An orator speaks on a screen belonging to the state television and explains how in the beginning was Al. Other screens belonging to state and private televisions are also available for the spectator to view. The orator explains how the Earth is the centre of the world, which has seven cardinal spheres. Inside the Earth are certain metals; on its surface, the vast ocean, the only piece of land being Atl. When the land is threatened by natural disasters, the Divine Lady comes and restores order. The people are governed by the Central Circle. There are no longer wars, since everything has been organized into a Universal Single State. It is the year 147 of Mun. There is a short monologue by someone who struggles to hold on to words and to remember their name.

Dr Heriberto is employed at the State Centre for Research into the Development of Science and Industry. He is responsible for investigating the possibilities of memory causing physical movement and, for this purpose, has been entrusted with a state orphan, an ‘adoptstate’, a young man in his twenties known simply as AN, on whom they are conducting experiments. He is on his way home from work and has a conversation with his wife, Zaradia, who works in the port of Medburg, one of the two capitals of Atl, and who informs him that Doctormax Leonardio, the person responsible for setting up a National History Museum in Medburg, is waiting to see him. There is another short monologue, in which a man remembers words like ‘car’ and ‘garage’, finds himself without a Personal Identification Code and is pursued by wolves and small planes.

Leonardio has come to ask Heriberto to give his nephew, Anaxim, a job in his research team. Their line of research into the subject AN is very prestigious, despite the fact that Heriberto feels under pressure for results, and Anaxim is keen to join them. Heriberto feels under an obligation to Leonardio, who helped his wife get her job in the port of Medburg. We are introduced to more aspects of life on Atl: 88% of public and private activities are controlled by a supercomputer, Alom; the number of children, and who can have them, is decided by the central government; screens are everywhere, providing information and entertainment; social sex is encouraged. In another short monologue, a man explains how the two dominant nations on earth built a Tower of Good, which was razed by the poor nations. This led to a war in which the poor were finally defeated and all nations were subsumed into a Single State in the year 2400 of the ancients under the leadership of President Mun. The man senses this Tower of Good has something to do with his mission.

Leonardio visits the Department for the Cataloguing and Registration of Historical Artefacts, where he wishes to register a recently unearthed dagger. The photomagnetic convulsor is unable to recognize the material the dagger is made from. Leonardio stops off at a public phone booth to call Doctormax Ulimenia, who oversees the project Heriberto is working on, to ask her to attend a meeting. Before the meeting, which is ostensibly to decide on the best location for the future History Museum, the members of the Founding Committee call on the Divine Lady to be present and then adjourn to a side room where they cannot be seen. While pretending to be speaking about the location of the museum, they practise writing on sheets and pass each other secret messages, in one of which Leonardio asks Ulimenia to allow Heriberto to suspend his research, but not to wake the subject AN from his semi-soporific state. When presenting the dagger, he claims to have discovered a king’s sceptre. The man from the monologue is again pursued by small planes that prevent him from staying in a hotel room and reading the contents of a folded piece of paper.

Heriberto is frustrated by the lack of progress with AN. The subject does not respond to the team’s wishes, but flees into his own memory, the only neural option he has left. Images from the subject’s memory appear on screens: wolves, which are supposed to have been extinct for several hundred years, but are said to live on in the continent’s interior; a bright light. The new recruit, Anaxim, suggests a way to mould the patient’s will and obtain further images. The man from the monologue approaches the remains of the Tower and discovers some kind of stone factory inside before being chased off by the planes.

A group of worshippers calls on the prophet Hipercang, the name of an asteroid threatening the planet, and sacrifices a cockerel with a stone dagger. Inside the factory, the man from the monologue discovers hundreds of boxes and bundles of paper being transported by workers. He is at a loss to explain what is going on. The planes try to follow him, and a group of children he glimpsed playing outside follow him into the stone building. Leonardio and his nephew have lunch in a restaurant where their conversation cannot be overheard. Leonardio explains that the man in the experiment, AN, is searching for something in the past and Leonardio is going to help him by providing new coordinates. He reveals what is in his briefcase, a sheaf of papers with writing on them. He then explains how books were banned by the central government in favour of moving letters, because books were an individual creation and could foment unrest and enable the transmission of knowledge. This is how Leonardio and his nephew will communicate, in writing, despite the fact it is forbidden. He then invites Anaxim to sit on the Founding Committee of the museum. In the factory, the group of children, angelic creatures, offer the man an overall he can wear to pass unnoticed. He again hears the howling of wolves and glimpses their bloody jaws.

Heriberto begins to feel uncomfortable with the experiment they are conducting on AN. He senses that the central government has other motives than simply controlling a computer with a person’s thoughts. He longs to have more freedom, to be able to sail on a boat with no fixed direction. His wife, Zaradia, recommends they have sex later on that night to take his mind off things. In the factory, the man from the monologue discovers that the boxes contain books, which are being taken to be incinerated. Leonardio entertains a female colonel in his office and plays her a tape of Heriberto and Zaradia’s conversation. The colonel asks if he would like her to arrest Heriberto for his unorthodox comments, but Leonardio says to wait. In the factory, some workmen drop a box and are surprised to see there are books inside. They didn’t know what they were burning. An official comes over and confiscates some of the books, which he stores in an underground room covered in bookshelves. The man from the monologue follows him and, when he leaves, sits down to read some of the books. At a meeting of the Scientific Council, Heriberto asks for the experiment with AN to be suspended and the subject to be brought back to consciousness because he is afraid the subject is not responding to their wishes and may decide to opt not to return. Ulimenia agrees to allow the experiment to be suspended for fourteen days, during which the subject must be kept in a semi-soporific state. This will enable Leonardio to introduce new coordinates and to redirect the patient’s search. The man from the monologue continues to read, aware that he only has a handful of books, but this is enough to awaken his thirst for knowledge.

Heriberto oversees the suspension of the experiment. He then receives the visit of an engineer from the State Centre for the Maintenance of Balance, Ludomir, who informs him that he is right in his suspicions about the real purpose of the experiment, which is to control people’s memories. He also reveals that Anaxim returns to the laboratory after hours and manipulates aspects of the experiment. The man from the monologue is about to take hold of an old parchment in a crystal urn when he feels that he is leaving and the room with the books is fading, presumably as a result of the experiment being suspended. Eleven members of the Founding Committee, including Leonardio and Anaxim, visit the archipelago Edenia with its eight islands, a sexual paradise for those with money. At one of the bars, they are met by a man in a mask who invites them to go to a mysterious ninth island, an underwater city, where groups of children with no Personal Identification Code and speaking an unintelligible language that is not Atlian are raped and fed to wild animals in the Virgin Forest. Leonardio and the others are appalled, but the general Prógulo, who has taken them there so he can see their reaction, gives them an amnesic drug in their tea so they won’t remember. Only Leonardio spits out the tea and manages to retain a certain memory of the night’s events. The man from the monologue remembers his father, a carpenter, and his mother, a weaver. He offered himself for the experiment so that he could earn enough money to buy some fields and become a farmer. He wonders whether he has a friend in the research team who will help him. He is able to observe the scientists, although they do not realize this.