Reading Journal Post # 5
End Chapters
Summary:
Tom ends his date with Lucy and returns home, mulling things over in his head. He has another small epiphany, and realizes that in order to be true to Lucy, he must tell her, and a few other people (Gram, the Police, his neurosurgeon) who he is and what he can do. He realizes that, if he tells Lucy the truth, she might leave him. After all, he has hurt people as iBoy, plotted, lied, and pretended to be a different person on MySpace and flirted with her. He feels like she has every right to leave him, especially after finding out what a freak he is. Tom agonizes over this, but he resolves to do the right thing and reveal all his secrets to the girl of his dreams. He spends most of the night wondering exactly how to 'spill the beans' when, at approximately 2:00 am, there is a knock at his door. His unexpected visitor: Howard Ellman, the ultimate mob boss. And with him are three goons, plus a very confused and frightened Lucy, in her pale nightgown, just dragged out of bed. And one of the most frightening things of all is her new accessory: A goon, Yusef Hashim, has taped his hand to a gun, and a gun to her head. If Tom does anything rash, Hashim pulls the trigger. Howard Ellman smashes a blunt object against Gram's head to stop her from calling the police, and then sits Tom down and begins questioning him about being iBoy and about what he can do with his powers. Tom spills it all, helpless as Lucy is repeatedly threatened and his Gram lies in the kitchen with a massive head injury.
Ellman eventually makes a weighted decision, and forces Tom and Lucy into a couple of cars and drives them to a warehouse to kill them both. On the way, he hints at a past with Tom's dead mother, Georgie, who was killed in a brutal hit-and-run accident while getting off a bus when Tom was only six months old. When they finally get to the warehouse, Tom finds out that the warehouse has no cellular reception, rendering Tom useless. He is forced to watch, strapped to a chair, while Ellman threatens to rape and murder Lucy before his eyes, too far away for Tom to zap him, even if he had access to his powers. Desperate, Tom searches his iBrain for a solution, and presses himself to the limit, finally connecting to a service provider and queuing up calls from all over the world to the cell phones of the goons in the warehouse. He sends them all at once, causing the phones to overheat and explode, debilitating or killing the goons instantly. Howard Ellman's phone explodes in his chest, and he collapses to the floor.
The next part is blurred. The police find Lucy and Tom, and rush all the goons to the hospital. A week passes, and some of Ellman's men have died, some are still in hospital, and Ellman himself mysteriously dissapeared after undergoing emergency surgery, and although hospital staff report he would probably be dead in the next 24 hours, there is always that nagging question in the back of Tom's mind.
Tom is not doing so well. After Howard Ellman told him of his mother's association with the mob, Ellman running her over with a car, and about the possibility of Ellman being Tom's biological father, Tom's world has been flipped again. Gram reveals her daughter's role in the mob, and Tom decides not to tell her the rest of Ellman's associations with their family. Tom ends up on the roof, verging on the egde of depression, flashing back to the iPhone falling through the air at his face, back when he is normal. He sits on the edge of the roof and considers jumping when Lucy appears and vows to kill Tom if he even thinks about commiting suicide, which, Tom points out, is a little contradictory. This makes them both laugh, and Tom decides not to jump after all, and hugs Lucy close.
Analysis:
Tom Harvey is maturing quickly in these last few chapters. In the beginning, we can see that he chooses to possibly sacrifice his newfound romance with Lucy in favor for his being honest with her, because he realizes he can't lie to her any longer. If he had been given more time, it would have been interesting to see exactly how he would have approached the topic with Lucy, without the pressure of the gang members. He also has to mature rapidly to deal with the information Howard Ellman reveals to him, instead of just shutting down. Tom has to face his demons, and he is forced to kill a couple men and severely injure severl others with the intent to kill. Seeing such carnage, let alone being the person responsible, would mature/severely mentally damage anyone, and he has to mature to deal with what he has done, otherwise it would destroy him. In the end, he goes through a great change, and almost commits suicide because of it, but he has become stronger, and has the strength to not take his life, to live with the choices he's made and the things he has done.
