Ply

Set in a far-future city where the state has long since dissolved, the novel follows an unnamed young woman who works as a "pincher," someone who illegally siphons electricity from the power grid controlled by Tensor, a private energy monopoly. Most of the population communicates through icons rather than written language and barters for survival. Security is enforced by CTS, a private contractor that brutally punishes pinchers with beatings, disappearances, or worse. The narrator has designed a revolutionary new battery, called a "brick," that holds far more energy than standard units and charges so slowly it is undetectable by Tensor's monitoring systems.

The story opens as the pincher crosses the river at night to check on a brick she has hidden at a shoreline site. She has agreed to power a concert for a band called Politburo because their manager promised an introduction to the Children, her favorite band. While crossing, she senses for the first time that she is being watched. When she returns to the site, she finds the brick has been examined but left intact, alongside a gift: two extremely rare Faraday components, scarce parts needed for her advanced brick, and a note reading "A token of goodwill. Wave if you want to talk." She disconnects the brick and leaves the components behind, then brings the situation to Anton, her business partner and broker, who investigates and warns that powerful brokers have learned about her brick and will try to recruit her.

Interspersed with the present-day plot, the pincher recounts her childhood. Her parents ran a bookstore; her father was disappeared during the Suppression, a CTS crackdown on activists planning to seize the city's energy and water infrastructure. Her mother, a gifted tinker, raised her alone and taught her the trade. When the mother fell terminally ill, she sent the pincher to live with Nelson, a wealthy young man uptown. Nelson introduced her to music and became her closest companion, but he was addicted to a drug called flunk. When the pincher discovered Nelson was trading away her mother's possessions, she deliberately opened the door for his domineering sister, Mina, despite his prohibition. Mina took Nelson away and had her assistant break the pincher's little finger as punishment. The pincher found refuge with Acevedo, her mother's supplier, who ran a tinkering commune. She spent three years there before falling in love with Sol, a fellow apprentice secretly training as a pincher. When Sol was discovered, she invited the pincher to leave. The pincher walked out, devastating Acevedo.

Sol and the pincher became nomadic pinchers, eventually partnering with Reni, a distiller whose brews complemented their battery-charging operation. The three moved into connected houses on the largely uninhabited far side of the river and built a small commune. This period ended abruptly when Sol died of septic shock from a cut on a nail, and Reni, blaming himself, walked away forever.

Back in the present, the pincher's situation intensifies. After powering the Politburo concert, she sets up a new pinching site at Central Market. On her way home, a rival broker later identified as Leslie forces her off her bike and demands the brick design. Shortly after, an acquaintance named Eunice lures her to the Newsroom, an exclusive venue run by Harlow, a cultural arbiter. There, a powerful broker named Kenneth pressures her to sell the brick. Harlow publicly declares her a star pincher, and the pincher realizes multiple parties are tracking her.

The stalker who left the Faraday components finally reveals herself: Pola, an elderly scientist who has built a particle accelerator in the basement of a former museum uptown. Pola explains that her accelerator can access the fundamental units of spacetime, and that a golden disk at the machine's end will stabilize and manipulate these particles. She claims the technology could fold space, reverse time's arrow, and access alternate realities. To power it, she needs the pincher's help to drain the entire city grid. The pincher agrees, motivated less by Pola's theories than by the prospect of bringing down Tensor and CTS.

The pincher reconciles with Anton, and they devise a plan with his trusted operative, the Champion. They will sell decoy bricks to Kenneth and Leslie while using crews from both to stage diversions that draw security forces from the power station. The pincher moves into Pola's museum to help build two powerful new batteries. Their relationship deepens through shared labor, music, and long conversations. Pola reveals she made a fortune designing computers in the Great Lakes region before retreating into isolation; Casey, a wealthy investor, later funded her current lab but tried to restrict her to commercial work.

The pincher secures deals with Kenneth and Leslie. Before the operation, she lures the reclusive Pola to a concert, but Pola, high on powders, brags about the experiment to Kenneth at the venue. Despite this reckless disclosure, they proceed: The pincher and Pola boat up the river and drain the power station, causing a citywide blackout, while Anton and the Champion execute the diversions.

After the blackout, the pincher takes in Ines, a young girl she finds beaten on the museum steps. Ines, an orphan expelled from a commune, joins their household. Pola teaches the child physics, and they discover Ines has severe vision problems, which they correct with eyeglasses. During the first experimental run, one battery catches fire. The pincher exits the bunker and approaches the active disk, where she has an overwhelming experience of "space taking place," a state outside sequential time. She collapses with radiation contamination.

Pola reports the data is inconclusive but promising. The pincher, growing sicker, decides to leave with her gold payment, but Ines declares she is staying with Pola. The pincher arrives at Anton's office to find Kenneth waiting. Leslie had broken in, stolen the gold, beaten Anton, and locked him in his airtight vault to suffocate. Kenneth demands the battery; the pincher shows her burns as proof it was destroyed. She buys her life with six kilos of gold from Pola's payment.

Devastated, the pincher returns to the lab and agrees to help with a second run. Her condition worsens, and the narrative perspective destabilizes: The first-person voice slides between the pincher, Pola, and Ines, as if the three were superimposed versions of a single life. On the eve of the second experiment, Casey arrives with a paramilitary force. He reveals Ines has been his agent, planted to report on Pola's progress. Ines defies him, declaring she wants to stay with Pola, and begs forgiveness. Pola, threatening to destroy the disk, negotiates their release in exchange for running the machine under Casey's watch. She kisses the pincher goodbye and sends her and Ines away on the cargo bike.

As the two reach the crest of the bridge, a pillar of smoke rises from Pola's part of town, followed by the sound of an explosion. Both understand that Pola has destroyed the lab, and herself, rather than surrender her life's work. Ines holds the pincher's hand, rubbing her crooked little finger, and helps the dying woman onto the bike. Together, they begin the descent toward the pincher's house across the river.