Every day, Dunne wakes up to work in a factory by the sea where plastic refuse trawled from the depths is repurposed for profit. The strength of his credit report and his social class have determined his life from start to finish. Fortunately for his bosses, the electronic opiate of the tele screen keeps him numb and ignorant to a life he would hate if he could concentrate long enough to realize it. Still, he has a memory of something better that he doesn't trust and a nagging belief that the world should be better than it is. "Wake, work, consume, sleep" is all he knows until one day he awakens with a cough and a sore throat that drive him to the edge of the sea. Thus begins the end of the world as he knows it.