Questions to Consider:
How would you react if you found out one of your biological parents was a murderer? What if he/she was responsible for your other parent's death?
Would you disclose this disturbing information to your guardian/anyone else? Why or why not?
Do you think Tom would have jumped if Lucy hadn't shown up?
How could a person change after being held hostage, tortured, and almost killed?
How do you make the decision whether or not to kill someone? What factors play into this?
Reading Journal Post #4
Reading Journal Post #4
Chapters 16 - 20
Summary:
Chapter 16 starts off with Tom in iBoy mode, going back another apartment complex where he causes some mayhem, specifically by setting a car on fire, breaking into a Crow residence, beating up some gang members and tying them up. He also questions a Troy O'Neil on the whereabouts of the supreme gang leader, Howard Ellman. O'Neil doesn't know where he is, so Tom leaves a message for Ellman, also dubbed 'Hellman': "Tell Ellman I'm coming for him.' (161) and goes back to his own apartment and falls asleep.
Over the next approximately ten days, Tom Harvey slips into a dream-like state, and works solely as iBoy, fighting crime, planting evidence, and getting Crows caught by the police. He goads this mysterious 'Hellman' and saves a couple of teenage girls from being abducted by several gang members. He also keeps in contact with Lucy over MySpace, also under the name iBoy. They talk a lot, and have gotten on friendly terms.
After the ten days are up, Tom is Tom again, and he feels as if he has just woken up from a dream. He knows what he has done, but to him it seems odd, almost like it was not him doing it. Which it wasn't; it was all iBoy. After throwing a 'Good Morning' to his Gram, she questions him about a random sum of money, fifteen thousand pounds to be exact, being deposited into her account. She was heavily in debt before this, and when Tom found out, he took one pound from the fifteen thousand richest bank accounts and deposited it anonymously into her account. Gram of course does not realize this; she suspects that Tom is involved in the gangs, and that's where the money have from. Tom denies it and proves to her that he has been 'studying' all this time, and Google's the answer to the questions that Gram asks him. He almost tells her the truth, when the two policemen from the hospital reappear for more questioning. They are searching for the 'superhero' who is attacking the gang members, but they get nothing out of Tom and they leave.
Tom goes to bed, and when he wakes up, he thinks over what he is trying to do. He has no clue about what his ulterior motive is, and he feels sick of all the digital stuff in his head. He is changing, and he doesn't necessarily like the change. He even admits to himself ".... I [am] sick of everything because I just [want] to be normal again....[but] [I'm not] just Tom any more. [I'm] not how I used to be." (199). When he reflects on what he has been doing for the last few days, how he acts when he's iBoy vs when he is Tom, he realizes he's changed more than he's thought. His feelings towards Lucy also complicate things, because he has been talking to her as two different people; iBoy and Tom. He realizes "...I [want] to be normal with Lucy... I [want] to be Tom Harvey with her. Not iBoy, just Tom. I [want] her to be as excited by the real me as she [is] by the fake me who talk[s] to her on MySpace." (199) During this inner realization, Lucy MySpace's iBoy, sounding flirty and bubbly, just like she used to. But "iBoy didn't reply. I wouldn't let him. I [am] Tom... I [am] losing my mind." (200).
Later, spurred by his epiphany, Tom asks Lucy out on a date, assuring her that no one will see them and they won't have to leave the building. Lucy reluctantly agrees, not having been out since the incident, and Tom leads her to a romantic dinner/snack on the roof, with specialty cheese sandwiches and crisps. Lucy kisses Tom, and they are officially a thing.
