Chapter 2 Summary

Reading 1: “Add Some More Boils”

Taddeo is a character with real thoughts and feelings who seems to exist with a real body in a medieval world suffering from black plague. Taddeo, who is dying from the plague, has been forced from his house by his family who fear contagion. Wandering the streets, Taddeo thinks about various theological theories of why people are suffering plague, most of which end up with human wickedness as the cause and justification. Taddeo prays for a miracle and seems to be getting one when colors of the world radically change. However, the miracle is nothing more than a temporary computer glitch. Taddeo is part of a computer simulation run by two boys who are having a little sadistic fun while both doing history homework.

Reading 2:“Why Don’t You Just Wake Up?”

Maya, college student, begins to find reality unpleasantly dream-like. She has dreams in which she seems to wake, only to find that what she thought was reality was only a dream. She’s not on drugs, as she has to keep explaining to people, and the cause can’t be the simple fact that she’s taking a philosophy class on Descartes and whether life is only a dream. She has one frightening episode in which the world seems to ripple as if it’s nothing more than a movie screen. She has another such episode in class one day. Distracted, she hears people telling her to “wake up”; she does wake finally, with terrible consequences.