In 2053 in Angeltown, formerly Los Angeles, Thelonious Babar is a senior and AAA rated student and the Belmont Nanomed Academy. He is disturbed by the increase of truancy prisons of his fellow classmates for failure to learn. To combat the expulsions, Theo tutors his friends and as many of their family as possible. He decides to have a rally and walkout on the last day of the school year.
Theo meets Chava Chavez. Theo teaches Chava some tricks for getting through her courses and avoiding the crime of failure to learn. Chava admires how Theo gets along with so many people and how smart he is, and he admires Chava's tenacity in the face of loss and discrimination.
The rally commences and is more successful than Theo ever thought possible. However, the Czar of Education along with the SADF had helped the rally succeed so they could increase attendance and then brutally come down on the terrorist elements of society at the library garden. Theo is killed. Chava escapes. She travels though sewers, past downtown, through unoccupied Angeltown, and finally makes it home.
Rita and Maxwell Benz, two master hackers, fake their deaths and escape to the Saint Gabriel Mountains. Outside of the contaminated confines of Angeltown and The Sterilization, Rita becomes pregnant and gives birth to a future hacker genius, Artichoke Benz. At the age of twelve, he is forced under the threat of prison to work at Caltech to create anti-hacking software and work on the Quick Learn educational software used around the country. After learning of his parents' deaths, he sabotages the software and educational databases and escapes to the mountains near where he grew up. Jane Winston is incapacitated in her classroom as Quick Learn fails catastrophically.
Jane wakes up downtown. She has a laptop and instructions to monitor student progress from her new, prison-like apartment. Over time, she is haunted by dreams, voices, isolation, and madness.
Chava is finally tracked by the ruthless Martin, but she is able to kill the brute with the help of a German shepherd she had befriended. She takes Martin's valuable monogrammed knife and heads downtown to trade it for survival gear at Ray's Pawnshop.
Jane finally snaps and leaves her house to travel outside where she hopes to find "her water" at Ray's Pawnshop. A barefoot Jane encounters Chava and runs back home in her drug induced fear as if she has encountered the devil. They enter Jane's basement apartment and Chava bandages Jane's feet cut from glass and metal outside.
As Chava aids Jane, Jane's voice comes out of her computer, "The rally is on the fourteenth at the library." After hearing Jane informed authorities about the rally, Chava, who once sympathized with Jane, can no longer. Chava needs to get out. A conflict ensues and Jane is knocked unconscious. Chava escapes as an investigative team arrives and finds Jane's body with her palm cut off, used by Chava to escape.