Analysis:
Here we begin to see a sort of split-personality in the main character. Tom Harvey is mostly Tom, but gradually it seems that iBoy is starting to take over. Tom is still mostly in control, but the feeling of euphoria that he feels when he is iBoy is starting to create a split in the characters within him. For ten whole days we see a lot more of iBoy, and a lot less of Tom. Only with the help of his iMemories, which are videos of his life in his head (recorded through his eyes) does Tom fully remember what happened for that length of time. He also wants to be normal, for Lucy and for himself. He admits to himself "...I [want] to be normal with Lucy... I [want] to be Tom Harvey with her. Not iBoy, just Tom." (199). He also comments "I [am] Tom... I [am] losing my mind." (200).
iBoy is a lot more daring than Tom, and a lot more vengeful too. iBoy doesn't feel any emotions towards the Crows, and only experiences a high euphoria whilst being in iBoy mode. Everything else doesn't matter. iBoy also has a certain cockiness to himself, an overconfidence in his abilities. iBoy also likes Lucy. Tom is almost the exact opposite of that. He is kind and caring and a bit of a wimp, all which he admits freely to himself. He loves Lucy too, but almost seperate from iBoy. Whereas iBoy can say anything he wants, Tom is awkward, and prefers to talk to Lucy face-to-face, where iBoy hides behind a MySpace account.
Questions to Consider:
Do you think Tom/iBoy is doing the right thing by going after the Crows?
"...absolute power corrupts absolutely" ( Lord Acton ). Does this quote have merit here? Is Tom being corrupted by iBoy's powers?
Tom stole money to give to his Gram to settle her debt. Is this the right thing to do? Why or why not?
Reading Journal Post #3
Reading Journal #3
Chapters 12-15
Summary:
At the beginning of the chapter 12, Tom Harvey is now in full iBoy mode, and he starts fighting with the gang members hovering outside Lucy's apartment. He scares most of them off with his powers and goes to throw the last guy out of the window, but Lucy cries out for him to stop. Tom puzzles over this, because the guy in his grasp is one of her rapists, and she knows he violated her, yet she calls for Tom to stop. Tom finds himself referring out loud to Lucy's earlier blog post about how she wanted all of her rapists to suffer and die. Lucy recognizes Tom as the person who messaged her on her Myspace; iBoy. He let's the gang member go and leaves, turns off what he calls his iSkin, and returns to the apartment as Tom Harvey, normal sixteen-year-old, and listens to Lucy gush about what has just happened. After he leaves her apartment, he intercepts her brother Ben and finds out the gang's version of iBoy's attack. They only figure that it was a guy in a hoodie with a taser, because they do not yet know the extent of what/who they are dealing with.
Later on, he returns to his own apartment, and questions his Gram about Howard Ellman, the supposed man in charge of all the organized crime in the city dubbed Crowtown. She reacts oddly, like she has seen a ghost, leaving the original question unanswered and spawning a whole lot more. Tom decides to research Howard Ellman, and he can't find out much of anything, except a single picture in the police database. At the end of chapter 16, Tom remembers Lucy telling him (just after the rape): "They ruined me, Tom. They totally f***ing ruined me." (56/149), and he leaves his apartment with revenge in his heart.
Analysis:
We can see Tom starting to take revenge on the people who raped Lucy, and he is using his superior powers to fight a large group and win. Is this the right thing to do? We also see Tom starting to become for violent and angry, and he shows his loss of control by almost pushing a gang member through a window. Seeing as Lucy lives on one of the top floors of the apartment complex, the Crow would have at least been severely injured, if not killed, by this action. The normal, everyday-teenager Tom Harvey would not have committed this act, if it even crossed his then-normal mind. It seems as though the strange new power in Tom Harvey's head is changing his personality.
Questions to Consider:
Is it a good idea to interfere with the Crows (the local gang)? Why or why not?
What are your opinions on what Tom is doing (i.e. Taking revenge)?
What would you do in Tom's situation?
Chapters 12-15
Summary:
At the beginning of the chapter 12, Tom Harvey is now in full iBoy mode, and he starts fighting with the gang members hovering outside Lucy's apartment. He scares most of them off with his powers and goes to throw the last guy out of the window, but Lucy cries out for him to stop. Tom puzzles over this, because the guy in his grasp is one of her rapists, and she knows he violated her, yet she calls for Tom to stop. Tom finds himself referring out loud to Lucy's earlier blog post about how she wanted all of her rapists to suffer and die. Lucy recognizes Tom as the person who messaged her on her Myspace; iBoy. He let's the gang member go and leaves, turns off what he calls his iSkin, and returns to the apartment as Tom Harvey, normal sixteen-year-old, and listens to Lucy gush about what has just happened. After he leaves her apartment, he intercepts her brother Ben and finds out the gang's version of iBoy's attack. They only figure that it was a guy in a hoodie with a taser, because they do not yet know the extent of what/who they are dealing with.
