The picture of the future is striking in its contrasts: resources are exhausted, cities are dead, the gap between poor savages and wealthy owners of new technologies is insurmountable. At the cost of exhausting work, perseverance, betrayal and luck on the flooded shores of the Gulf of Mexico, teenagers must get out of the “bottom” and survive. They mine non-ferrous metals in abandoned oil tankers, take risks, dream, and grow up. And in the best traditions of adventure stories and novels of education, one chooses between feeling and reason, noble, “right” actions and momentary gain.