“There’s still some human left in you, ain’t there?” she asked, craning her neck to look at the number above the barcode 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.
Reboot by Amy Tintera is a dystopian novel that takes – and heavily subverts – traits from the classic ‘zombie virus’ genre by having the main character herself be a part of the undead. Those who return from the dead (and ‘reboot’, in the book’s own terms) are stronger than normal humans, heal from injuries faster, and process emotions much differently; which leads to living humans seeing them as emotionless monsters. Reboots were once killed for the threat they posed, but now there is far more use for them alive as biological weapons.
The narrative opens up about its themes early on, weaving them into the setup of the world. What is humanity? Is it right to deny freedom to one group if it ensures the safety of the other? Are those in ‘undesirable’ groups only valued when those in power deem them as useful?
By presenting these themes early on, finding your ‘reading for’ as an audience is simple. As a reader, looking at ideas that live in conflict with one another, one is inherently curious about which side is going to ‘win’ out. Even if it’s obvious – of course the ‘Reboots’ are human and deserve their freedom, otherwise this would be a very strange and unsatisfying narrative – you still may find yourself curious about the paths the story will take to pit these ideas against each other. It’s not the result that’s interesting, it’s the conflict. It’s the process of hitting ideas against each other when both sides think they have the right idea of what is best for the world.
Despite the fantastical nature of the story’s premise, the idea of a group of people needing to be controlled and subdued for the safety of the masses is not at all fiction. The atrocities committed during World War II hinged on the masses believing that the Jewish people were liars and cheats, aiming to control the world by pushing all others into poverty. Much of the oppression towards the LGBT community was built upon a belief that those people were inherently predatory and ‘diseased’. Police brutality against people of color is justified with inflated crime statistics to paint the victims as inherently ‘dangerous’. Almost anyone who finds themselves a part of a marginalized group can relate to the idea of being cast out as an ‘other’ who poses a threat to others in a society.
Internalizing oppression is also a heavy theme in this book. The Reboots clearly process emotion differently than their human counterparts, yet instead of being allowed to understand themselves, they are simply taught from the beginning that they are inherently emotionless husks. The protagonist, Wren, fully believes what she has been told about herself, and treats herself as if she is the unfeeling killer that she has been told she was. When she feels, she often scolds herself, insisting she’s not supposed to be like that. And yet, there are times when she lets her true emotions slip through without realizing it, and you know that she’s still human.
“I couldn’t help a smile as she grinned at the target. Maybe the Under-sixties weren’t all hopeless.” – p. 32
Whether Wren believes it or not, she is alive. She is alive, she is human, and she has dreams and desires just like any human does. She tells herself the same thing those who have controlled her did – that she is just a tool, a weapon, an unfeeling machine meant to kill – but repeating a lie doesn’t make it the truth. Her belief in the lies she’s been fed is how she copes with her situation, because if she accepted that she was still human and deserved the same respect and freedoms, then she would have to accept that she was living in a world that was simply not made for her. Even the most talented Reboots are less than the lowest-ranking humans. The guards were content to let Ever tear her to shreds every night, but the second the younger reboot attacked a guard in the cafeteria, he was gunned down without hesitation. By accepting that she is alive, she has to accept that the rest of the world doesn’t care about her life.
That’s hardly a fun realization to have.
This story features a buildup of negative charges, broken up only by small positive ones, building up to where Wren can no longer tolerate it anymore. The final straw is the negative charge of being told that she has to eliminate Callum herself, which causes her to break through her veil of neutrality and embark on a plot to escape the facility. This is the turning point of the novel where Wren accepts herself as an autonomous, living being, and not as just a tool for the government to use. In many ways, this is an incredibly positive development for her. However, this development also opens herself up to a lot more negativity, as her acceptance of the situation became a sort of ‘coping mechanism’ for her. Now she has to face reality with no buffer to protect her.
Now, she has to face the most difficult turning point in her life without any of the walls she put up to keep her safe.
Read the Room 
Are emotions what make you human? Wren seems to think she has no emotions like on page 30, but she expresses emotions several times, even during the early chapters. She actually feels a lot of emotions: pride, amusement, guilt, hurt feelings, and embarrassment about her feelings toward Callum. You mention both, “the idea of a group of people needing to be controlled and subdued for the safety of the masses is not at all fiction” and the connections to World War II. Since Night by Elie Wiesel was our first book, it is hard not to compare the two, although one was factual and the other is fictional. There is the recurring idea of rookie vs. veteran that is in both Night and Reboot. The veterans treat the rookies poorly because, in micro-systems of labor camps and Reboot facilities, everyone was being oppressed. The prisoners created their own hierarchy to maintain a modicum of power. The veterans feel as though they have learned how to navigate the system and take advantage of newer prisoners all under the guise of toughening them up. Wren originally doesn’t mind the self-imposed hierarchy, “The Nineties liked to break ‘em in right away. Considering the speed at which we heal, I saw no problem with the newbies being roughed up a little. Might as well stare toughening them up now” (Tintera 14). By choosing to train Callum number twenty-two, she is giving a lower number a fighting chance at survival and breaking the cycle of abuse.
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Jay, I like how you pointed out that Reboots are told from the beginning that they are emotionless. From the beginning of the story I couldn’t help but think that maybe Reboots aren’t actually emotionless, which of course we learn as the story unfolds. Just how Wren says that there was no rule for the higher numbers to sit with the higher numbers and lower numbers sit with the lower numbers it was just something they did, maybe being emotionless was just something they did. Maybe Reboots could not stand the thought of being away from their homes or families so it was better to just turn everything off and become desensitized to it all. Maybe it was a rule they made up for themselves or was it something that HARC pushed? I remember Wren saying that HARC told her if she screamed she would die. Acting like a child meant death. Disobeying rules meant death. Reboots could not rebel or have fun or show any type of emotion. So maybe Reboots are not emotionless after all. Maybe they are just really good at concealing their emotions because they are terrified of what would happen if they did get caught being emotional.
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