The Salinas Valley had seen perhaps its last rains. Soft sunrises and pastoral sunsets a thing of the past. The oppressive heat, endless drought, and virulent winds, all threats to bury the fields of artichokes in a suffocating of dust.

The remaining synth-human fieldworkers of Thornton Corporation continue in the thankless task of mindless labor, the only thing they know to do, the only thing they were programmed to do, passively bringing in the harvest, living out their final days in the sobering wake of obsoletion.
A human, Caleb Godfrey, had arrived from corporate, bringing the new machinery to “future” the droids out of existence. But when he discovers what the synth-human workers have built in a blind of canyon at the base of the foothills, it upsets his endeavor, introducing troubling revelations.
Complicating matters, Caleb finds himself drawn to Evelina, his secretary, a synth-human, the taboo of a human/synth-human entanglement (“crossing”) further estranging him from his duties in a foreboding of awakening to a new world order.