Later on, he returns to his own apartment, and questions his Gram about Howard Ellman, the supposed man in charge of all the organized crime in the city dubbed Crowtown. She reacts oddly, like she has seen a ghost, leaving the original question unanswered and spawning a whole lot more. Tom decides to research Howard Ellman, and he can't find out much of anything, except a single picture in the police database. At the end of chapter 16, Tom remembers Lucy telling him (just after the rape): "They ruined me, Tom. They totally f***ing ruined me." (56/149), and he leaves his apartment with revenge in his heart.
Analysis:
We can see Tom starting to take revenge on the people who raped Lucy, and he is using his superior powers to fight a large group and win. Is this the right thing to do? We also see Tom starting to become for violent and angry, and he shows his loss of control by almost pushing a gang member through a window. Seeing as Lucy lives on one of the top floors of the apartment complex, the Crow would have at least been severely injured, if not killed, by this action. The normal, everyday-teenager Tom Harvey would not have committed this act, if it even crossed his then-normal mind. It seems as though the strange new power in Tom Harvey's head is changing his personality.
Questions to Consider:
Is it a good idea to interfere with the Crows (the local gang)? Why or why not?
What are your opinions on what Tom is doing (i.e. Taking revenge)?
What would you do in Tom's situation?
Reading Journal Post #2
Reading Journal Post #2
Chapters 7-11
Summary:
After seeing his friend Lucy, Tom Harvey leaves Lucy alone in her mother's bedroom and wanders over into the living room, where her brother Ben is watching TV. There, he questions and threatens Ben. Ben cracks, and tells about how the Crows wanted him to stab some kid, and Ben refused. Since he didn't want to take a knife to an innocent, the Crows decided to pay Ben a little visit. Lucy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Somewhat satisfied, Tom leaves the apartment, before intercepting a call from a few floors down through the iPhone embedded in his brain. A gang member, Jayden Carroll, checks in with his superiors reporting Tom's visitation to Lucy, and his superior tells him to go and threaten Ben. Tom becomes so enraged that he waits by the elevators, tracking Jayden's cell, and he accidentally glances in the steel frame, observing that his skin is glowing and flashing different colors all over, a sort of camouflage so complex that no one could see who he really was. When Jayden arrives, Tom pushes him back into the lift, shocks him (by accident) and threatens him, stating "'If you go anywhere near Lucy or Ben Walker again, I'm going to make you wish you'd never been born.'" (65). When Jayden asks Tom what he is, Tom only responds with "'[Y]our worst nightmare,'" (65).
After this confrontation, Tom goes home, shocked at himself, a person who is usually non-confrontational, and starts to do some research to see exactly what he can do. The possibilities are nearly limitless, and Tom even admits to himself, "I could overdose on information" (75). He hacks into the police database and learns the names of three suspects in Lucy's rape, and also intercepts a video from a Nadia Moore, who filmed the incident. In anger after watching the video, he sends a few texts pretending to be another person to ruin Nadia's relationship with a gang member, Carl Patrick. A little while later, Lucy wrote on her Myspace blog for the first time since the violation, admitting she is lost, confused, and messed up. Tom decides to make a Myspace, and he writes back to Lucy under a code name; iBoy.
The next day, Tom decides to go to the school to ask his friend Davey, a new gang member, some questions. While there, he finds out that Davey was the one who threw the iPhone at him, and that he was there at the break-in. He forces Davey to reveal the names of the kids who violated Lucy, and then leaves the school. Before he leaves, though, he witnesses a relationship spat between four people, the result of the texts he had sent. One of the people was killed by a knife, and Tom Harvey has to deal with the guilt of it being his fault.
