The Android, published in August 1997 and written by Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant, is the tenth book in the Animorphs series. It is the third book narrated by Marco and his first book as sole narrator.

Synopsis

Plot

Marco talks Jake into sneaking into an outdoor concert as dogs. While at the concert, they see a flyer for The Sharing and they recognize the person who was handing them out, a kid named Erek King. As Erek pets Marco, he and Jake discover something strange about him, which they later tell the others – Erek has no smell. The next day after school, Marco meets up with Tobias, and they go out flying to spy on Erek. They find him being hassled by some bullies, which he's running away from. As he's running, he trips, sprawls into the street, and hits the side of a bus. For a second, he disappears and in his place something made of metal appears, then Erek reappears as if nothing had happened.

Marco goes home and immediately calls Jake, but instead of Jake, Tom answers the phone. He invites Marco to The Sharing and suggests that Marco bring his dad. Jake arrives and takes the phone, Marco tells him they have to get together right away. After hanging up Marco tries to calm down over the fact that the Yeerks were interested in his dad, and he would not let that happen. The Animorphs later meet up with Ax, who believes that Erek is an android that uses a holographic projection to pass for human. The Animorphs need a morph that has a different sort of vision that could see through the hologram, and Cassie figures out the perfect choice: a wolf spider, which Marco and Ax are chosen to morph.

They fly out towards a lake in the mountains where The Sharing is holding a water-skiing party. Marco and Ax morph to wolf spider, and with their spider eyes they see through Erek's hologram of human skin and clothes and discover that Erek is actually an android. Just then, Marco gets snatched up and eaten by a crow. As he's dying, he thinks of his mother, which gives him the motive to demorph and burst out of the crow. When he finishes morphing back to human, he is discovered by Erek. Erek reveals that he knows Marco is one of the "Andalite bandits" that have been giving Visser Three trouble, and Marco figures this is the end, but Erek tells Marco to bring the others to his house for a meeting of allies, to join together to fight the Yeerks. Marco goes home, where during dinner, his dad tells him about about a new job with the military at a place called Matcom and how before Marco's mom's "death", they had perfect peace and love and how one night, she talked about not being taken away if you stay away from the military. Marco realizes it was then that she became a controller, and why Tom wanted Marco's dad to join The Sharing, the Yeerks wanted him.

The Animorphs arrive at Erek's house, Rachel (in grizzly bear morph) and Tobias stay outside as backup, while Jake, Marco, Cassie, and Ax (in human morph) enter where they meet Erek's dad, and he shows them down to the basement, which starts going down underground like an elevator, to a huge underground park filled with dogs and androids playing together, they meet with Erek and he explains everything, that he and the androids are called the Chee. They were created hundreds of thousands of years ago by a peaceful and highly advance race of dog-like aliens called the Pemalites, and the Chee, which means "friend" in the Pemalite language, were built to be companions, and they all lived together peacefully. But then they were attacked by an alien race called the Howlers. Because the Pemalites were pacifists, they couldn't fight back, and almost all of them were wiped out. The few surviving Pemalites and a few hundred Chee escaped and headed towards Earth, which they hadn't visited in fifty-thousand years, but the Howlers had unleash germ weapons, killing the Pemalites. The Chee couldn't save their creators, so in order to keep part of them alive, they harbored the essence of the Pemalites into an Earth creature much like them- wolves. From that union, the happy-go-lucky domesticated dog was born.

The Chee want to save Earth because humans and dogs depend on each other. Erek tells the Animorphs about how he and some of his friends have infiltrated Yeerk organizations. The Yeerks' technology isn't sufficient to distinguish them from humans, allowing them to easily enter undetected. These Chee have taken in the Yeerks willingly, keeping the parasites captive while providing their own Kandrona rays to it as well as tapping into its memories. When the time comes to return to the Yeerk Pool, they simply project a holographic parasite leaving them. They also learn that the Yeerks are working on a master computer that could infiltrate and rewrite all of the software in Earth's computers, allowing total control of all of Earth's computers. The heart system is a Pemalite crystal, a powerful computer processor that the Yeerks obtained from a Dayang trader, and the crystal could even rewrite the Chee's pacifist programming and allow them to fight. Unfortunately, the crystal is highly guarded by Hork-Bajir, and is in a room of total darkness and wires, the slightest kind of light or touch of the wires would set off the alarms. Marco says he'll do it, because the company his dad is working with is run by the Yeerks, and if they get the crystal, they won't infest him. Now they just need to figure out a way how they can navigate the defenses, and Cassie knows how they can do that: morph into bats.

