In the future, humans enriched with cockroach DNA dominate the planet. The old humans, fast-tracked for extinction, scurry to and from impoverished homes at the beck and call of the new elite, the magnates and managers that control all. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Capitalism thrives as labor unions are outlawed, and, soon, magnates, with antennae quivering, will face down those who do the work. The slow and the weak, the old and the tired, will get stepped on like so many bugs. Or will they? Tom Fried is a middle-aged man who works for a giant cockroach at a firm that specializes in items designed for upscale insectoid clientele. Tom and his wife, Kathy, work hard to get by, while a small elite, made up mostly of bugs, lives it up. Tom doesn't complain. It would just make things worse. Conversations are monitored, and he doesn't want to draw the attention of the dreaded National Harmony Bureau. He just wants to live a quiet life. Unsettling news from his daughter, however, forces Tom to re-evaluate his accepted reality. From the rantings of an old man about the return of unions, to clandestine meetings with shadowed strangers, events begin to convince Tom that his complacent existence is no longer possible as he and his family are drawn into a struggle that has the potential to change everything.