I just finished reading "Prey" by Micheal Crichton, which takes place in the future. A cloud of nano particles which are micro robots which has escaped from the Nevada laboratory in the desert. Jack, who has just been out of a job due to being fired for discovering an internal scandal. He takes the position as a house husband. His wife, Julia is a very high employee at a nano robotics company called Xymos. He begins to suspect things when Julia starts to act strange; coming come late and possibly lying to him. Jack is offered back his position in the company when an "urgent" arises. He now works in the same company as Julia. Strange enough, he finds out stuff that's being hidden away from him. In this blog post, I'm going to write about Jack's relationships with his family and co-workers.
One of Jack's important relationships is his children. Because he's stay at home dad, he is around them all the time.His children ,which consist of his eldest daughter, Nicole, his son, Eric and his littlest daughter, Amanda. When he leaves for the company, his sister, Ellen, takes care of them. His children do not like her and complain to Jack when he calls home. One thing that shows that he cares about his children is when nearing the end of the story, he is trying to get away from Ricky, who's trying to kill him. He thinks this, "I thought of the kids, waiting for me to come back. I saw them sitting around the table waiting for dinner. And I knew I had to go on no matter what. So I did." This shows that even though his children are very far away form him, he thinks of his children that need him. Because it seems like Julia does not seem to care for her children any more, he has to take good care of them. In my opinion, I think that Jack's relationship with his children gives him hope throughout the story. Without his children, he wouldn't have had the sudden "hope" to fight off the nano-particles.
Another of Jack's relationships is at his job. He develops several kind of connections with his co-workers. One is with Mae who helps him through out the whole thing. She is very suspicious of the whole thing, taking DNA of anything that come sin contact with the nano-particles. Jack and Mae continue to build this relationship when they are on this mission to find out what had happen to their fellow worker, Charley. She helps him find more about the nano-particles than any one else. In addition to being helpful ,she helps him escapes which shows that she does care about his safety, than just finding out what's going on at the company.
These good and well relationships help him stay in the game while many nano-particles are chasing him down. These strong attachments help him build a strong exterior around him, so he doesn't break down while in the process of trying to get rid of the particles. In my opinion I feel like Jack is being really strong in his situation because like the first victim, Charley, he broke down as soon he saw the first swarm of nano-particles.
This book is really well-written because I'm able to understand what's going on even though I'm just an amateur reader. I hope, I hope, this does not happen in the near future, or the future because it can hurt a lot of people.
