The Cell

Diana Yang

The Cell

By Stephen King

Summary:

It was an ordinary day in an ordinary city. Unfortunately, this afternoon was far from ordinary. It all began at 3:03 p.m. EST on October 1^st. A graphic novelist named Clayton Riddell from Maine walked the Boylston Streets of Boston, his portfolio in one hand and a brown plastic shopping bag labeled small treasures entwined in the other. It was meant to be a gift for Sharon, his wife. It was a glass paperweight with a grey haze in the center, like a pocket of fog. On the way to his humble Atlantic Avenue Inn from the grand Copley Square Hotel, he stops to notice an ice cream truck parked in front of the Four Seasons Hotel. While waiting in line for a cone he notices a woman in a jumpsuit with a poodle on a leash jabbering away on her cell phone. A couple of teenage girls giggled and a group of boys bought some ice cream. Then there was a scream. Perhaps out of joy? After all, it was 3:03 p.m. at the Commons, someone had to be happy. But it was a sad twist of fate that the teenage girls began screaming incomprehensible words as one of them leaped for the woman in the jumpsuit’s neck, leaving a gaping hole that’ll make you hold your neck in fear; the beginning of ‘The Pulse.’ Clayton finally meets a middle-aged mustached man named Tom McCourt and a sane teenager named Alice Maxwell. While Boston goes up in chaotic flames the newly formed band escape to Clayton’s home in Maine. The people who went insane shortly after a talk on the phone banned together into ‘flocks.’ While traversing the chaotic cities of New England they travel by night and encounter other sane people while dodging the crazies. They arrive at Gaiten Academy, NH where they meet a flock of crazies under a leader dubbed ‘The Raggedy Man’. They also meet the last survivors of the school; a teacher named Charles Ardai and Jordan, a student. The group has a nightmare where they meet their demise in the soccer field at the school by the crazies. The flocks of crazies have begun developing physic powers and using two tank trucks they managed to destroy a majority of the group. Fleeing, Ardai is forced to kill himself, while the rest of the group buried him and continued their journey to Kashwak, Maine; where the Raggedy Man ordered them to go. The group were called ‘flock-killers’ and branded untouchables, shunned by other normal people. Alice is killed after a small argument that broke out when a pair of normal people killed her. Finally arriving in his hometown of Kent Pond, Clayton discovers that Johnny and other normal people were forced to head to Kashwak by the crazies. His wife, unfortunately, was turned into a crazy. Clayton has another nightmare where the normal people became crazies once entering Kashwak. Clayton was determined to find his son while Tom and Jordan preferred to run away, but before separating the group finds out that Alice’s murderers killed themselves for touching an untouchable. Luckily, using their psychic powers, they forced the disbanded group to regroup. A flock-killer named Ray gives Clayton a cell phone, a phone number and tells him to call ‘when the time is right’; Ray then kills himself to avoid the crazies for psychically finding out the plan he has set up. At Kashwak Jordan believes that The Pulse was started from a corrupted computer program called Pulse by a computer worm that muted the Pulse, thus turning normal people into crazies. The crazies lock the flock-killer group for them to await their ceremonial execution tomorrow. Awaiting his death, Clay visualizes Ray’s plan; to drive a rigged school bus into the center of the city and detonate it. Using the cell phone and phone number, Clay was able to detonate the rigged bus and wipe out the flock of The Raggedy Man’s Men. The group escaped into Canada to let the winter kill of the rest of the leaderless crazies. After the winter, Clayton heads south to search for his son. Clayton finally finds his son corrupted by Pulse. Jordan came up with a theory that by using another blast from Pulse, the corruption might cancel itself out in Johnny’s brain. The book ends with Clayton dialing the number and holding the phone to Johnny’s ear.

This novel relates to science because of the Pulse, which was a tragedy started with one mutated computer program called Pulse. Because of Pulse, the apocalypse seemed kinder than the carnage erupted on the simple street of Boylston. The influence the mutated Pulse caused by the computer worm destroyed the brains of anyone who even heard the signal emitted from the cell phone. This is a good lesson on how cell phones can have a negative impact on everyone. The crazies acted like a colony of bees, communicating through telepathically and having a Queen/leader “The Raggedy Man.” This novel also shows the relationships between the three kinds of people here; the crazies, the flock-killers and the normal people. The crazies indiscriminately killed while the normal people rejected the flock-killers because they were psychically marked as untouchables.

The likelihood of cell phones carrying a computer worm that will destroy your brain when heard is improbable. Frankly, the thought seems stupid. However, the chance of insane inmates being let loose from the closest asylum doesn’t seem like such a farfetched idea. If, this should ever happen I still highly doubt the crazies would be sane enough to actually organize themselves instead of acting separately as banshees. The development of psychic powers in a dead brain is just simple unheard of. If the brain has been blown away then it’s just a sheer miracle the crazies ever lived, let alone develop psychic powers. The corruption of a computer program is likely, but the apocalypse following it is not.

Nevertheless, if some fool were responsible for bringing this monstrosity to life then our entire way of life will go up in flames, just like Boston did. Because of our development in technology, almost everyone has or is in contact with a cell phone every day. Because of that, there wouldn’t be much flock-killers or normal people after the Pulse began. Just like what happened in the book, almost all of the world would become mindless banshees. Oh wait, the crazies have psychic powers. Well I guess the world will be fine if everyone is crazy with psychic powers. So we’ll all kill the normal people and the flock-killers and live happily ever after.