When their friend Ann dies of a drug overdose, Alex and Mark try to recreate her death using virtual reality, because they don't know if it was accidental or a suicide. Their grief and obsession with technology and problems with how humans treat the environment lead them to become ecoterrorists, with Alex the true extremist and Mark just along for the ride, ambivalent, grieving, and coasting through a haze of depression and sexual insanity. Poetic, gritty, are some of the adjectives used for In the Flat Field. Inspired by many literary and sci-fi writers and films, notably William Burroughs and the Matrix.