While Richard "Dodge" Forthrast undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge's brain to be turned back on. An eternal afterlife - the Bitworld - is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem.