You will be given a summary of a story. You need to create a question that can be answered from the story. You can create a question about characters, events, facts and beliefs, etc. Your question should be specific, try not to use pronouns instead of full names. As the stories are sometimes movie plots, they will contain actor names in parentheses. You should not use those names. Only use character names. Try to ask a question about all parts of the plot, not just the beginning.

[Q]:  This science fiction novel takes place in the year 2203, if we take literally the age of 250 years given for a Korean War identity bracelet that is dated 1953. A rogue planet, populated by strange machines known as Pyramids, has stolen the Earth from the Solar system, taking it off into interstellar space. The moon has been 'ignited' by alien technology to serve as a miniature sun around which both planets orbit. This new sun is rekindled every 5 years, though as the book opens, the rekindling is nearly overdue and there is fear among the populace that it may never happen again.
The global population has crashed to a hundred million, due largely to the radical climate changes that followed the arrival of the alien planet. Most of the surviving humans are 'Citizens,' passive people living lives bound up with elaborate social rituals, various styles of meditation, and carefully prescribed selflessness. This constraining lifestyle frequently causes Citizens to succumb to mental breakdowns and run 'amok,' attacking anyone within reach. Persons who commit this or any other crime face ritual execution.
A small minority of the population who retain their aggressive natures are referred to as 'Wolves.' They are considered to be a direct threat to the rest of society. These Wolves, however, generally see themselves as superior humans and refer to the Citizens as 'Sheep.' This labeling system is somewhat ironic, because the Wolves generally try to trick the Sheep into avoiding their settlements, while any Wolf who is caught by the Sheep is murdered.
The Pyramid aliens' motives are unknown, their only visible presence being a lone Pyramid perched atop a leveled-off Mount Everest and the transparent 'Eyes' which form over individuals who have supposedly attained or approached a state of meditative perfection or 'Nirvana.' Persons who reach this stage of meditation vanish from the world to an unknown destination.The story opens in the town of Wheeling, West Virginia. We first see Roget Germyn, a banker and model Citizen. An Eye forms over him while he is meditating, but he is interrupted and the Eye vanishes. He then returns to a more Earthly concern - whether or not the 'sun' will be regenerated, ending the current period of hunger and cold.
Attention then shifts to Glenn Tropile, who lives among the Citizens, but regards himself as one of the feared Wolves. He has even managed to slowly coach his wife, Gala, toward a more Wolfish outlook. Despite this rebellious attitude, he maintains a genuine interest in meditation.
Glenn Tropile is exposed as a Wolf while stealing bread. He escapes execution and is collected by a community of Wolves living in the town of Princeton. They find he doesn't entirely fit in there either, but hope he may get collected by an 'Eye', giving them a chance to measure this process in detail. This eventually happens and they find, as expected, that his disappearance was facilitated by the Pyramid on Everest. Glenn Tropile has been sent to the Pyramid's planet.
We then learn his fate. To the Pyramids, the human race is nothing more than a useful source of 'Components' for a complex world-machine devoted mostly to feeding these artificial and semi-organic beings. Tropile is suspended in a fluid-filled tank and 'wired in' to the vast computer system. Later, he is linked to seven other humans as a 'Snowflake' - eight minds joined together to facilitate more complex tasks than a single human Component could manage.
In this condition, Tropile wakes, manages to retain his sanity, and wakes the other humans. They eventually merge with one another to form a sophisticated collective mind. The freed Snowflake then spies on the Pyramids, finding that they have been traveling for some two million years, and have collected many species as Components, but seem locked in meaningless rituals surrounding an alien creature at the world's North Pole. They later realize that this is the last survivor of the race that created the Pyramids.
In the meantime, they have modified the collection process of human Components so that it selects persons known to at least one of the eight people composing the Snowflake (which has become almost as ruthless and inhuman as the alien Pyramids). These humans are intended as 'mice,' disrupters of the planet, and later as an army with which to fight the Pyramids. Roget Germyn is one of them, as is Tropile's wife.
Facing a philosophical dead-end, the 'Snowflake' decides to separate its component minds to study the problem. Restored to individual identity, Glenn Tropile becomes horrified at what he has done. However, the majority of the others want to carry on. While they are arguing, one of their number is taken over by the mind of the alien at the North Pole, who warns them that the Pyramids have noticed them and plan to wipe out half the planet to get rid of them.
They initially re-merge their personalities as the Snowflake and expedite their plans. Tropile decides he must physically disconnect himself from the Snowflake and leave to lead the humans. They manage to defeat the Pyramids, but not before the remainder of the Snowflake is also destroyed. The humans free many of the other Components and ship them back to Earth.
Tropile now finds he is a hero of sorts, but does not fit the role (though he never truly fit any role in which he was placed - Sheep, Wolf, or Component). He also sees that there is a need for someone to wire themselves back in to the alien planet's surviving systems, to re-kindle the 'sun' every five years and perhaps return the Earth to its original orbit. He doesn't want to do it alone, but most of the people he knows are either unwilling or unsuitable. On the last page, though, his wife agrees to join him. He expects that there will later be others, that "[t]he ring of fire [will] grow."
[A]: What war is the identification bracelet from?


