kids are dancing and having a good time. An old man appears among them, shouting, “We enter a time of calamity!” When he does something to the kids’ feeds that forces them to broadcast this message over and over, Titus realizes the old man is a hacker. The police arrive and beat up the hacker, then they switch the kids off.
Titus awakens in a hospital, where his first thought is that he has no credit for buying anything. Then he realizes that his head is quiet and he is disconnected from feednet. Titus finds life boring without the constant input. He reflects that when feeds were first invented, people were excited at their educational value because they allow people to look up any information instantly. Now everyone who has a feed is “supersmart,”…show more content… They run everything and employ everyone, so as far as Titus is concerned there is no point getting upset about how bad they are. He is far more upset that he is disconnected.
Titus and his friends are stuck in the hospital and annoyed at their predicament. Titus’s dad arrives and says, “Dude, this is some way bad s**t.” The other kids’ parents come too, except for Violet’s. She acts withdrawn, and although she does not complain as much as the others, she seems extremely upset. Still, she joins in when the others go stir-crazy and invent a game of blowing hypodermic needle tips at an anatomy diagram. The doctor gets angry about this, but the kids’ parents defend them, saying they are stressed out and need to unwind.
Violet and Titus bond in the hospital, and she shows him an old, cracked terrarium she finds leaking air. Later, he learns that she knows how to write with a pen. Nobody writes on paper anymore, so he calls her “a funny enchilada.” When the technicians are sure there is no permanent problem with their feeds, they reconnect everyone. Messages and advertisements pour in, and everyone goes insane with relief. It is as if they can feel like themselves again. Titus and Violet hold hands and dance in
