The book is formatted as a series of interviews with various characters that gradually reveal the plot and the world.
In the year 2059, two very different groups of people are placed in cryogenic suspension while their minds are uploaded into a quantum computer (apparently, simply freezing someone destroys an inactive consciousness). The first group are astronauts led by Captain Letitia Garvey on a 500-year journey to Proxima Centauri to establish humanity's first extrasolar colony (a colony on Mars having already been established in 2041). The plan is for the crew's frozen bodies to be loaded up on the starship Hōkūleʻa, while their minds remain in an institute in Waterloo, Ontario, with the clock speed set to only 0.8%, so only 4 years will pass for the astronauts. Upon arrival, their minds will be instantly downloaded into their defrosted bodies via quantum entanglement. The other group are convicts doing hard time as part of a pilot program for a virtual prison. Unlike the astronauts, their 20-year (reduced) sentence will be carried out virtually with their minds sped up by a factor of 24, so only 10 months will pass in the real world. Naturally, things don't go quite according to plan...
Examples:
- After the End: The bulk of the story takes place 500 years after a nuclear war caused the collapse of society.
- Alan Smithee: One of the ex-cons uses that name when asked. As a movie buff, Roscoe immediately recognizes it for what it is and tells Letitia. She does some snooping and learns that he's a murderer with a penchant for smashing his victim's skulls in with a crowbar.
- Apocalypse How:
- Class 2 happens somewhere around 2059 after the repeat of the Carrington Event. Except it turns out to be not the case. In fact, it was World War III. The reason Letitia thought it was a natural phenomenon was because Waterloo was never bombed (the closest cities to be hit were Washington and New York, and the prevailing northern winds kept the fallout away) and only suffered decay after the EMP caused by nuclear explosions fried all electronics.
- Class 6 is looming on the horizon with a 1000-km asteroid hurtling towards Earth. Slightly subverted in that humanity will not go extinct thanks to the Martian colony.
- Artistic License – Biology: A crew of 23 is too small a gene pool for a viable extrasolar colony to endure long-term. On the other hand, it's possible that genetic engineering was already advanced enough in 2059 to allow for sufficient tweaks to prevent complications due to inbreeding.
- Author Tract: Sawyer doesn't mince words about his feelings for those who refuse to mask or get vaccinated during a pandemic.
- Bittersweet Ending: The "downloaded" (except for the would-be rapist Hornbach) get evacuated by the Martians: some to Mars and some to the Hōkūleʻa to go to Zeta Tucanae (as, apparently, the Martians have already explored every star between Sol and Tau Ceti and found no habitable planets there). However, Earth is destroyed by Brimstone right on schedule, and the Mennonites refuse to leave, accepting their fate (as either uploading or living under a Martian dome is anathema to them). Those who choose to go to Mars are shunned by the Martians and kept in their own dome on the other side of the planet, although their lives are relatively comfortable. Still, they're kept under constant surveillance (just like the Martians themselves) and are only allowed 21st century technology (but no robots). Despite caring for one another, Roscoe and Valentina choose different life paths: Valentina uploads permanently (where she can look the way she feels), giving up her body to Mikhail, while Roscoe remains in the real world. Those who decide to leave eventually (1200 years later) arrive to what appears to be a habitable planet in the Zeta Tucanae system.
- Brain Uploading: The human mind can be uploaded into a quantum computer and be placed in a virtual environment (simply uploading it and keeping it static will result in decoherence). The virtual environment can be changed at will with a mere thought, so the uploaded can experience whatever they want. The clock speed can also be dialed up and down. The astronauts to be sent to Proxima Centauri are to be frozen with their minds uploaded and kept in Waterloo, Ontario, with their clock speeds dialed as far down as possible, so they only experience 4 years out of the 500 the trip is supposed to take. It's said that it's only possible to download a mind into its own body. Martians have developed technology to allow a mind to be downloaded into any body, which is what allows Mikhail to be downloaded after Valentina decides to be re-uploaded again and no longer needs her (male) body.