At the end of the chapter, Tom goes to visit Lucy, and sees a bunch of Crows tagging her door with derogatory words, and iBoy comes out to fight.
Analysis:
In these chapters, there is a development in Tom's personality. Where before he would shy away from a fight, he now jumps in, unafraid. This is a direct result from the new powers he has discovered, and that with them he feels indestructable and powerful. So the question here is "Is the power going to his head?". When he sees the mobsters outside Lucy's door, he states "..but I didn't care. He wouldn't be smiling for long." (113). This kind of thought would never have crossed the mind of the normal Tom Harvey.
Questions to Consider:
How could a sudden influx of power influence a person?
What would you do in Tom's position?
Chapters 7-11
Summary:
After seeing his friend Lucy, Tom Harvey leaves Lucy alone in her mother's bedroom and wanders over into the living room, where her brother Ben is watching TV. There, he questions and threatens Ben. Ben cracks, and tells about how the Crows wanted him to stab some kid, and Ben refused. Since he didn't want to take a knife to an innocent, the Crows decided to pay Ben a little visit. Lucy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Somewhat satisfied, Tom leaves the apartment, before intercepting a call from a few floors down through the iPhone embedded in his brain. A gang member, Jayden Carroll, checks in with his superiors reporting Tom's visitation to Lucy, and his superior tells him to go and threaten Ben. Tom becomes so enraged that he waits by the elevators, tracking Jayden's cell, and he accidentally glances in the steel frame, observing that his skin is glowing and flashing different colors all over, a sort of camouflage so complex that no one could see who he really was. When Jayden arrives, Tom pushes him back into the lift, shocks him (by accident) and threatens him, stating "'If you go anywhere near Lucy or Ben Walker again, I'm going to make you wish you'd never been born.'" (65). When Jayden asks Tom what he is, Tom only responds with "'[Y]our worst nightmare,'" (65).
After this confrontation, Tom goes home, shocked at himself, a person who is usually non-confrontational, and starts to do some research to see exactly what he can do. The possibilities are nearly limitless, and Tom even admits to himself, "I could overdose on information" (75). He hacks into the police database and learns the names of three suspects in Lucy's rape, and also intercepts a video from a Nadia Moore, who filmed the incident. In anger after watching the video, he sends a few texts pretending to be another person to ruin Nadia's relationship with a gang member, Carl Patrick. A little while later, Lucy wrote on her Myspace blog for the first time since the violation, admitting she is lost, confused, and messed up. Tom decides to make a Myspace, and he writes back to Lucy under a code name; iBoy.
The next day, Tom decides to go to the school to ask his friend Davey, a new gang member, some questions. While there, he finds out that Davey was the one who threw the iPhone at him, and that he was there at the break-in. He forces Davey to reveal the names of the kids who violated Lucy, and then leaves the school. Before he leaves, though, he witnesses a relationship spat between four people, the result of the texts he had sent. One of the people was killed by a knife, and Tom Harvey has to deal with the guilt of it being his fault.
At the end of the chapter, Tom goes to visit Lucy, and sees a bunch of Crows tagging her door with derogatory words, and iBoy comes out to fight.
Analysis:
In these chapters, there is a development in Tom's personality. Where before he would shy away from a fight, he now jumps in, unafraid. This is a direct result from the new powers he has discovered, and that with them he feels indestructable and powerful. So the question here is "Is the power going to his head?". When he sees the mobsters outside Lucy's door, he states "..but I didn't care. He wouldn't be smiling for long." (113). This kind of thought would never have crossed the mind of the normal Tom Harvey.
Questions to Consider:
How could a sudden influx of power influence a person?
What would you do in Tom's position?
Reading Journal Post #1
Reading Journal Post #1
Chapters 2 - 6
Summary:
In Chapters 2 - 6, Tom Harvey wakes up in the hospital after being in a coma for seventeen days. The audience is then introduced to his Grandmother, who he refers to as 'Gram', and who also happens to be his only guardian. There is an incredible relief that Tom is not going to die, although the situation reminds 'Gram' of Tom's mother, who died a long time ago in a hit and run. However, Tom starts to realize that something is not quite right with his head. Dr. Kirby, a neurosurgeon, informs Tom that pieces of the iPhone were impossible to remove from some areas of his brain, and that Tom is stuck with them for life. This isn't really crucial until a bit later in the story.
