User:Keilana/Extras sandbox

Extras is a young adult science fiction novel written by Scott Westerfeld. The novel was published and released by Simon & Schuster on October 2, 2007, and is a companion book to the The Uglies series. However, Extras differs from its predecessors in that its protagonist is fifteen-year-old Aya Fuse, not earlier protagonist Tally Youngblood. Despite the fact that Youngblood is not the main character, she still appears in the books' later chapters in a major role. The book was received well by critics such as the New York Times's James Hynes.

Plot
The story is set in a major Asian city, most likely in Japan. The city functions with a unique economy, one based on popularity. As each citizen has their own "feed", a place to post (or "kick") gossip and opinions, the more people that pay attention to a person's feed, the higher their "face rank", or popularity ranking.

Aya Fuse, the protagonist, is known as an "Extra" in the city, or a person with a very low face rank. As she is desperate to raise her face rank, she discovers a secret group of adolescent women that use magnetic "hoverboards" to balance on top of mag-lev trains. While in the course of uncovering her story, she meets a boy named Frizz Mizuno, who has had a brain operation to make him unable to lie, leading him to inform her of her apparent attractiveness.

As Aya uncovers the story, she decides to join the group, known as the Sly Girls, in order to better understand it. However, the group abhor fame and are suspicious of those who wish to make them famous. After vehemently denouncing her past as a "kicker", Aya is eventually accepted into the group, temporarily having her private camera, Moggle, disabled at the bottom of a lake.

She joins the Sly Girls on several surfing expeditions, apparently unquestioningly trusted by the group. Aya begins to secretly interview the members, trying to understand their psychology and motivations. On her first train ride, the train stops in the center of a mountain, and the group is startled to see strange, inhuman figures living within the mountain.

On a later trip inside the mountain, the Sly Girls and Aya uncover hundreds of large, metal cylinders containing smart matter. As they venture further inside the mountain, they come upon a mass driver. When they return to the city, Aya visits her brother's friend, a technology genius, who tells her that one cylinder breaking apart could destroy a city. She eventually decides both to tell the Sly Girls and to "kick" the story about the mass drivers along with the Sly Girls.

However, when Aya meets up with the group again, she is informed that the Sly Girls were well aware of what she was planning, and thus send her on a "joy ride" through the mass driver with a homemade parachute. After they land, the Girls vanish. Aya then returns home to kick her story, focusing on the possibility that a city could be destroyed. Within several hours of the story coming out, Aya receives thousands of "pings"&mdash;similar to e-mails&mdash;including one from Tally Youngblood, the most famous person in the city. Because the ping asks Aya, Frizz, her older brother (Hiro) and his friend (Ren) to "run and hide", they make several attempts to escape the flood of cameras, eventually ending up in the most prestigious mansion in the city, Shuffle Mansion, which has camera-repelling security.

After a short wait, Tally and fellow Specials Shay and Fausto find Aya, Hiro, and Ren, taking them to run away from the "inhumans" who built the mass driver.

Tally's ping says to run and hide. After many attempts to "hide", they go to Shuffle Mansion, where it is so secure not even Moggle can go in. Eventually Tally, Shay, and Fausto find them and take them to run away from the "freaks" that have built the mass drivers. These freaks have surgery that make them like monkeys. Although Tally cautions Aya not to, she sends a transmission signal to Moggle. Tally knows about this and boosts it so that the freaks catch them. The lead one identifies himself as Udzir. This was supposed to be a plan to take them down, but Frizz is forced to give them away becase of his radical honesty.

The group runs away, and, after many more adventures, meet up with David. They eventually get to the freaks' base and find a line of missiles. After being caught by the freaks again, Aya is confronted with a reprogrammed version of Moggle, along with Udzir and Andrew Simpson Smith. Aya, Frizz, Ren, and Hiro find that the freaks, who call themselves Extras (capital E) are trying to redirect the popularity expansion to orbit and live there. This way, feet are unncecessary, extra vitamin D absorption is necessary, and normal depth perception is not needed, so the bodies are modeled differently. The mass drivers are going to be used to get the Extras into orbit and the "missiles" are actually ships. This is going to be used so that the population expansion can be redirected into permanent orbital habitats before it is too late. However, Tally is unaware of this and starts destroying the ships. Aya tries to stop her, taking a risk as Tally still has destructive, Special brain wiring. Eventually, she is convinced.

