The world was becoming overtaken by Artificial Information (AI) and robots. Humans were being replaced and seemed to be on the path to be Obsolete. One such person, Steve, was a teacher. When due to "declining enrollment", fewer teachers were needed, his conservative views about the education system and how "woke" was indoctrinating the kids put him atop the list to lose his job and he lost it.

To help people in his situation, "fifteen-minute cities" were being built. In them, people essentially were locked down as happened during Covid but they were convinced all was okay because robots would "serve them" and they could live like retired people, doing anything they chose as long as they did it in the confines of that city.

Steve didn't like the idea but he met a woman with connections to the city who got him a salesman job for the city where he could use his "people skills". He met another resident, James who seemed to be a savant, figuring out things by seeing "patterns". They noticed that the city had also become a way station for women accepted survival being trafficked for the ones who ran it all.

With James' computer hacking skills and seeing "patterns", he figured out that to reduce the "obsolete" humans, the world was to be nuked. Small groups of people not wanting to become part of a fifteen-minute city prepared for the nuclear bombs to be survivors and not disappear due to obsolescence.