Bix Bouton disguises himself as a graduate student and joins an academic Big Questions discussion group hosted by Ted Hollander.

Bix meets Rebecca Amari on the subway and they agree to maintain each other's cover stories as strangers.

Bix walks his old East River neighborhood, fails to recall Rob's drowning clearly, and calls his mother-in-law for guidance.

Alfred Hollander's screaming project ends when bus driver Mr. Kinghorn offers him a surprisingly reasonable ultimatum.

Miles Hollander takes his affair partner Janna on a reckless car ride and crashes into a lagoon, seriously injuring her.

Miles attempts suicide by jumping from a hot-air balloon, and Drew grabs him by the neck to save his life.

Miles moves in with Drew and Sasha after his hospitalization, and their arguments gradually transform into genuine friendship.

Miles passes the bar exam and is elected mayor, completing a total reinvention of his life.

Lincoln's boss O'Brien is exposed as the company's internal saboteur and fired, shocking the entire team.

M and Lincoln get married in a ceremony officiated by State Senator Miles Hollander.

Melora Kline sells her mother Miranda's intellectual property to Bix Bouton to rescue her father's failing music business.

Roxy Kline accesses her father Lou's memories of their London trip and learns he regretted bringing her along.

Lulu is shot during a Citizen Agent spy mission and returns home traumatized and destabilized.

The Conduits band reunites on Jazz Attenborough's boat, and Lulu finally meets her biological father for the first time.

Gregory Bouton visits his former professor Athena after his father Bix's death and commits to writing his novel about city dwellers.

The novel opens with tech genius Bix Bouton, creator of the Own Your Unconscious memory-sharing platform, craving new purpose and disguising himself to reconnect with the kind of intellectual discourse that once drove him. Meanwhile, Miles Hollander's obsession with a perfect image collapses into addiction and a near-fatal suicide attempt, from which Drew rescues him and the two forge an unlikely friendship that helps Miles rebuild his life entirely. As Miles rises to political office and Lincoln's analytical worldview is repeatedly overturned by unpredictable love, the novel traces how human connection consistently defies algorithmic prediction. Melora Kline's decision to sell her mother Miranda's intellectual property to Bix deepens a family rift while fueling the expansion of collective consciousness technology across society. Lulu's dangerous double life as a spy culminates in a shooting, but she recovers by finally meeting her biological father during a reunion that draws multiple characters together. The novel closes with Bix's son Gregory, who rejected his father's technology in favor of fiction, finding renewed inspiration to write his own story of human lives after Bix's death.

The core story of technological ambition, collapse, and human reinvention.

Bix spots a subway advertisement for anthropologist Miranda Kline's lecture and decides to attend the related Big Questions gathering.

PhD candidate Rebecca Amari seeks out Alfred Hollander after his father Ted shows her Alfred's documentary on geese migration.

Alfred and his girlfriend Kristen visit Miles's family in Chicago, and Alfred deliberately triggers a family argument about Jack Stevens.

Alfred tracks down Jack Stevens at his home and decides to call Rebecca back about collaborating on her research.

Miles Hollander is shocked to discover that his former kleptomaniac cousin Sasha has become a successful sculptor happily married to Drew.

Miles uses the Hey Whatever Happened To memory program and discovers his former drug dealer Damon is serving time in prison.

Drew decides to skip work and join Miles on the hot-air balloon tour after noticing Miles slump with disappointment at being left alone.

Lincoln confesses his feelings to M over lunch and suggests they have sex together; she firmly rejects him.

Lou Kline is inspired to become a music producer after a night of live music and marijuana in a California redwood forest.

Charlie Kline accesses her father Lou's memories through Own Your Unconscious but discovers nothing particularly revelatory about him.

Roxy uploads her own memories to a Consciousness Cube and briefly feels connected to something larger than her damaged life.

Chris Salazar loses track of his colleague Comstock and is left stranded and alone on a street corner with a mysterious suitcase.

