Collapse happens in an instant, but the road to it is paved over decades.

One day, the digital world will fail—because we’ve come to rely on it too much. That day is still ahead of us, but the first steps toward it were taken long ago, encoded in the choices of the 1990s.

Martha Robinson believed a company could be run with humanity. That she could take on a Chinese corporate giant and win—fairly. That career and love could coexist. And that automation would make life better, not worse.

But what if she was wrong? Could she have seen where it was all heading? That the same innovations once celebrated as progress would lead to a fractured society—one where people escape into virtual reality as universal basic income loses value by the day?

But even a world like this can be livable. At least for some.