They Always Screamed

They always screamed. My assignment wailed as she slipped in the mud, whipping her head around to see if I was gaining on her. I was. Her feet hit solid pavement and she broke into a full sprint. My feet grazed the ground as I chased her, my short legs easily overtaking her panicked attempt at running. I yanked her arm. She hit the ground. The sound that escaped her mouth was more animal than human as she desperately tried to stand. I hated the screaming. (Tintera, 1) 

Reboot, written by Amy Tintera, brings us to ask the central question: How does one begin to resist a role that you have already submitted to? How does one go from complete willingness to take up the role projected by the text to resist any such projected role to play? Before we discuss how a submissive reader becomes a resistant reader, we must discuss who the narrator is trying to address. Reboot is written from a first person point of view. The protagonist, Wren, is speaking directly to the audience. Who is the audience? What kind of audience is Wren addressing?

“There’s some human left in you, ain’t there?” she asked, craning her neck to look at the number above the bar code on my wrist. She froze. Her eyes flew from the 178 printed on my skin to my face and she let out another shriek. No. There was no human left in me. (Tintera, 2)

Wren does not directly answer her assignment. But she does speak to us readers directly, answering the woman’s question. We are instantly captured by Wren. As she is chasing her assignment, she is chasing her readers. As her assignment is captured, we are captured. Instantly we are called on to play a certain readerly role, also known as interpellation. As readers, we are an audience and we take on these readerly roles. There are four different types of audiences. 

Rabinowitz defines four audiences: actual audience, authorial audience, narrative, and ideal narrative audiences. First, there is the actual audience. It is the only audience which is entirely “real,” and the only one over which the author has no guaranteed control. The actual audience are those who have read similar stories to Reboot. Stories such as Divergent, Hunger Games, and The Maze Runner. I have never read these books but I have seen both the Divergent and the Hunger Games movies. These stories deal with a futuristic and dystopian society. Wren describes Rosa, Texas after the virus, where some of the story takes place: “They were full of holes, though abandoned  after it became clear the sums were nothing but a disease-ridden Reboot breeding ground. Trash piled up on the side of the street and the stench of rotting food and human waste filled the air” (Tintera, 72). Second, the author designs his/her work rhetorically for a specific hypothetical (authorial) audience. The author cannot write without making certain assumptions about his readers’ beliefs, knowledge, and familiarity with conventions. Their artistic choices are based upon these assumptions. Authorial audiences are familiar with science fiction stories. They are also familiar with Amy Tintera and how she writes. They understand the references and clues the author drops throughout the story. 

Third, the narrative audience which possesses particular knowledge that the author already knows and believes. As the narrative audience, we are reading with the narrator in the moment. We trust what the narrator is saying but aren’t afraid to question her from time to time. A part of the book where I remember questioning Wren was on page 13.She says that she realized her life was much better off as a Reboot than it would ever be if she were still human. Also, further in the story she talks about being neglected by her parents and her terrible childhood. No wonder she has become desensitized over time. She has gone through so much. Can we really claim and believe that Reboots feel nothing? This is something I discuss further in the blog. Fourth, the ideal audience is from the narrator’s point of view. Even when the  ideal audience reads about Wren’s childhood, they still believe that she has no feelings and is extremely unhuman because that is what the narrator is telling us. (Rabinowitz, 126-127 & 134). 

The act of calling an actual reader to play a certain readerly role is a kind of interpellation. The narrative audience completely submits to the text and what the narrator is trying to tell her readers. What readerly role did I play when reading Reboot? The role of a Reboot—someone who has no emotion. Reboot by Amy Tintera begins with the main character, Wren, on a mission to secure an assignment.“The lower numbers often cried. The less time dead before the Reboot, the more humanity retained. I was dead for 178 minutes. I didn’t cry” (Tintera, 5). Wren is a high number so she must not have any emotion because only low numbers have emotion, right? As a submissive reader and playing the role of the ideal audience, I accepted that the lower numbered Reboots were more human-like and more emotional, while the higher number Reboots were less human-like with no emotions. Wren gives the audience so many examples of her being less emotional than her fellow, lower-numbered Reboots. “Ever’s pretty Fifty-six face was still crumpled in sadness, and I rolled to stare at the wall, uncomfortable. We’d been roommates four years, since we were thirteen, but I’d never gotten used to the way emotions poured out of her like a human” (Tintera, 8-9). 

“I didn’t have feelings like that. They didn’t exist” (Tintera, 30). Again, Wren is pretty much drilling it into our heads that Reboots, especially higher-number ones, have no emotion. Around page 35, I break from the role of a submissive reader to a resistant reader. “‘Twenty-two.” It was out of my mouth before I could change my mind. A grin spread across his face” (Tintera, 35). Wren chooses Twenty-two, Callum, as her trainee. Wren is known for choosing the highest number of newbies because she is the highest number trainee. She has never trained a low number before. After this, I was no longer submitting to the narrator’s idea that Reboots are emotionless and no longer human. If that was true, Wren would have picked One-twenty-one. From this point in the story, I was resistant to the text. I began to question the narrator. Are Reboots actually emotionless? Does the amount of time a Reboot was dead for really make them more or less human? Are Reboots just playing a role because of what they have known about Reboots before they became one? Is there any humanity left in Reboots?

There are so many questions we begin to ask when we resist the role we were projected to play. Another question we must ask ourselves, who is Wren addressing with her narration? What is the point of this story? I believe Wren is addressing both Reboots and humans. She is addressing society. We know that humans are aware of the Reboots. “‘You’re One-seventy-eight?” he asked, hopping to his feet. Even humans had heard of me” (Tintera, 16). Callum has heard of Wren before. Humans know about Reboots. They are scared of them. They fear them. They want to control them. But Wren, and other reboots, are not monsters. We know this because on the very first page, Wren is bothered by the screaming. She hated the screaming. A monster, machine, robot, would not hesitate to kill or eliminate. Wren addresses Reboots and humans to point out that they are alike even though those in power and control try to separate them and divide the two to meet their own agenda. 

“‘Pull it together,” I said, lowering my voice. “The first time is the hardest. You’ll adapt. “I won’t adapt. I don’t want to turn into some monster who enjoys hunting people’” (Tintera, 83). Wren is trying to convince other Reboots and humans that Reboots are not monsters. They still have emotions, feelings, etc. When Callum calls Wren a monster who enjoys hunting people, she felt pain and felt like she could not breathe. She hates that Callum thinks of her in that way. A “monster” would not care if they were called a monster. They would accept it. It is in their DNA. Wren is not a monster. She does not enjoy hunting people. She has emotions. She has feelings. 

They told me screaming meant death. Acting like I was still a human child meant death. Disobeying orders meant death. And then I was silent. (Tintera, 9)