While mourning his mother and listening for her voice through a ghost box, an editor intercepts a series of frantic mayday messages—fragmented transmissions sent from the year 2141. Spanning five days for the sender but arriving over five years for the editor, the recordings follow a doctor adrift on the waves in a high-tech safety coffin—a final, cryptic gift from his father lost to the deep.

Aided by Bartleby, a rebel AI fighting to bridge the gap across time, the doctor recounts the case that led to his exile: the discovery of a pregnant woman with no past washed up on the manicured sands of Laguna Beach. Alongside his partner, a yogic detective, the duo's desperate effort to uncover her identity and save her children unearths a vast conspiracy. Little does the doctor know that this woman's fate will collide with the long-abandoned search for his own parents.

Now, under the shadow of a gathering storm, his coffin is being drawn toward a watery graveyard off San Nicolas Island. Locked in a lethal race against an uncle who is "helping" him find the wreckage, the doctor must face the ghosts of the past before the sea claims his future. As the editor pieces together the puzzle, he must find a way to reach across the static and help rewrite the coming ruin—or watch the Republic of California and the rest of the world teeter on the brink of oblivion.