In the future, humans enriched with cockroach DNA dominate the planet. The old humans, fast-tracked for extinction, scurry to and from impoverished homes at the beck and call of the new elite, the magnates and managers that control all. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Capitalism thrives as labor unions are outlawed, and, soon, magnates, with antennae quivering, will face down those who do the work. The slow and the weak, the old and the tired, will get stepped on like so many bugs.

Or will they?

Tom Fried is a middle-aged man who works for a giant...