

Chapter 3 introduces Cam, who is a rewound: He’s just awakened after being constructed completely of body parts from unwound teens. He tries to talk to Roberta, his handler, despite the pain, using metaphors, associations, and images. Roberta helps him find words to express his thoughts. A jumble of memories comes from the dozens of unwound teens that were combined to create him.

The next day, Cam realizes he is in a private house with a large staff by the ocean, and Roberta helps him walk to the balcony. She asks what his name is, and he inadvertently answers Camus when trying to identify objects that are nearby—cam (camera) and moo (milk). Roberta gets excited, so Cam goes along with his name being Camus Composite-Prime, but he prefers Cam Comprix.

This narrative is interrupted with an advertisement for heart nanosurgery, followed by descriptions of Cam’s physical therapy. Roberta visits him and discovers he can speak in more than one language but is still struggling to find words. He begins working on a computer to increase his vocabulary.

After days of being physically and mentally exercised, Cam asks Roberta about his life (he does not know he is rewound yet). When she refuses to answer, he throws dishes and is strapped to his bed by guards. Discovering that he accidentally hit Roberta with a shard, Cam apologizes.

Cam continues to work with his physical therapist and realizes he is covered with scars. Through a series of associations related to Alice in Wonderland, he asks to look in a mirror. Roberta eventually takes him to one. After seeing how he is made of a wide variety of skin tones and hair types, he calls himself a monster.

Roberta begins to tell him about the people who previously had his body parts—athletes, geniuses, artists—the most talented teens they could find. Cam remembers seeing Roberta at his operations. She tells him they have immense financial backing, and he will heal beautifully and become an inspiration.

After an advertisement for a proposition to allow voluntary adult unwinding, Cam has a lucid dream. He walks through a mansion that shows him snippets of the lives of the unwound teens whose parts he has, and voices encourage him to jump and fly off a balcony.

The next day, Cam has lunch with Roberta, and they go back to the computer (a digital tabletop) where he has to identify works of art. On top of the table, he finds a picture of a girl in a wheelchair playing piano, and some part of him remembers her (it turns out to be Risa). Cam becomes obsessed with her.