Nothing beats watching cat videos.
Especially in a world where cats don't exist anymore.
Flora loves nothing more than cats.
And Firmament, an advanced algorithm, shows her exactly the kinds of videos she loves.
So, with a practically infinite reservoir of cat videos, Flora is fairly content--even while living in a coffin-like metal booth. All human survivors live in one of these booths in a pit, after all.
Everything stays splendid, until an undeniably real-sounding meow interrupts Flora's regular cat-video-viewing session.
When confronted with the real, what is a person used to the virtual supposed to do?