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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 1: "Nathaniel Recalls the Miracle" through "Home.".

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Nathaniel say that ceremonial occasions remind us about?
(a) That life is unpredictable.
(b) That we should love one another.
(c) That ideas are bigger than any one person.
(d) That time only moves in one direction.

2. Where did Nathaniel meet Madison, Amity, and Lyle?
(a) In college.
(b) In high school.
(c) At his first job in New York.
(d) At a bar near Matsumoto's loft.

3. Besides their minimal rent, what task are Nathaniel and his roommates performing in exchange for a place to live?
(a) They take care of Matsumoto's cats.
(b) They collect the rent from Matsumoto's other tenants.
(c) They sort through and forward Matsumoto's mail.
(d) They are repainting the loft.

4. What ridiculous detail does Nathaniel give in his description of the last months of 1999?
(a) Preppers sealing their families into shelters underground.
(b) Celebrity clairvoyants making wild predictions in the tabloids.
(c) Businesses desperately trying to teach their staffs how to do math without computerized cash registers.
(d) Cults announcing that aliens would come to Earth at midnight on New Year's Eve.

5. What does Nathaniel say history teaches us?
(a) Systems and institutions favor the powerful by their very nature.
(b) There are too many variables for humans to be effective at thinking ahead.
(c) If we do not study the past, we will inevitably repeat unhelpful patterns.
(d) Great people rise to prominence regardless of their circumstances.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is Nathaniel's job in the narrative present?

2. What does Lucien end up saying to his assistant on page 8 when he wants to give her a piece of advice?

3. What does Nathaniel suggest that people might be desperate enough to burn in the wake of a global computer failure?

4. Which of the possible consequences of a global computer failure that Nathaniel mentions could be considered foreshadowing?

5. What is Russell's business relationship to Amity?

(see the answer key)

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