Cosmic Puppets, Chapter 8

A really short chapter this time (6 pages), but an interesting one all the same. 

Ted and Christopher (I guess I didn’t catch that his first name was Will, the book just keeps calling him Christopher) work on seeing if they can restore the tire iron. Ted tries to use the Spell Remover, and succeeds! The tire iron is restored perfectly, but then Christopher points out that, actually, the Spell Remover failed. Ted was just somehow able to do this on his own. With this in mind, the two set out to see if they can just use whatever ability Ted has to set the town right. 

Okay this is getting really reminiscent to some of the themes brought up in ‘Eye in the Sky’. In that book, there was a pretty persistent issue on how perception shapes reality, and how certain characters (namely those marginalized by 1950’s US society) weren’t quite as gung-ho at the prospect of being able to return to straight-cis-white dude’s “normal” world. I think something similar can be said here. I’m sure Ted “remembers” the town in the same way that I remember my neighborhood from when I was seven (always sunny, houses much bigger and full of kids my age). In either case, though, there’s the problem that still remains over whether what Ted remembers is “real” or not. Also, I find it rather suspicious that Ted’s able to do this in the first place, and that Christopher is so willing to jump on board with this. It all seems a little too suspicious and I don’t think things are going to necessarily end well for Ted here.