(account deleted) 29 Mar 2014 00:04
I'm neutral voting this one. There are parts of the article that I really like. I enjoyed the skip that you used, and I liked the cleverness of the plan that the protagonist comes up with to identify the host. It's a good use of what I presume is a decent working background in mathematics. So despite my issues, I have no problem seeing this stick on the site.
I do have issues, though. There's parts of this where you should really let your writing do the work of telling the reader what's going on, rather than just flatly telling us. Example:
As Area 19's resident psychiatrist, he felt somewhat shafted by the decision to call her in. He was thus rather eager to prove himself.
I would much rather have seen this bit of information conveyed more through the character's attitude and actions; this approach lends itself, I find, to a richer and more satisfying reading experience.
Mostly, though, I don't care for the wife-husband thing you've got going in this story. Despite the somewhat convoluted reasoning that you gave up front, I still don't buy that they'd have someone so obviously compromised in a position where they might have to essentially kill their spouse, when the consequences of failure would be as high as they are here. The interactions between the two also don't ring especially true to me as a long-term married couple placed in repeated stressful situations. I'm not saying it needs to be overly dramatic, humorless grimdark, but there's a certain lightheartedness underlying the relationship that strikes an odd note in comparison to the situation.