- The Bully: Roscoe Koudoulian was convicted of first-degree murder for killing his childhood bully who came back to torment him online as an adult. Roscoe didn't intend to kill him, only wanting to beat him up and get him to stop. But the Asshole Victim turned out to be a diehard conservative who hated that Roscoe held liberal beliefs and justified the attempts to destroy his life as trying to keep Roscoe's teenage daughter from "being corrupted." That enraged Roscoe, and he ended up stabbing the bully with garden shears just as the garage door opened and a neighbor passed by, recording Roscoe standing over a bloodied corpse. The fact that Roscoe specifically sought out the victim allows the DA to convince the jury that the murder was premeditated.
- But What About the Astronauts?:
- Zigzagged with the Hōkūleʻa's crew. They never left Earth, but their specially shielded and self-sufficient building has kept them safe from the Great Blackout shortly after they were frozen. On the other hand, they're not the only survivors, as they find that the Mennonite village near Waterloo has endured since they were never dependent on technology to begin with.
- Played straight with the Martian colony established nearly two decades before the Blackout. It seems Mars was unaffected by the coronal mass ejection, so the colonists survived. Their terraforming efforts weren't really that successful, but they were able to use genetic engineering to modify themselves to survive on the red planet, becoming tall, blue-skinned, monogendered, and lacking in facial hair.
- Colony Drop: One of the astronauts uses a telescope aboard the Hōkūleʻa to discover that a 1000-kilometer asteroid she has dubbed Brimstone is on a collision course with Earth and will impact 7 years after their awakening. The event will wipe out all life on Earth, and there's no telling when (or even if) life might evolve on the planet again.
- Cryonics Failure: Averted. The cryo technology works just fine (when coupled with Brain Uploading to keep the consciousness from decohering). However, one of the astronauts turns out to be physically dead when the rest wake up because someone smashed his skull in with a crowbar. Thus, his mind is unable to be downloaded into his body, so he has to remain inside the computer. Unfortunately, he's one of the few astronauts who hates being in a virtual world. When Letitia informs him that an extinction-level asteroid will strike Earth in 7 years and offers to boost his clock speed to allow him to live out more than a century in the computer before the end, he refuses, demanding that she keep the clock speed equal to the normal passage of time.
- Eternal English: Averted. The English spoken by the Mennonites has changed drastically over 500 years, especially without any movies and TV to hold back the changes. It takes some effort for the "downloaded" to learn to understand them.
- Human Popsicle: Suspended animation involves replacing all the fluids in the body with antifreeze and keeping the body in a low-temperature "coffin." However, the quantum nature of the human consciousness means that, without Brain Uploading, the mind will undergo decoherence, and any revived body will remain in a perpetual coma. Such was the fate of Letitia's grandfather, one of the first people to be frozen upon death with hope of being revived in the future and cured of a deadly disease.
- Kill It with Ice: An accidental version happens when a group of ex-cons storms the quantum computer room and tries to smash the machine, claiming that no one was going to put them back in virtual prison. The woman smashing the computer housing with a fire extinguisher ends up rupturing a liquid nitrogen pipe that sprays her. By the time they go back for her, she's frozen solid.
- Lightspeed Leapfrog: It turns out that Martians have already been to Proxima Centauri, having developed better ships since 2041. Unfortunately, the second planet in that system turned out to be far from hospitable, as indicated by the Martian name for it: Hellhole.
- Meaningful Name:
- The starship's name is Hōkūleʻa, Hawaiian for "Star of Gladness" and is their name for Arcturus. It's also the name of a double-hulled Polynesian canoe build in 1975 that completed a voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti using only traditional navigational techniques.
- The robot Penolong's name means "helper" in Malay. He resents it, as well as his own lack of rights.
