summary
Jack Forman is an unemployed, stay-at-home dad. His wife, Julia, is the vice president at Xymos, a nanotechnology company. Jack begins to suspect his wife is cheating when she starts acting distant and stays at "work" late. Jack eventually agrees to take his job back at Xymos after his wife gets in a mysterious car accident.
An old friend/co-worker explains to him that they've had nanobots escape from their facility. The bots have collected in a swarm that continually grow out of control. It kills living, moving creatures by suffocating them. Jack sets up a tracker to follow them back to their cave where he finds of Julia and Ricky being controlled by the bots. Jack and his other friend hurry back to the facility and discover that a few of their friends have been killed by the swarm. He drinks an E. coli virus strain that he knows will kill the swarm if they enter him. He releases the virus throughout the facility and the swarm is killed.
An old friend/co-worker explains to him that they've had nanobots escape from their facility. The bots have collected in a swarm that continually grow out of control. It kills living, moving creatures by suffocating them. Jack sets up a tracker to follow them back to their cave where he finds of Julia and Ricky being controlled by the bots. Jack and his other friend hurry back to the facility and discover that a few of their friends have been killed by the swarm. He drinks an E. coli virus strain that he knows will kill the swarm if they enter him. He releases the virus throughout the facility and the swarm is killed.
Themes
Man vs Technology - Crichton has written many books about how humans invent something through technology and then regret it because they were unable to control it.
Selfishness - The team is willing to put lives at stake just because they don't want the company to go bankrupt. Job Expectations - A lot is expected of Julia in her job and she is no longer able to balance her family with work anymore. |
Quote
“If you compressed the history of life on earth into twenty-four hours, then multicellular organisms appeared in the last twelve hours, dinosaurs in the last hour, the earliest men in the last forty seconds, and modern men less than one second ago”(181).
Essay and Quotes
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