In the world of the distant future, after clawing itself back from the brink of oblivion due to a now mostly forgotten calamity, humanity has coalesced to live almost entirely within the bounds of a single mega-city. Although technology allows almost unlimited production of food and energy, at least on a basic level, artificial scarcity ensures material possessions remain important status symbols, highlighting the massive gap between the haves and the have nots. There is an extreme nostalgia for the past, an obsession with creating a facsimile of many of the aspects of life from before the collapse but this only enhances the social stratification because of commodities lik plants being incredibly rare, affordable by only the most wealthy. Woman all live in and work out of brothels and both they and their male counterparts are expected to make work and productivity their highest goal while emotions are considered dangerously deviant, to be suppressed with powerful pills. In this controlling and cut-throat environment, one woman dares to defy the system.