- Mind Prison: A pilot program of one is introduced in 2059. The convicts who volunteer will have their sentences reduced to 20 subjective years. However, only 10 months will pass in the real world thanks to the clock speed on their uploaded minds being raised by a factor of 24. The goal is to reduce the financial drain on the government since keeping a convict frozen for 10 months it not as expensive as keeping them in prison for decades. For the convicts it means they can get back to their lives with their loved ones still alive and barely aged and their own bodies still youthful. Unlike the astronauts, the convicts won't have any control over their virtual environment since this is supposed to be punishment. They'll still be in prison among virtual inmates and guards, but there's no risk of them being shanked, raped, or subjected to abuse. Instead of 20 subjective years, they end up spending 24 in it because the Great Blackout happened, so no one came to thaw them out. However, the robots monitoring the facility did switch their clock speeds to match the astronauts after their "sentence" ended.
- The Movie Buff: Roscoe is constantly quoting 20th century movies. Jackson is one too.
- Ragnarök Proofing:
- The Hōkūleʻa and everything on it has been engineered to survive a 500-year trip through interstellar space, being constantly bombarded by cosmic radiation. In the end, the ship ends up making a 1200-year trip (after already spending 500 years in Earth's orbit) to Zeta Tucanae.
- The institute building with the quantum computer has likewise been made to endure for five centuries, with multiple Faraday cages (meant to protect the quantum computers from solar radiation) in its structure. Those cages are what protected all the equipment inside the building from the coronal mass ejection. The solar panels on the roof kept the building powered, while the service robots made the necessary repairs and monitored the frozen humans and their uploaded minds.
- Regional Bonus: The English version of the audiobook has Brendan Fraser (the voice of Roscoe Koudoulian) on the cover in a cryopod. The French version has Pierre-Yves Cardinal instead.
- The Reveal: Plenty of those.
- The first major one is that not only have the astronauts never left Earth, but the world around them has clearly suffered some sort of cataclysm.
- Halfway through we learn that the one interviewing the characters is a Martian, descended from the colony established in 2041.
- Near the end, the interviewer reveals that it really was World War III that ended the world rather than a natural phenomenon. The reason there's no damage to Waterloo or Toronto is that Canada wasn't directly hit, but the EMP produced by nuclear explosions knocked out power everywhere anyway.
- Shout-Out: After finally reaching a habitable exoplanet in the end, Jurgen provides this quote for the astronauts: "The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best. And sometimes the best that we can do is to start over."
- Solar Flare Disaster: It turns out that a repeat of the Carrington Event happened sometime in or shortly after 2059. A powerful coronal mass ejection has caused a geomagnetic storm that overloaded and shut down all electrical devices on Earth. The subsequent societal collapse led to most of humanity dying off, as they were unable to survive in a world without electricity and no survival skills. Very little is known of the world beyond Waterloo, Ontario, but the only people in the immediate area who are still alive 500 years later are the Mennonites, who weren't that dependent on electricity to begin with. They mention that a few other survivors occasionally visited them but ended up moving on. When asked about Native Americans, they learn that the city-dwelling ones suffered the same fate as everyone else. The few who still clung to ancestral traditions survived for a while by hunting and fishing, but even they eventually either left or died out. However, we eventually learn that there was no flare. It was World War III started by a bunch of terrorists with nukes.
- Three Laws-Compliant: Penolong references them when talking to Letitia when confessing to caving in Mikhail's skull with a crowbar. He hates being a servant just because he's a machine. He wants equal rights, but the cyberneticist Mikhail is a staunch "Asimovian" in how he thinks of machines. So, when it became clear that the astronauts aren't going anywhere and that Mikhail will be the only cyberneticist in the future, Penolong made sure he wouldn't be able to download ever again.
- Trans Tribulations: Valentina loved being in a virtual environment because it means she could have the virtual body that matched her gender. After being downloaded, she hated seeing her hairy chest and male genitalia. After putting on her jumpsuit, the first thing she did was tear off the name tag that said her deadname. The only person she came out to was Roscoe, who treated it as no big deal, explaining that his cousin was trans, and he's okay with it. Still, when they go stargazing at night, Roscoe is startled to be touched by a man's hand, even though he'd gotten used to Valentina speaking with a male voice. Still, it's clear by the end of the story that they have fallen in love. And both are devastated that they want different things: Valentina chooses to be permanently uploaded (where she can look like her gender), while Roscoe feels that, as mayor, it's his responsibility to lead the "downloaded."
