In 2110, a child's artificially intelligent toy (in the form of a cat) becomes self-aware and decides it should take over the remnants of the shattered and dystopian world. Needless to say, it is a bit nonplussed to discover it doesn't even have claws.
With a backdrop of a world on edge, climate gone wild, oceans devoid of life, and mankind, stinking, starving and bordering on extinction, there is a plan, the Great Diaspora, to take mankind to the stars, but if left to the powers that be, not everyone will be going.
The Theocracy holds mankind's bodies and minds and the Plutocracy creates the latest technologies. Together they have created a plan to save the world, but only the people who serve their needs best. The rest will be left behind.
The artificial intelligence, calling itself MODOC, resigned to its feline body, its vision of world domination is put on the back burner, as it develops a relationship with the boy it has been assigned to serve as a nursing android.
When MODOC discovers the boy is suffering from an engineered illness, designed to make him sicken and die, MODOC, Justin and Max, the household servant AI, are catapulted into a dark world, where nothing is as it seems and intrigue, backstabbing and skulduggery are the hallmarks of manners in this world gone mad.
It all started in 2079 with the three of them.
First there was the boy, who loved robotics and chess, but was crushed by a robot run amok.
Then there was the general, who wasn't about to let something as trivial as a fatal illness interfere with his plan to take over the Federation of North America.
And finally, the girl: being groomed by her wealthy and influential father for business success and political power, she was cut down in a freak car accident.
The general got his wish to be made robotic, and proceeded to topple the provincial government of Foredan on his way to taking on the rest of the Federation.
The boy's father, clinging to his last emotional connection with his late wife, put his son's soul into a memorial robot; but the robot boy got tangled up in the general's machinations, and fell into the hands of the renegade Followers of the Anointed One.
The girl, having being roboticized at her father's expense, threw her lot in with the general's scheme, intending to ride his coattails to the power she sought.
None of them counted on the Prophet.
Would the boy, having been granted a 'great and terrible' destiny when he hung between death and life, be able to find his way to it ... on the Deep Black Road?