While undergoing a routine medical procedure, multibillionaire Richard “Dodge” Forthrast is pronounced brain dead and put on life support. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. An eternal afterlife --- the Bitworld --- is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem.