I should be writing, but I was thinking about the note on the message board that discussed some of the points about The Power of Two and wanted to share some thoughts of my own.
The woman who posted understood both my characters really well. She said if it wasn't for the neural implants connecting Jake and Cai that she didn't think either one of them would have been able to reach out to each other or anyone else.
She's right.
I'll take it one step further. If Jake had known from the start that Cai was human, he would have held her at a distance, the way he keeps everyone else apart from him. He's buddies with his men, but he definitely allows them to only know so much of him. Only the fact that he thought Cai was inanimate and "safe" allowed him to share his deepest thoughts with her.
Jake and Cai are soul mates, so I wonder what they would have done when they'd met if the implants weren't inserted. (I believe soul mates find each other, but have the choice whether or not to form a relationship in this life.)
My thoughts about this is that Cai would have been totally intimidated by Jake's looks and not been comfortable around him. I think Jake would have been attracted and would have hit on her, but Cai would have missed it. :-) If he persisted, and he might not have if they weren't around each other a lot, he would have run scared when it started to get too deep for him. And that would have been that. Cai's confidence would have been undermined--if she ever trusted his interest in her to begin with.
I wonder if Cai, as she became older, would have managed to acquire enough confidence in herself to reach out to others. Maybe. She did realize in chapter 3 of TPOT that she needed to make an effort to form real friendships. But maybe that realization came because of her connection to Jake. If she didn't have the connection, I don't know if it would have occurred to her to reach out beyond the interweb. I honestly don't have the answers to this because Cai and Jake DO have the implants.
In any case, I found this interesting to think about and very much enjoyed the chance to look at it from a different slant than I had before.