[Q]:  The Terran system is growing and expanding all the time. But an old and corrupt Centaurian Empire is holding Terra down, as it encircles the Terran system and will not let the humans grow out of their current empire. For this reason Terra is at war with Proxima Centauri and is trying to find a way of breaking free from the Centaurian's hold upon them.
In the war that results, Terra is continually coming up with new weapons to try and break the Centaurian defenses, but Proxima Centauri is also continually updating its defenses. Using spies and other such tactics, both parties find out about each other's advances, and no actual fighting ever occurs because both sides are too busy trying to beat each other with new technological developments. Terra even calculates their chances to win a war versus Centauri and updates these calculations with each new development, making their decision about a war rely on this calculation. Eventually Terra comes up with a concept for a bomb, called Icarus, that Proxima can not defend against because it travels at faster than light speeds, making use of the buildup of mass at near light speeds as a destructive agent when it slows down to below light speed. Then the odds start to side with Terra, and Terra prepares to fight with this new-found technology. There are two problems 1) is that Icarus does not yet work which prevents Terra from using it against Proxima Centuari and 2) that the existence of Cole on Terra is an "unknown variable" that confuses the war win probability computer. Hence the book title "The Variable Man".
This is where Thomas Cole, known as The Variable Man, comes in. Cole is a man from the past, from 1913, the time just before the First World War. He is brought into the present (or future depending on perspective) as an accident via a Time Bubble that was used for research about the past. He escapes from the authority in the future and spends a lot of time running from them afterwards. It is, however, discovered that this man has a certain genius to fix things and make things work. This is because he comes out of a period of time when humans had a natural genius and an ability to invent things and to solve problems. It is at this point that the man working on the FTL (Faster Than Light) bomb realizes that The Variable Man is the only person who can make Icarus work. As a result, the engineer working on Icarus convinces The Variable Man to help them out. Icarus does eventually work, although not in the way that anyone may have wanted. Instead of emerging from FTL speed in the middle of Centarus (the sun around which the Centaurian Empire is built) and blowing it, and the surrounding Centaurian system, out of existence, it turns out that Cole transformed (or fixed) Icarus into a working hyperdrive. However the order for Terra to launch a full-scale attack against the Centaurian Empire (under the assumption that the majority of the enemy ships and planets would have been destroyed in the Icarus explosion) had already been given. The forces of Terra suffered a terrible defeat, losing many of their ships, yet due to the Variable Man having successfully wired Icarus it was now possible for Terra to travel beyond the Centaurian Empire's perimeter. Terra was no longer blocked into their tiny system, and there was no further need for war.
[A]: Where do the Terrans go at the end of the story?


[Q]:  The People That Time Forgot is a direct sequel to The Land That Time Forgot and continues the lost world saga begun in the earlier story. Burroughs continues the revelation of his lost world's unique biological system, only hinted at in the previous installment, in which the slow progress of evolution in the world outside is recapitulated as a matter of individual metamorphosis. This system forms a thematic element serving to unite the three otherwise rather loosely linked Caspak stories.The novel begins with the organization of an expedition to rescue Bowen J. Tyler, Lys La Rue, and the other castaways marooned on the large Antarctic island of Caprona, whose tropical interior, known to its inhabitants as Caspak, is home to prehistoric fauna of all eras. Tyler's recovered manuscript detailing their ordeal is delivered to his family, and the relief effort is put together by Tom Billings, secretary of the Tyler shipbuilding business. The expedition's ship, the Toreador, locates Caprona, and while the bulk of the crew attempts to scale the encircling cliffs Billings flies over them in an aircraft.
Billings' plane is attacked by flying reptiles and forced down in the interior of Caspak. He saves a native girl named Ajor from a large cat and a group of ape-men, and undertakes to accompany her back to her people, the fully human Galus, while she educates him in the language and mysteries of the island. They travel north, encountering various creatures of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, as well as additional primitive subhuman races. They pass through the lands of the Neanderthal Bo-lu (club men) and the more advanced Sto-lu (hatchet men), who are easily cowed by gunfire. But in the country of the Band-lu (spear men) he is taken captive, and despairs until rescued in turn by Ajor. They resume their journey, re-encountering and befriending Tomar, a Band-lu newly become Kro-lu (bow man). Tomar and his mate So-al are the first examples Billings has actually seen of Caspakian evolutionary metamorphosis in action.
After an interlude in which Ajor's back story is related the new friends separate. Billings and Ajor enter Kro-lu territory and save Chal-az, a Kro-lu warrior, from a group of Band-lu. Visiting the Kro-lu village as his guest, they are parted again when Billings is attacked through the machinations of the chief Du-seen, who has designs on Ajor. They escape individually, making for the Galu country. Du-seen goes after Ajor with some of his warriors.
Billings catches and tames an ancestral horse, with the aid of which he rescues Ajor from Du-seen. Pursued, they resign themselves to death, but are relieved by a force consisting of Bowen Tyler, Galu warriors, and the rescue crew from the Toreador, which had successfully scaled the cliffs and entered Caspak after Billings' ill-fated airplane flight. All are reunited in the Galu village, where Tyler and Lys La Rue have been formally married by the captain of the Toreador. Billings and Ajor also desire to wed, but Ajor may not leave Caspak due to her status as cos-ata-lo   she was born a fully evolved Galu rather than attaining that form through metamorphosis, and hence is treasured by her people. Billings elects to remain in Caspak to be with her.
[A]:
Where are the castaways?