Unwind Rules and Order

There's an arbitrary cutoff for unwinding, and it's eighteen years old. Connor's idea is to run away and hide until then, when he'll be exempt from the procedure.

Oh good—the government has turned babies into a game. It's like an Easter egg hunt, except nobody wants to find anything and there's no sweet giant chocolate rabbit at the end.

This law turns minors into property, which seems egregious. But are real-world laws any different? Think on it a minute—things might not be quite as you assume.

It seems that the rules come at the expense of basic human decency. Even Hannah seems put-upon when she realizes she has to help these children. She's become so conditioned by the society she lives in, despite having beef with it.

This is a pretty awful reason to have a baby, and it doesn't even take into consideration the fact that this baby would probably be later unwound after being storked. Does anyone actually care about anyone in this book?

Here Hayden tells it like it is. As we said when discussing ethics and morality, there are no absolutes. Although now that we think about it, that statement kind of sounds like an absolute in its own right…

The Admiral has replaced governmental laws with his own. He doesn't believe that the solution is total anarchy, but simply to have different rules to abide by.

Connor eventually finds his loophole at the end of the book—an ID he can pass off as his own, one that says he's of legal age. The nurse is sympathetic to his cause because she doesn't question his identity; in fact, become Mullard is her idea. In other words, here we see breaking the rules arguably working for good.

Despite what the law says, it seems that some people are teenagers mentally a lot longer than their age says they are.

Risa may have found a loophole, too, but this is what we call a Pyrrhic victory. They've subverted the laws, but at what cost?