Adam takes her out of the room.  At first she’s all defiant and shit over…whatever the hell is going on, but then he touches her as he leads her around all of a sudden she’s blushing all over and spouting off extra metaphors, because she just wants so bad to swoon.  No, really.

I have to hold myself upright to keep from falling backward into his arms.

Dafuq is wrong with you, Juliette, because this isn’t something you can blame on a break with reality. 

Adam takes her outside and she just sort of stands there like Pocahontas for a while, reveling in all the outdoorsness and wind and shit.

We’re in a blank space, an empty acre filled with dead leaves and dying trees taking small sips from melted snow in the soil.

It cannot be empty and full of trees at the same time.

It’s even less empty with an armored car in it, which is what they get into next.

There is no public transportation. Everyone knows that cars are now manufactured by only one company and sold at a ridiculous rate.

Very few people are allowed a means of escape.

If the Reestablishment controls everything, where would they escape to?  Space?  And if this is all about having a means to control, then don’t sell the cars.  Having them assigned out to the people who need them offers much more control.

Industrial buildings form the spine of the landscape: tall, rectangular metal boxes stuffed full of machinery. Machinery intended to strengthen the army, to strengthen The Reestablishment, to destroy mass quantities of human civilization.

There’s just no end to how stupid these guys are, is there?

She passes the abandoned homes of yesteryears and mentions that there’s now big newly built compounds where people live now.

Because, yeah, don’t recycle or anything.  Build new shit!  It’s not like that’s ever gone wrong before.  And if it has, we’ll never know, because we’re destroying history.

No more dangerous imaginations, no more prescription medications.

Seriously, how did these guys get into power?

If you want to tell me their evil and supposed to be stupid, fine, but how did they win?

This is the kind of shit you’re more likely to find on a cult compound in the middle of nowhere, because if you tried to sell it to the whole world, we’d all say “no thanks, I’ll take the environmental destruction, you nutters are off your lid.”  So how did this pile of evilulz get into power?

Juliette goes on and on and on and on and on about how bleak and hopeless and terrible everything is as she describes how uniform and unbelieving and crushing the whole world has become.  I have exactly zero fucks to give, because why would I?  It’s too stupid to scare me, too over the top to connect to, so the only thing going on in my head is “well, you guys are fucked, sure glad I don’t live in a reality where this is actually possible.”

They finally arrive at some large building.

All that took an entire chapter.  AN ENTIRE CHAPTER. Of nothing except driving to a new location.

Dirty money is dripping from the walls, a year’s supply of food wasted on marble floors, hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical aid poured into fancy furniture and Persian rugs.

Juliette.  Honey.  You’re an idiot.

The only way this is all “dirty money” is if it was built new.  If it was already there, if they took their fancy furniture and Persian rugs out of the houses no one is living in anymore, then they’re not really taking money and medical aid from people.  The existence of fancy stuff does not mean that people are spending money.  According to you, most of the population is dead now, so there’s lots of unclaimed fancy stuff hanging around.

Or they could be manufacturing new stuff, but if so, then they’re not wasting money.  Why?  Because why the fuck would they have to pay for anything if they’re in charge of literally everything ever?  Who would they buy food from?  Themselves?

So many people must’ve died to sustain this luxury. So many people had to lose their homes and their children and their last 5 dollars in the bank for promises promises promises so many promises to save them from themselves.

Why?  Where is she getting this from?  The idea is supposed to be that the environment is fucked and not making food, not that the government is spending money on rugs instead of corn.  At a certain point, the corn runs out, and then it doesn’t matter how many rugs they do or don’t have.  Why is she carrying on like they’ve gone to war (against no one) to get luxury goods?

If they got rid of all of this, it would just go sit in a landfill somewhere and there still wouldn’t be any more food.

I mean, at least she’s having a reaction, which is more than America could say.  But circumstances matter.  What would have been an issue in The Elite is not an issue here.

Instead, Juliette literally falls to her knees because of all the blood that probably didn’t go into these Persian rugs.  Adam has to pick her up and carry her, and she decides that Persian rugs are just too much and actually asks him to go ahead and kill her.

The world we’ve been shown is so far from supporting this reaction that I just cannot even.

We finally get some clarification on what’s going on.  Adam takes her to a room and says that she’s here so Warner can tempt her and show her the good life in order to convince her to work for him.  Doing what, we still don’t know.  But since she’s still a threat, Adam has to stay in the room with her, even to the point of living there full time.  Because, apparently, there just weren’t any female soldiers who could take this gig?  A guard rotation that could watch her?  Nope, just this one guy she already has a crush on and no one else?

Man, that’s about as unsubtle as the lock-you-in panic rooms in The Elite.

Look what you’ve done to me, too.  Two Elite references in one chapter.

Adam goes in the bathroom, ostensibly to show her “how everything works” so she can get cleaned up and ready for dinner.  But instead he looks about ready to talk to her, which makes sense, the bathroom is the only room without cameras.  Juliette instead thinks he’s about to torture her for some reason.

Every organ in my body falls to the floor.

Not that he needs to; apparently she’s an anatomically correct Mr. Potato Head Doll.

Adam see’s she’s freaking and just leaves instead.

WOW, TWO WHOLE CHAPTERS OF DRIVING AND LOOKING AT A ROOM, WHAT A BLINDING PACE YOU’VE SET, PLOT.