The Scientist is an idiot-savant
- His theory on sound being taken out of everything by evolution makes no sense, as there's no evolutionary advantage to that, and any creature that was incapable of hearing sound would quickly lose to creatures who retained the ability to hear. He doesn't consider any of his actions consequences, muting his granddaughter for a week, and dooming the protagonist to being trapped in their own delusions. He is able to make the Shuffling system, and the sound dampening system, so he is an expert at developing new technologies, but knows nothing of anything else, so that when he does make a vague remark about sound going away or defending his keep from monsters, he is an arrogant fool who doesn't know what he's talking about.
There are no INKling.
- Our protagonist throughout the book never encounters a single INKling, and is only told by the Scientist, the scientist's granddaughter, and two thugs that they exist. Considering that we find out that unicorns are also fake, there's no reason to believe the INKling are real except as propaganda for the Factory and the delusions of a crazy old man and his naive granddaughter.
All characters in the book admit that they've never seen one, so they're are just perpetuating a myth for their own purposes.
