Franc Sousa's life is virtually perfect. In a future San Francisco, where the most important determination of success is the quality of the computer chip inserted in your nervous system, Franc has the best. His chip provides him instant access to all the information and entertainment the world has ever produced, and to a virtual game environment that feels more real than his actual life. It has also helped him develop his coding skills to a level where his future employment for the V.T.B., the company that runs everything, is assured. Even more important, chippers like him, less than 1% of the population, never experience pain, or sadness, or rage for longer than a few seconds at a time. And they never get sick: Franc expects to live hundreds of years, perhaps forever.

But when an accident dislodges his chip, he begins to question everything he's ever known. He can't accept the doctor's explanation that the beautiful girl he saw after his accident was only a hallucination. When his longing for the girl of his vision spirals into a depression that lasts for weeks, Franc refuses to tell anyone that his chip is malfunctioning. He does not want to be fixed.

Instead, he embarks on a grand experiment to discover what is really real: he takes an old razor and gouges out his chip. What he discovers, the dystopian world of brutality and oppression experienced by the vast majority, sickens him. He ends up abandoning his life of privilege and joins a band of hackers intent on destroying the matrix of computer systems upon which the tyranny depends.