| Idlewild (novel) |
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INTERLUDES The story told in the interludes is set in the middle of the 21st Century . Here, a retrovirus called ''Black Ep'' has rendered all of humanity infertile, and causes people to die. It went undetected by hiding in the human genome itself. Humanity, realizing that the end of the world is imminent, promptly unites in a show of universal brotherhood, but they are too late. However, in the lab of a major German-American genetic research facility, a group of scientists (referred to throughout the interludes as The Southern Gentleman, Blue, and Halfway Jim) are working on a project which may save humanity. The project involves raising ten genetically altered children in virtual reality, since no-one would be left to raise them. To test the efficiency of the software, Halfway Jim uses his masterpiece work, Malachi, a program designed to be as close to a real child as possible, to run through the virtual lives the children will lead. Out of sentimentality, Jim's dying act is to integrate this program, who he names Malachi, into the virtual reality, known as IVR. PLOT "I'm not dead. A dim realization, but an important one, because I should have died." So begins Idlewild. A young man wakes up with no memory of who he is, where he is, or anything about his life and is initially unable to move. He knew only three things-- he was young/male/a student, someone was trying to kill him, and Lazarus was dead. He didn't even know who Lazarus was. "Why was Lazarus dead?" "Because I killed him." After a short period of time, he regains motion, but no memories. Over the next few pages, he was faced with flashing lights, disembodied voices, a cathedral, teddy bears nailed to wooden posts, graveyards, the realization that he was both alone and that his world was impossibly small, and terrifying creatures known as Nightgaunts before meeting with Jasmine, a 'human' who identified him as Halloween. As the book progresses, Halloween realizes where he is. He's in a virtual reality school that his parents had sent him to. Upon completion of the school, each student would receive a scholarship to go through college and a position in a prestigious medical company called Gedaechtnis Corporation. The other students are Mercutio (Adam), Pandora (Naomi), Halloween(Gabriel), Simone, Issac, Lazarus, Vashti, Tyler, Champagne (Charlotte), and Fantasia (Gina). Fan, Merc, Hal, and Ty are considered the "clods" and Simone, Issac, Laz, Vashti, Cham, and Pan are the "pets". Where pets study and follow all of the rules, clods do the opposite. The digital teacher of the school is named Maestro, but the clods call him Mae (Maeshtro) and do not respect or care for him. Each student gets a digital world that they may edit to their liking, which is where their house is and where Halloween first finds himself at the beginning of the book, and a "Nanny". A nanny is a digital being that can help a student with anything they need help with. For example, when Halloween realized that Jasmine was not real, he asked Nanny to bring her back to life (she died in a fight against Fantasia), and Nanny did so. Because of Halloween's suspicions that he may have killed Lazarus, he did not confide in anyone for a long period of time. Mercutio asks Halloween if he'd like some food, and they decide to dine at the Taj Mahal. Mercutio begins to order a steak, but halfway through his order, the entire world freezes up. Merc had triggered a jammer so that he and Hal could escape IVR and they both wake up in their beds in the school. They decided to visit their favorite diner, Twain's, and they enjoy a nice meal before Merc decides to head back to IVR. Halloween, however, choses to call his parents and report that he was dropping out. After a tough time with both his parents and Ellison, the school's headmaster and the man Maestro was modeled after, Halloween is sent back to IVR. Upon request, Halloween goes to visit Simone, who also believes that something happened to Lazarus, but she didn't know what. The school claimed that he had graduated, but Simone and Hal didn't believe that. Hal agrees to help Simone determine what happened to him, so they both travel to Laz's last known IVR location-- his own domain. Hal still believes that he was the one who killed Laz, but he loved Simone and would have done anything for her. However, Simone kept talking about how she loved Laz, because before he had left, they had been going out. Almost a legendary event, like the last supper, Halloween throws a party,the last night spent together in IVR. At a party, Mercutio breaks the rules, which brings the governor program, an entity known as Maestro, to the scene. Using a prepared code, Mercutio breaks the system. With information gathered in the course of his murder investigation, Halloween is able to get out of the broken system, to what he assumes will be the Idlewild IVR Medical Academy in Michigan. Instead, he finds out that his entire life was spent in a pod. The periods of time he spent out of the school were just extended periods of virtual reality. The ten students of the school - five boys and five girls - are divided between five different locations in Europe and America, with one in space, guarding against the possibility of some catastrophe. Halloween and Fantasia break out of their facility, steal a car, and decide to wake up one of their friends, not being able to wake the others due to the distance between the pods. They then go to the site of the Centre Site to release their other friends, which has the real-world address of the virtual school, Idlewild Michigan. There they are attacked by the murderer - Mercutio. They battle and Mercutio dies. Afterwards, Halloween finds Mercutio's online diary. He found out about the true nature of the school a year too early and attepmted to kill the other students. His only remaining message to his classmates was this: "what can I say, I went for the gold and lost, you'd have done the same if you were me." Having shunned the idea of fulfilling what Gedaechtnis wanted them to do,Halloween gives his classmates 24 hours to get out of North America. The book ends with Halloween standing in the woods of North Michigan, angry at the world for robbing him of his illusions, the girl he loved and his two best friends. INTERESTING COINCIDENCES, PUNS, AND SUBTLETIES OF IDLEWILD In the original schoolhouse of IVR, where the students sat is foreshadowing for their positions in the school later on, and their personalities. "Players on a chess board" In the bible Lazarus died, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep", and was brought back to life by Christ. The character Mercutio has significant similarities to his counterpart in Romeo and Juliet. For example, in Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio curses both his friends and enemies when he realizes he is about to die, just as in Idlewild Mercutio goes after both the clods and the pets. A sequel, '' Edenborn '', was published in 2004. It is set 18 years after ''Idlewild'', and shows disagreements between the students as to how to build a better world. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
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