Tom begins to experience some unsettling feelings, all of which come from inside of his head. He suddenly sees flashes of information, hears and feels strange things going on inside of his body, and he has no idea why. His skin carries an electric charge, and strange colors appear on it as well. Instead of alerting Dr. Kirby, Gram, or the two policeman who come knocking, Tom keeps all these weird feelings to himself, and tries to figure them out on his own. Some of the strangeness inside of his head alerts him to a newspaper article, which describes at length the break-in to Tom's friend Lucy's apartment the physical assault on her brother Ben, and the rape that several members of the local gang had committed on Tom's best friend. It turns out that this happened on the very day that Tom was going to go visit Lucy, and he returns to that day in his mind, trying to place the mysterious figure on the thirteenth floor that threw the iPhone at his head.
Tom is finally released from the hospital and goes home, to a low-end apartment complex, in the same building as his friend Lucy, and there he finally figures out what is causing all these irregularities; the iPhone in his brain. The circuits have somehow merged with his brain, causing him to develop extraordinary abilities. He can call, text, email, search, hack, everything an iPhone can do and more, all anonymously. Not exactly something every sixteen-year-old figures out on a daily basis. But before exploring his vast database that is now available to him, he decides he has to do one thing first; He has to go see Lucy. And Lucy is not doing so well. Tom doesn't exactly know how to talk to her. After all, what can you say to someone who's just been violated?
Analysis:
While never winding up in the hospital myself, I think my first reaction upon waking up in a hospital room would be a slight panicking since, after all, the only reason patients are administered to hospitals is because there is something wrong with them. Tom seems to stomach his situation much more calmly than I would expect, and when he starts to notice that his brain is acting strangely, he doesn't tell anyone about it, preferring to keep it to himself. When talking to the police, he thinks "It might not have been the whole truth, but I wasn't going to tell him that, was I? I wasn't going to tell him that the newspaper report just appeared in my head out of nowhere" (23). I understand that all he really wants to do is to get home and out of the hospital, and that part of the human nature is to sometimes suppress things and hope they go away, but I personally would have at least clued someone in, like perhaps my neurosurgeon? Usually, after brain surgery, when the hallucinations start, that's when everyone realizes that something went wrong and to not alert a doctor is almost a death sentence. I believe I would have told someone, even if it was just my parents (or grandmother, in this case) just to let someone know something had gone wrong.
Questions to Consider:
Would you have told someone if you started to experience weird disturbances in your head?
How would you respond to a friend being violated, like Lucy was?
What could you do to bring the offenders to justice in a Mafia-like structure of society where to talk to the police is both futile and a death-sentence?
Chapters 2 - 6
Summary:
In Chapters 2 - 6, Tom Harvey wakes up in the hospital after being in a coma for seventeen days. The audience is then introduced to his Grandmother, who he refers to as 'Gram', and who also happens to be his only guardian. There is an incredible relief that Tom is not going to die, although the situation reminds 'Gram' of Tom's mother, who died a long time ago in a hit and run. However, Tom starts to realize that something is not quite right with his head. Dr. Kirby, a neurosurgeon, informs Tom that pieces of the iPhone were impossible to remove from some areas of his brain, and that Tom is stuck with them for life. This isn't really crucial until a bit later in the story.
Tom begins to experience some unsettling feelings, all of which come from inside of his head. He suddenly sees flashes of information, hears and feels strange things going on inside of his body, and he has no idea why. His skin carries an electric charge, and strange colors appear on it as well. Instead of alerting Dr. Kirby, Gram, or the two policeman who come knocking, Tom keeps all these weird feelings to himself, and tries to figure them out on his own. Some of the strangeness inside of his head alerts him to a newspaper article, which describes at length the break-in to Tom's friend Lucy's apartment the physical assault on her brother Ben, and the rape that several members of the local gang had committed on Tom's best friend. It turns out that this happened on the very day that Tom was going to go visit Lucy, and he returns to that day in his mind, trying to place the mysterious figure on the thirteenth floor that threw the iPhone at his head.
