March 2036. The world has been divided, not by geography, but by standard of living and technological status. Some have nothing but their ideologies; some their addictions, their cunning, their desperation. The luckiest, safest, healthiest live in the first world–--all of them employees of FirstWorld Corporation. A global communications network, a consortium of manufacturers and energy suppliers, a system of belief: this is FirstWorld. They are your doctors, your teachers, your bankers, your technicians. They are everywhere and they are you.

Maura Lakin is your average thirty-something single mother living in the Pacific Northwest, with a job, an apartment, and a daughter doing well in school. She's also got a shadowy past with the cadre of trippers, hackers, and innovators known as the Underground–-and along with her daughter Lalia, a radical piece of technology, implanted into their brains, that allows them to communicate wirelessly, and untraceably with only the power of thought. Maura and Lalia have successfully kept their secrets from the outside world–-or so they thought, until the day that Lalia goes missing and the link goes dead.

Now Maura must go in search of her missing child, returning on her old skills and contacts–-and picking up new ones along the way–-in hopes of getting Lalia back. But Lalia may or may not want to come back, especially not if she finds her long-hidden techno-genius father Scott and tastes the freedom of his revolutionary way of life . . .