A catastrophic heat wave kills tens of millions of people across Uttar Pradesh, India.

The Ministry for the Future is established under the Paris Climate Accords to advocate for future generations.

Mary Murphy is appointed as the first minister of the newly formed Ministry for the Future.

India announces a unilateral plan to dump sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to lower global temperatures.

Mary authorizes legal counsel Tatiana to file international lawsuits seeking climate justice for future generations.

Frank May kidnaps Mary and argues the ministry must embrace targeted assassinations against major polluters.

Mary confronts Badim about starting a secret black wing, only to learn one already secretly exists.

Ministry economists Dick and Janus Athena propose creating carbon coin to incentivize carbon sequestration.

US Federal Reserve chair Jane Yablonski rejects Mary's carbon coin proposal to protect American financial dominance.

The Ministry for the Future's headquarters is bombed and destroyed while the building is empty at night.

Mary persuades the Swiss Federal Council to back the carbon coin economy, gaining crucial state support.

Saudi Arabia's ruling family is overthrown and the new government applies for carbon coin payments.

A global economic depression collapses traditional banking systems and effectively ends capitalism as previously practiced.

Tatiana is assassinated outside her safe house, and Mary instructs Badim to find and kill those responsible.

Mary retires as minister of the Ministry for the Future, handing leadership to Badim.

A catastrophic heat wave in India kills tens of millions and forces the newly formed Ministry for the Future into urgent action. Mary Murphy, the ministry's appointed leader, pursues legal, economic, and covert strategies to slow carbon emissions while navigating resistance from global financial powers. Her kidnapping by activist Frank May pushes her to accept that the ministry's cautious approach must expand into darker territory. The proposal of carbon coin and the destruction of the ministry's own headquarters mark a turning point that gives Mary unexpected political leverage through Swiss government backing. Saudi Arabia's fall and a global economic depression gradually break the grip of fossil fuel capitalism. The novel closes with Mary retiring after passing the torch, the world measurably better but the struggle far from over.

Mary Murphy and the Ministry for the Future's fight to save the planet.

An Indian aid worker rescues Frank May, the sole survivor of the heat wave, badly burned and barely alive.

India's new Coalition government overthrows entrenched parties, abolishes the caste system, and embraces clean energy.

Frank contacts the Children of Kali, who reject him as a member but use him to deliver a threat to Westerners.

A trafficked fishing worker is rescued when the Children of Kali destroy the boat and film the operation.

Frank accidentally kills a wealthy partygoer named Edmund by striking him with a piece of driftwood on a beach.

Glaciologists Slawek and Griffen propose pumping water from beneath glaciers to slow their destructive slide into the sea.

Mary and Badim tour Kerala and witness collective farming as a model of New India's egalitarian values.

Frank marries Syrian refugee Syrine, but his violent outbursts eventually destroy their marriage and frighten her daughters.

Armed captors take World Economic Summit attendees hostage at Davos and force them to watch films about inequality.

On Crash Day, an unknown group crashes planes, sinks container ships, and infects cattle, crippling fossil fuel transport.

Griffen's glacier trials prove the pumping plan is technically feasible, but his colleague Pete dies ignoring safety protocols.

YourLock, the ministry's open-source social media platform, achieves global adoption and revolutionizes data ownership and banking.

Namibian mine workers go on strike, and African Union drones subdue the guards and nationalize the mine.

A Syrian refugee woman is released from a Swiss processing camp with a global passport after nearly a decade.

Griffen's Antarctic team pumps a glacier completely dry, demonstrating they can meaningfully slow sea level rise.

While the ministry wages a bureaucratic war, a parallel struggle unfolds through ecoterrorists, displaced people, and individual scientists. The Children of Kali escalate from threats to coordinated attacks, crashing planes and sinking ships in a campaign that reshapes global fossil fuel economies faster than any treaty. Frank May stumbles through violence and failed relationships as a traumatized lone actor, while refugee voices bear witness to the human cost of climate-driven instability. Scientists like Griffen pursue unglamorous applied solutions in the Antarctic, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Ordinary people — farmers, mine workers, refugees — enact the slow work of rebuilding. By the novel's end, a Syrian woman once imprisoned in a camp opens a restaurant, and Griffen's team pumps a glacier dry, small victories that together signal a healing world.

Ecoterrorism, refugees, and the scientists fighting on the ground.

Frank realizes accumulated Western privilege, not fate, likely allowed him to survive while Indians around him died.

India carries out the Pinatubo operation despite treaty objections, declaring the action was right and necessary.

Ministry scientists declare the world is on the brink of collapse, and Mary shocks Badim by saying any means of action are acceptable.

Frank undergoes multiple failed PTSD therapies, travels to Antarctica seeking escape, and begins radicalizing himself toward violence.

Frank escapes after holding Mary hostage and hides in a community garden shed using a forged passport identity.

Griffen's first test pump beneath a glacier runs successfully for four days before the water stops flowing.

The Arctic Ocean ice melts completely, triggering an accelerating feedback loop that threatens to make the planet uninhabitable.

Mary visits Frank in prison for the first time, feels unexpected sympathy, and promises to help with his lawyer.

Russia deploys pebble-mob drone missiles, instantly rendering conventional armies and traditional weapons systems obsolete.

Badim returns to India and reveals to the Children of Kali that he is their original founder and leader.

Frank collapses while hiking in the Alps with Mary and is later diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor.

Carbon emissions show a significant measured drop for the first time, signaling the climate battle is making real progress.

Frank introduces Mary to his quiet friend Art Nolan, an airship captain who loves watching animals from the sky.

Frank dies and Mary, overwhelmed by grief, wanders alone to the Ganymede statue in Zurich to reflect.

Mary and Art spend carnival night together in Zurich, and Mary feels a profound sense of connection and collective hope.

Beneath the headline events of the Ministry's work lies a series of quieter but decisive turning points. Frank's realization that privilege rather than fate saved him sets him on a path of radicalization, while India's unilateral Pinatubo operation signals that nations will act outside the law when survival is at stake. The revelation that Badim secretly founded the Children of Kali collapses the boundary between the ministry's public diplomacy and its covert violence. Individual moments of connection — Mary's first prison visit with Frank, Frank introducing her to Art — carry as much weight as geopolitical shifts. Russia's pebble-mob missiles and a measured carbon drop mark the moment when the tide finally turns. The novel closes with Mary at carnival beside Art, choosing personal connection over despair, having passed the torch of institutional leadership.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that shape the novel's arc.