In the not so distant future a global authority has established an equitable distribution of carbon energy resources, driving prices too high for the consumers in the Carbon Nation. After a civil war over the use of renewable resources, the Global Power Authority banned the transfer of wind and water power into electricity. Trintico is a pocket of civilization built amidst the vast post-petroleum-apocalypse wastelands. It is founded on a social machine carefully designed and engineered by the brilliant Secretary of Electricity. The citizens of Induction Town walk on giant treadwheels to produce electricity. Their massive diets power the great nation Trintico.

Shevi and Jackson are to young people trying to keep up with the momentum of society. They only want to do their jobs well enough to help their parents pay the rent. Shevi is a big girl with a bright future. She needs to eating enough to keep a place on Wheel Three, and marrying into one of the biggest families in I Town. Jackson is a skinny kid. He needs to survive one more crime, then maybe he can get a legitimate job. They have no future together. But each time they meet, the attraction between them grows stronger until it threatens the status quo.

Mr. Myrtle is a small man with big ambitions. He can make himself look better to the people who maintain the social machine of Trintico if he makes sure these two kids are reminded of their proper places.

Built in the wake of W3, the Wind and Water War, the Trintico Corporate Society was established by the great leader Merwin Burgess and engineered by the brilliant Michael Faraday to conform to the sanctions of the Global Power Authority. Within the three separate, sovereign and interdependent city-states of Trintico, the people were protected from the horrors of the post-petroleum wastelands that surrounded them. They worked hard to maintain their way of life. through natural selection of values and habits, they developed a social machine that became a self-imposed dystopia. Polarized and unsustainable, the machine has now encountered two young people who will oppose its construction and operation because it opposes them. Shevi and Jackson will resist the will of the Social Machine until they overcome it or it destroys them.