In the 24th century, the tomb of Adam Hernandez is excavated, and his memories are extracted to detail his journey. Archaeologists reveal that Adam and his daughter Evelyn traveled in a world claimed by an ecosystem of machines, seeking out other people like them. This world is full of dangers, as mechanical species have taken their place at the top of the food chain. They travel across the ruins of the United States, encountering new threats every day as evolution is fast-occurring in the new world. In just 10 years, machines have evolved into an ecosystem that closely mimics the natural world that we know. They have taken over, and the process seems to mimic Earth's epochs so closely that Adam speculates an artificial intelligence is guiding the evolutionary pathway of mechanical life forms. Adam does what he can to raise his daughter in the chaos, though he lives with the guilt of inadvertently causing this nightmare. The world can begin and end with one man.