Marco later gets a call from Erek, saying that the Yeerks are beefing up security and they must strike tonight. They fly out in their owl morphs to the Matcom building, where Marco and Ax (in spider morph) and Jake, Cassie, and Rachel (in cockroach morph) travel through the air ducts and almost get burned in the furnace, but finally get into the room where they demorph and morph into bats. They use echolocation and easily pass the defenses to get to the crystal. Unfortunately, they can't navigate back with the crystal, so they decide to risk it and burst through the door in their battle morphs, setting off the alarms, and alerting many Hork-Bajir and human-Controllers with rifles. Marco sees Erek outside seconds before the fight begins.

They have a violent and bloody battle where the outcome is likely the Animorphs will lose and die. As Marco is starting to die, he still sees Erek outside. Suddenly, he wakes up outside, back in human form, and sees the others are okay. Jake tells Marco he was dead, but Erek gave him an electric shock to restart his heart. Marco sees Erek crying; they explain to Marco that in order to save them, Erek used the crystal to rewrite his programming and he killed all the Controllers. Marco tries to comfort Erek, but Erek couldn't handle living with the memory of the bloodshed because, unlike humans, the Chee never forget. Erek gives Marco the crystal saying he changed his programming back, he will never fight again, but he will help the Animorphs fight the Yeerks, just not with violence. A few days later, Jake and Marco are at the beach throwing a frisbee with Jake's dog, Homer. Marco takes out the crystal from his pocket and wondering what to do with it when Homer and two other dogs snatch it and they take it out into the ocean where it gets dropped and washed away.

Appearances

Protagonists

• Jake
• Rachel
• Tobias
• Cassie
• Marco
• Ax

Supporting Characters

• Erek King (First Appearance)
• Mr. King (First Appearance)
• Peter

Antagonists

• Tom's Yeerk
  • Tom (Body)
• Elite Guard Hork-Bajir-Controllers (Death)
• Various human-Controllers (Death)

Other Characters

• Various Chee (First Appearance)
  • Jenny (Only Appearance)
  • Maria/Chee-Ionos (Only Appearance)
• Homer
• Pemalites (Hologram)

Locations

• California, United States
  • Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic
  • Peter's Residence
  • King Residence (First Appearance)
    • Underground Chee Park (First Appearance)
  • Matcom Corporation Building (Only Appearance)
  • The Gardens (Mentioned)
  • Observatory (Mentioned)

Organizations

• Animorphs
• Yeerk Empire
  • The Sharing
• Matcom Corporation (Only Appearance)

Items

• Dracon beams
• Pemalite crystal (Only Appearance)
• Dome ship (Mentioned)
  • GalaxyTree (Mentioned)

Other Mentions

Characters

• Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul
• Esplin 9466/Visser Three
• Eva
• Walter
• Michelle
• Dan
• Dayang
• Howlers
• Edriss 562

References

• Nine Inch Nails
• Alanis Morissette
• The Offspring
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"
• Spider-Man
• Batman