Chris drags the mysterious suitcase to his grandmother's home and awkwardly tries to explain his story-algebraizing job over dinner.

Molly breaks away from the country club and sneaks off with Lulu, Colin, and Chris to smoke weed in the woods.

Ames Hollander unexpectedly hits a winning home run as a child, a moment that briefly transforms him into a family legend.

These events trace the quieter but significant turning points that shape the novel's key characters from the margins. Bix's rediscovery of intellectual hunger leads him to Miranda Kline's world, while Alfred's confrontational experiments crack open into genuine curiosity and a willingness to collaborate. Miles's self-destruction is rooted in small choices made long before his dramatic fall, and Drew's impulsive decision to board the balloon with Miles quietly sets the entire redemption arc in motion. Lou Kline's origin as a music producer reveals how one creative night can give rise to both an empire and a complicated legacy, while his daughters Charlie and Roxy each turn to his memories seeking answers and find only disappointment. Chris Salazar's strange evening with a mysterious suitcase and Molly's afternoon of freedom with Lulu and her friends offer glimpses into how human connection sneaks up on people when they stop trying to engineer it. Ames Hollander's brief childhood glory, nearly forgotten by everyone including himself, closes the novel by quietly asking what the facts of a life really mean without a story to carry them.

The supporting moments that shape each character's path and choices.

Bix Bouton breaks his own rules and walks New York City alone at night for the first time in ten years.

Miles Hollander's doctor cuts off his prescriptions entirely, pushing him toward drug dealers and a rapidly deepening addiction.

Drew and Bix reunite to watch Bix's recorded memories of the night Rob drowned, leaving Drew more traumatized than before.

Miranda Kline locates the mysterious indigenous Brazilian tribe that every other researcher before her had failed to find.

Melora and Lana Kline sell their mother Miranda's algorithms to social media companies, betraying her explicit wishes.

Miranda Kline vanishes into the Mondrian virtual world as an eluder, and her daughter Lana eventually follows her.

Roxy Kline secretly smuggles drugs into her recovery clinic and continues using despite her ongoing treatment program.

Noreen forces her way into Jules Jones's hiding spot at the Salazars' party and persuades him to come outside with her.

Noreen and Jules Jones measure the backyard fence together and end up standing side by side, staring silently up at the sky.

Joseph writes to Lulu's mother Dolly seeking help for Lulu's deteriorating mental health after she returns from the shooting.

Lulu discovers that movie star Jazz Attenborough is her biological father and begins scheming through multiple contacts to meet him.

Lulu engineers her way into Jazz's inner circle by arranging a band interview through Jules Jones, securing a job as Jazz's assistant.

Lulu has dead government surveillance devices surgically removed from her body through an underground network facilitated by Jules Jones.

Gregory learns that Bix's attempt to record his own dying consciousness failed entirely, leaving no final uploaded memories behind.

Bix's lawyer Hannah announces that Bix left a substantial sum of money to his competitor Chris Salazar's Mondrian platform.

This pool captures the pivotal revelations and quiet fractures that shift the novel's characters irrevocably. Bix's lonely nighttime walk signals his deep restlessness, while Miles's medical abandonment sets off a chain of self-destruction, and Drew's traumatic experience watching Bix's uploaded memories of Rob's death proves that technology cannot heal grief on its own. Miranda Kline's discovery of the Brazilian tribe and her daughters' subsequent betrayal of her life's work establishes the novel's central tension between knowledge, commercialization, and human cost. Roxy's secret drug use, Noreen's volatile feud with Jules Jones, and the unexpected tenderness that emerges when they finally stand together beneath the sky illuminate how genuine human connection forms in unplanned and unlikely ways. Lulu's discovery of her father's identity sets off a cascade of strategic messages and schemes through overlapping networks that ultimately reunite old bandmates, remove her trauma, and heal her fractured sense of self. The novel ends with two quiet revelations: that Bix's dying consciousness could not be captured, and that he left his fortune to the very competitor whose platform swallowed the people he had spent his life trying to connect.