The whole gang goes back to the city to go to Nana Love's Thousand Faces Party, where only the face ranks 1 to 1000 are invited. Udzir is face ranked in the 100s so people joke that he is the only Extra that is not an extra at all. Aya's face rank is now 3. She finds Lai at the party, who has a face rank of 957. She tells Aya that Eden created a smart matter injection that Lai put in the cake, and when it is cut, it will explode so that everyone is covered in cake. Lai tells Aya that this could be a good story for her, and not to tell anyone; she is also joining Udzir to become an Extra. Aya talks to Frizz and finds that he is going to quit Radical Honesty. She sees Tally walking off with David. In the end, Aya goes with Frizz to watch the cake being cut.

Characters
Aya Fuse: The main protagonist of the book. Aya is fifteen years old. Aya originally wanted to use the Sly Girls as an anchor to bring her miserable face rank up, but turned out to save the world in the end. Her face rank went from 451,359 to 3.

Moggle: Aya's hovercam, with artificial intelligence. Aya was forced to lose Moggle in order to join the Sly Girls, but recovered him. He constantly blinds her with his night-lights. She cannot stand being without him, as it makes it somewhat hard to put things on her feeds; for example, Tally informed Aya not to send a transmission signal to Moggle so that the Extras would not see, but she did anyway (this was utilized by Tally as a trap). Moggle was used as a tool for the Extras to convey to Aya the goodness in their actions.

Hiro Fuse: Aya's brother. He was a pretty during the Prettytime but was cured thanks to the mind-rain. Being famous has made him somewhat arrogant, and is still harping about fame.

Frizz Mizuno: A leader of a clique called "Radical Honesty", where the members must have a brain surgery that gets rid of all deception. He becomes Aya's boyfriend. His surgery did not agree somewhat with the story as he was unable to hide anything, and it especially did not agree with Tally. She convinced him that he was not strong enough to tell the truth all the time (he took the surgery because he lied constantly, especially to girls). His Radical Honesty saved the day as a tool to prove to Tally that he was not lying about the Extras. At the end of the story, Frizz decides to give up the clique.

Ren Machino: Hiro's friend who is good with technical things. He installed the mods on Moggle to make him waterproof, able to fly, able to carry Aya, and with artificial intelligence.

Jai/Kai/Lai and the Sly Girls: This clique did crazy things but were forced to keep their face ranks down, otherwise the wardens would catch and stop them. They keep their face ranks down by changing nicknames every so often. Aya joins them and tries to betray them to the public, but realizes that she must do so anyway to save the world. Their original plan was to leave town once Aya kicked her story. However, Lai is seen at the Thousand Faces Party as a recruit to the Extras, and when Aya asks where the others are, Lai replies, "Probably all watching this party on their wallscreens." Their last trick was to have the cake explode at the Thousand Faces Party as soon as it is cut. It is unsure whether this was accomplished as the book ended before this could happen.

Tally Youngblood: The most famous person in the world, the architect of the mind-rain, and the original protagonist of the Uglies trilogy. Tally is almost twenty years old. Still a Special, Tally flocks to Japan when she sees Aya's City Killer story. She is still somewhat destructive thanks to her Special wiring in her brain, and is now having a romantic relationship with David (although she made a reference to Zane; after seeing Aya and Frizz kiss, she said that she disapproves of kissing because the last time she kissed a person, she watched him die).

The Cutters and David: Characters from the Uglies series. The two Cutters seen are Shay and Fausto. David still has his hatred of cities, and is apparently having a relationship with Tally at the end.

The Extras: Are originally thought to be freaks, and were the builders of the mass driver. They were originally shown as antagonists, kidnapping people and hunting Aya down. Aya thought that their original ambition was to destroy the world. Her opinions flickered throughout the book. The Extras were seen walking around in hoverball rigs in a somewhat strange way, building mass drivers and missiles, and having something to do with the expansion. It is revealed that the mass drivers and missiles are actually ways to get into orbit, and the hoverball rigs are used to practice for zero gravity. Even though Tally destroys many of their ships, Aya kicks their story and allows them to get many recruits, which is apparently more valuable than the lost ships.

Links

 * Scott Westerfeld's Official Site
 * Scott Westerfeld's Blog
 * Extras at Amazon.com

Linkfarm for reference purposes

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