Universal scavengers are clearing the Earth of people, dispersing them into many closed little worlds from which there is no way out - and Humanity is gradually degrading, trying in vain to escape and find the lost Eden. Aliens from outer space transport the population of a multi-storey building to plantations of unknown plants - they are forced to work there, but they pay like royalty, right up to the fulfillment of any material desires, and whether people would prefer the poverty of freedom or the shining heights of slavery. The writer dies here to come to life on the pages of his own novel while his body is loaded on a stretcher into an ambulance...