Tom is finally released from the hospital and goes home, to a low-end apartment complex, in the same building as his friend Lucy, and there he finally figures out what is causing all these irregularities; the iPhone in his brain. The circuits have somehow merged with his brain, causing him to develop extraordinary abilities. He can call, text, email, search, hack, everything an iPhone can do and more, all anonymously. Not exactly something every sixteen-year-old figures out on a daily basis. But before exploring his vast database that is now available to him, he decides he has to do one thing first; He has to go see Lucy. And Lucy is not doing so well. Tom doesn't exactly know how to talk to her. After all, what can you say to someone who's just been violated?
Analysis:
While never winding up in the hospital myself, I think my first reaction upon waking up in a hospital room would be a slight panicking since, after all, the only reason patients are administered to hospitals is because there is something wrong with them. Tom seems to stomach his situation much more calmly than I would expect, and when he starts to notice that his brain is acting strangely, he doesn't tell anyone about it, preferring to keep it to himself. When talking to the police, he thinks "It might not have been the whole truth, but I wasn't going to tell him that, was I? I wasn't going to tell him that the newspaper report just appeared in my head out of nowhere" (23). I understand that all he really wants to do is to get home and out of the hospital, and that part of the human nature is to sometimes suppress things and hope they go away, but I personally would have at least clued someone in, like perhaps my neurosurgeon? Usually, after brain surgery, when the hallucinations start, that's when everyone realizes that something went wrong and to not alert a doctor is almost a death sentence. I believe I would have told someone, even if it was just my parents (or grandmother, in this case) just to let someone know something had gone wrong.
Questions to Consider:
Would you have told someone if you started to experience weird disturbances in your head?
How would you respond to a friend being violated, like Lucy was?
What could you do to bring the offenders to justice in a Mafia-like structure of society where to talk to the police is both futile and a death-sentence?
Introduction to iBoy
Author: Kevin Brooks
Copyright: Text Copyright © Kevin Brooks, 2012
Number of Pages: 290
Publisher: Penguin Books
Summary on the Back:
Before the attack, sixteen-year-old Tom Harvey was just an ordinary boy.
But now fragments of a shattered iPhone are embedded in his brain and it's having an extraordinary effect...
Because now Tom has powers. The ability to know and see more than he could ever imagine. And with incredible power comes knowledge - and a choice. Seek revenge on the violet gangs that rule his estate and assaulted his friend Lucy, or keep quiet?
Tom has control when everything else is out of control. But it's a dangerous price to pay. and the consequences are terrifying...
Basically:
iBoy is a story about a teenage boy, Tom Harvey, who lives in a bad neighborhood When he goes to meet his friend Lucy after school, someone calls out his name and throws an iPhone at him from the 30th floor of an apartment complex. The iPhone, instead of missing Tom, the iPhone implants itself into his skull, and the doctors can't get all of it out. Because of the circuits deep within his brain, Tom can surf the web, text, phone, send videos, emails, hack into databases, and intercept or hack into any data or database in the world, all while remaining completely anonymous. That is only a few of his 'powers', which he discovers and develops.
Why I chose this book:
I am heavily into technology, so I am very familiar with iPods and iPhones, the little 'i' stands out and practically screams "I'm technology, look at me!". As soon as I saw the title of this book, I immediately grabbed it and read the back. It appeared as an espionage/technology/mafia sort of book, and I decided to take it out. Once I started reading, I found the writing style extremely catching, with the plot line being immersive and effective at conveying emotion. In the first few pages, the way the flashback combined present and past was very smooth and seamless, and it just kept building the tension, making me want to read more. Overall, I chose this book because it immediately caught my attention, the writing style was amazing, and the subject matter was something I'd read on my free time anyways.
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