Wyatt Weston lives in an era of no mass media, no private transportation, where police hover over the streets keeping order, where knowledge is limited to one's immediate surroundings, and the collective amnesia of the population. Wyatt works as a sweeper; on a biweekly basis he removes rats, cockroaches, and the homeless from the city. With time on his hands, Wyatt pursues ways to bolster his memory. He encounters Victor Crist, who offers him a job and takes him to the Heartland, a dwelling place of those who rule the city. Wyatt's life becomes a complicated balancing act between a search for his missing girlfriend Jennie and his bizarre involvement with Victor and his family. Victor's grand plan to alter the current society comes to light, and an utterly transformed Wyatt stands upon the threshold of a new world order, far more bizarre than the old, with the past dissolving around him and only the limitless potential of the future beckoning. Paul L. Bates lives on a wooded acre in eastern Massachusetts.