Parker lives in a city in near-future America, which is controlled by megacorporations. In his youth, his parents signed him up to be indentured to a Japanese-American plastics company. After working there for a time, he escaped. Parker winds up in a makeshift but heavily guarded camp. He is unable to escape the tightly guarded camp until he finds some cocaine and valuable antibiotics in the jacket of a dead woman and bribes the guards to let him through.

While waiting to be escorted out, Parker makes his first visit to an apparent sensory perception (ASP) machine. These cassette-driven devices allow users to relive memories by entering a so-called delta state through virtual-reality interfaces. They have become prevalent, first as theater locations and later as portable devices.

After leaving the camp, Parker developed a relationship with a woman named Angela who “had helped him get his papers, found him his first job in ASP” (44). Angela has left him, however, and Parker spends his time revisiting memories using his Sendai Sleep-Master portable ASP machine. He has become addicted to the device and has difficulty sleeping unless he uses it. Compounding his problems, the power grid is taxed, and brownouts are frequent.