It tells the story of Denis Lange, a fallout shelter engineer who is accidentally trapped in suspended animation as war breaks out in 1970, only to awaken in the early 2100s in Sial IV, an underground city in which humankind lives a life of leisure, having discharged all responsibility to androids. Assigned the android Diana as his personal assistant, Denis ventures through this unsettling idyll, eventually finding a small but tenacious group of resistors who seek to uncover the truth about the compound and its ruler, the mysterious Machiavelli.