In a world decimated by climate change, Emergent Biotechnology manufactures clones, called models - used as slaves to prop up a declining population. A young woman’s decisions decide an escaped model’s fate and may decide the fate of all model kind.
A young man must decide whether to accept death from his fatal anemia, or make a devil's bargain and take another life to save his own. The pathway to immortality is opened, with potentially devastating consequences on models everywhere.
An autistic woman, a savant who tracks hundreds of variables simultaneously in her mind at any given moment, has a "chance" encounter with the leader of an anti-modeling terrorist organization. For anyone else, the encounter might have been terrifying. For her, it's an interesting occurrence, and not even the most interesting thing to happen in her day. But the clockwork set in motion by this event and her reaction to it have consequences for all worlds, both virtual and "real".