Major/Highlighted Events

• The Animorphs discover that Marco's old classmate, Erek King, is a Chee, a race of super-advanced androids. In order to fight the Yeerks, Erek asks the Animorphs to retrieve a Pemalite crystal, a supercomputer stored in a heavily guarded Yeerk facility, so that he may remove his violence-prohibiting restrictions and aid them in their combat efforts.
• The Chee are introduced for the first time.
• Marco's father is given a contract at Matcom Corporation, a Yeerk-owned computer firm that coincidentally is where the Pemalite crystal is being analyzed and stored. Marco discovers that Tom, on the Yeerks' behalf, is attempting to have his father infested, which prompts Marco to transition from his usual sardonic personality into a rage-filled demeanor.
• Marco's father discloses to Marco that his mother and he often fought when they were younger, but at some point, she stopped engaging in any domestic scuffles, which Marco's father chalked up to them having found a rare strain of pure peace and love. Marco, however, is aghast when he realizes it is because his mother was infested, making him realize that not only did his father's marital relationship become more satisfying after his mother became a Controller, but that his mother had been a Controller for quite some time prior to her faked death.
• The Animorphs successfully steal the Pemalite crystal and engage in their second outnumbered fight against numerous Hork-Bajir-Controllers, following their first serious combat situation in The Stranger. During the fight, Marco, in his gorilla morph, is disemboweled, brutally beaten with both sharp and blunt instruments, and is eventually stabbed in the heart. Marco succumbs to his injuries, although before he dies, he manages to get the crystal to Erek.
• Using the crystal to remove his restrictions, Erek brutally murders all of the human-Controllers as well over two dozen Hork-Bajir-Controllers. His actions are witnessed by the other Animorphs except Marco, who has died, with the brutality moving Rachel to tears. After committing mass murder, Erek takes the Animorphs to a safe location, managing to resuscitate Marco's heart to bring him back to life, allowing Marco to demorph from his fatal injuries, as well as reattaching Ax's severed arm. Traumatized by his actions, Erek reinstalls his initial programming and offers to help the Animorphs henceforth in a non-violent manner, unable to bring himself to kill again. The Pemalite crystal is then dropped into the ocean.
• Ax reveals that whenever they morph into smaller creatures, their original excess mass is sent to Z-space. However, there is a slight risk that a passing ship, traveling at light speed, would disintegrate their mass. This revelation plays a vital role in The Decision.

Morphs

• Marco's acquisition of the Irish Setter is accredited to this book, although he actually acquired it off-page shortly before the opening chapter.

Trivia

• The cover quote is, "Fear has a new name.... Yeerk."
• The inside front cover quote is, "Along came a spider...."
• This marks the first time that an Animorph is killed, as well as the first time that an Animorph is revived from death.
• Erek King was named after a fan of the same name.

  

  • ANIBASE: "Erek King the Chee was named after Erek King the Animorphs fan. Way back when Animorphs started, the official site held a contest, and the winner got his or her name in an Animorphs book. Erek was the winner. Little did he know that the character named after him would end up being one of the major secondary characters in the Animorphs series!"
• ANIBASE: "The book introduces us to the Chee, and we get to meet some of these amazing androids: Erek King, who appears to be a boy about Marco's age but is really thousands of years old, is the spokesperson for the Chee and is the one who decides to try reprogramming his systems with the Pemalite Crystal. Unfortunately, the reprogramming went perfectly, and Erek effortlessly murdered a whole slew of Controllers -- after which he promptly changed his programming back. Unlike humans, the Chee can never forget and the memory of the bloodshed will be with Erek forever."
• This book features Marco with a new, shorter hair style which keeps throughout the rest of the series.
  • ANIBASE: "Want to know the real reason Marco got a haircut in this book? One day, K.A.'s editior, Tonya Alicia Martin, called K.A. up and said, "We have this really cute Marco model, but he has short hair" -- much shorter than Marco's hair in the books. K.A. agreed to give Marco a trim and had fun having the other characters tease him throughout the book -- and Marco has had short hair ever since."
• Chapman, who was referred to as the assistant principal in the previous books, is referred to as a vice principal in this book.
• Jake mentions criticizing Rachel and Cassie for using morphing for personal reasons, a reference to their rat morph experiment in The Secret.
• Marco refers to Tobias as "Bird-boy", a nickname that he continues to use throughout the series. The nickname was first coined by Tobias himself in The Visitor.
• Marco's father mentions Marco's friend No's computer software for the observatory; this is a callback to the events of The Alien.

Goofs/Inconsistencies

• Erek says the word 'Animorphs' on p111, even though he should not know the word as no one had told him that.

Gallery

"Someone took a picture of me? Not cool. Do you see what I'm wearing? I'm Spandex-boy. Totally not cool." The image gallery for The Android may be viewed here

References