The Barbarian Nurseries

After finding her two boys fighting, Maureen takes them to the park near the house, which is curiously devoid of children and people. She leaves them there with Araceli to watch them for a while, so she can have peace and quiet. She had angrily told them: “sometimes I wish I could just leave you with your father and take Samantha and just go. Go someplace far away” (56). She only briefly feels that this may be a bad idea, “leaving her boys at a park with this ill-tempered Mexican woman of unproven child-rearing skills” (56).

The boys feel abandoned by their mother, but their imaginations—fed by Brandon’s voracious appetite for reading fantasy and adventure stories—soon take over. Araceli sits on a bench to watch them but feels out of place in her uniform.

At work in his office, Scott works on designing a program for the US government intended to keep workers monitoring the Citizen Anti-Terrorist Sentry System. The program adds fake people to real video the employees monitor, looking for terrorists and other threats. He builds several stereotypical fake people, like “turban man” (61).

In between working, he checks his stocks and investments, which are doing poorly.