Machine Dreams is a dark, dystopian cyberpunk thriller set in the dangerously near future of a hyperdensified San Frangeles of a hundred fifty million people. Anson Hockney, a street shark with a photographic memory who hides stolen files for a living, is hired to protect Daniel, the young boy consort of Schlosser, a rich industrialist, while negotiations are underway for a new and fabulously valuable entertainment technology. Anson is to accompany Daniel to Schlosser's mansion in the Sierra Nevada mountains, but what should have been an easy payday goes wrong immediately. The mansion has been taken over by hostile corporate troops, and Anson and Daniel must trek down the mountains and through the automated farms of California's central valley to return to San Frangeles and lie low. Anson leaves the boy with his girlfriend, Lorie, while he goes off to assess exactly what kind of corporate intrigue they are involved in. Meanwhile, Anson's mysterious past keeps haunting his dreams, and the megacorps chase him for a secret file he unknowingly possesses that will unlock the new technology. As the climax nears, all these threads come together in a hair-raising confrontation that upends everything Anson thought he knew, and the balance of power of the world he lives in.