Meet Jerry Shimizu. He's a tough, two-fisted fixer who works for the boss of Habitat Four, one of five Japanese refugee communities built on abandoned oil platforms off the coast of the United States in a hard-edged dystopian future of technological decline and climate chaos. His beat is Shoreside, the bustling, brawling, anything-goes temporary port on the beach two miles from the Habitats.

He's trying to bust a robbery ring that's preying on Shoreside gambling money when he encounters a mysterious woman with strange mental abilities. Before long he's having to dodge hoods sent after him by Shoreside's crime lord, agents of the US government, and spies from its archrival, the European Union. Does all this have anything to do with rumors of a secret supercomputer project in the now-abandoned country inland from Shoreside -- a project that once left a string of corpses behind it, and now might yield a fabulous trove of old world technology? Jerry's going to find out...if he can survive long enough.