Prologue

Group 1:

The Prologue has Jules and Dan sitting in a bar, talking. As they talk, the reader is introduced to some basic ideas of the Bitchtun Society, such as a mortality rate of zero. Because death is avoidable, some people choose to explore the world, achieve higher levels of education, or even enter suspended animation for a few hundred years to see what the world looks like then. Dan is presented as a well-respected missionary with a lot of experience, already in his "second or third blush of youth." During his life time, he successfully converted multiple communities, earning him a lot of respect and experience in the process, shown as "Whuffie," which he has so much of that Jules had to "resize his window" because there were too many zeros. Jules is presented as a man over a century old who, instead of exploring the world, wanted to earn Doctorate degrees. Not much more about him is told, though at the end of the chapter, he flies to Disney World. In this chapter, multiple terms unique to the book are introduced, such as "deadheading," "Whuffie," "Bitchtun Society," and "hyperlinks," though none of them are explicitly defined.