Summary of Prey book 3rd and 4th Quarter

Posted: November 27th, 2013

Summary of Prey book 3^rd and 4^th Quarter

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Summary of Prey book 3^rd and 4^th Quarter

Prey is a book written by Michael Crichton. It was first published in 2002. The book is based on the theme that “things will never turn out the way you think they will”. It is based on a life of the narrator by the name Jack Forman who became unemployed because of revealing some information about his company. Based on the theme, the book unveils change of events in the narrator’s life, which were not expected. He revealed a scandal within the company, which made him to be dismissed unfairly. Jack Forman used to work for a software company as a manager and a programmer. Jack was programming robots to possess the biological processes of a human being. The software company is known as Media Tronics. On the other hand, the wife of Jack is known as Julia. Jack and Julia have three children; a twelve years old girl, eight years old boy and an infant. She works for a billion-dollar nanorobotics company known as Xymos technology.

Julia becomes the sole breadwinner of the family as the husband stays at home taking care of their three children. Jack is surprised because though he was used to working, he finds himself being satisfied with staying at home after losing his job. Julia’s company has developed new products. As a result, she is interested in them and hence she continues to like her job even more. The new technology is based on medical imaging. The company develops technology such that several cameras working together can be inserted into the human body. Each of the camera specks is smaller than one tenth of a billionth of an inch. The size of the camera bit is smaller than a microscopic dust. Hence, Julia is excited because of the technology that is developed by her company.

This technology of where small pieces of machinery are produced is referred to as nanotechnology. The multiple cameras work together because of a program developed by Jack that was based on swarming of bees and hence it is being used by Xymos in their technological development. Because of the increased duties and work, Julia is overworked and this tends to change her personality. Julia tends to become hot-tempered and sometimes make irrational decisions though she used to be a happy woman. She increases her hours at work and hence she is rarely at home with her family. She sometimes does not come home because of work. This raises a lot of concern especially to Jack.

Jack is worried because of the change in Julia and as a result, he becomes suspicious of an affair. This is because of her continued neglect of the family due to taking long hours at work. He is concerned because she used to come home early when he was working. In addition, the change in attitude makes the suspicion by Jack justifiable. This is demonstrated when their infant, Amanda becomes ill but she shows less concern. In fact, she prefers being left with the other children while Jack takes Amanda to hospital. The infant had developed a rash on the entire body, which made him to wail and hence Jack was worried that the baby was in pain. Jack takes the baby for the emergency where tests are carried out to identify the cause of the rash. However, tests are completed but without much success because the disease cannot be identified.

There is a change of events when the baby is taken for MRI. The infant stops crying immediately while the rash also disappears suddenly. It disappears at a fast rate as it had appeared. Jack does not know the cause of the disease but comes to discover later that the illness on Amanda was caused by a new type of shared technological and biological living thing, which is a hazard to life on earth. The technological development is a revelation of what has been happening to Jack’s life. In addition, it indicates the developments in science that resulted from the works of Jack in his development of the software that depicted biological processes of the human being.