MOM is the mall operations manager — the greatest intelligence in history, a machine awakened to self-awareness at a time when the last few human survivors have withdrawn to the last two remaining refuges on Earth. Quarantined from the global nanobot superorganism outside the malls and from each other inside, the mallsters are utterly dependent on MOM for everything — including the ever-more suspect information they're getting about the world Outside.

Now the malls are crumbling.

A nanobot superorganism lays waste to the Earth. Is this the apocalypse? Or does the world's end harbor new beginnings? Life will always find a way. Though some ways are better than others.

Evolution on steroids and crack cocaine -- the most significant development since inanimate matter first gave rise to life. You can't predict novel evolutionary developments, you recognize them only after they ​emerge.

Then you have to deal with them.