I was actually sad that the trap Jakob set in Cherry's mind didn't work -- I wanted to see double agent Erin.
It's still not clear it didn't work, of course - Erin has called Aiken in because she knows she is "fucked up". And there did seem to be some differences between the recall of Erin and Dani of what happened. Regardless, I'd certainly have liked to see Erin more clearly falling under Jakob's spell in that scene.
I do wonder what the plan is here. To use the Zenon girls as a distraction for Adrian? To get them under Astrid's incfluence? To get Amy and Danielle under Astrid's influence? To get Astrid's hands on the crystal that is currently in Danielle's possession, or on the Watch?
Only last night, it appeared to occur to Caitlyn that her next move should be to bring the twins to Astrid (682). Yet here she is the next day engaged in what appears to be quite a complicated plan, of which Astrid is sufficiently aware for a text merely saying "It's on" to be meaningful to her. Maybe Caitlyn is already keeping secrets from her roommate.
Anyway, whatever the plan is, I'm hoping it's going to involve somebody else getting converted sooner rather than later. I suppose 700 is too near to be a realistic hope?
I wonder if Astrid knows anything about the scallops? Somebody stole some of them from the stream room; what if it was her?
Maybe an irrelevant question but: do we recognise Astrid's thumbnail on Caitlyn's phone?
What's it gonna end with, Adrian signing over the harem to Astrid because male tops are cringe?
Adrian seemed to be fairly at home with being something approaching a male top from 676 to 685.
In Gogol's
Diary Of A Madman, the diarist struggles with the thorny issue of the succession in Spain: "It cannot be that there is no King. A kingdom cannot be without a King." (Of course, he comes to the conclusion that
he is that King, but let's brush that aside.) That line often comes into my mind when I'm thinking about the SJI harem. One thing I used to wonder was whether the watch maybe brought with it a similar kind of madness.
Adrian didn't create the harem; the harem created itself. Adrian is its master essentially because Dani said he was. And we really don't know -
really - who Dani is. And more importantly, we don't know to what extent she was free of Jakob's influence by the time this story started - or indeed how free she is now. (Which is what made her appearance as Erin's saviour in Cherry's mind so intriguing.)
We now have Adrian seeming a little more comfortable simply directing his women about - Réka's visit being an example. But why is he acting this way? Why did he get all buddy-buddy with Julian and take Erin and Dani to heal Cherry with the watch?
Apparently it's a result of Erin going exploring in Miriam's mind and getting sucked into a memory of Jakob, and that in turn infecting Adrian via the mind link. Well, it happens. But it reduces to: he's doing it because Erin made him. And what was Erin actually trying to do in Miriam's mind?
No doubt it was just a coincidence that it was just
that very morning that Adrian had said no when Erin and Dani
wanted to try to heal Cherry using the watch. It does seem somehow though that even when Adrian starts directing things, he's only doing what the women want him to do.
It's as though the harem wants a master more like Jakob, so it is creating one. A kingdom cannot be without a King.
I know it's more the case really that the harem has been poisoned by the Jakob-tainted mind of Miriam ("the anti-Adrian"). (If Jakob planned the trap for Erin in Cherry's mind, then who can say he wasn't capable of planning the conception of a kind-of-half-twin for the son of Patrick and Miel, and planting all kinds of traps in her? You'd have to wonder what lies in Jacqui's backstory in that case though.) But I still wonder.
