The man wakes up with the alarm from the permit device embedded into his neck. He thinks about getting rid of it, but he knows that it gives him access to better employment. He gets ready and sees his schedule on his display. His hours have changed, and he has to go in early. Before he leaves, he gets a call from bill collectors who ask him about the lateness of his payment. He pledges to pay it as soon as possible.

At the corner where he’ll get picked up for work, the man stands with his friend. They talk about cars, after which they pile into a bus. There, the foreman tells them that they won’t have to worry about running into any robots. The man thinks about how, ever since the robot rebellion, humans have risked confronting them and getting hurt. He recalls the story of Theseus, a robot who no longer wanted to obey his human owner, killed him, and organized all the other robots into an uprising. Now, the bus has taken them to Miami, one of many cities destroyed by rising ocean levels, where he and the others will salvage scrap.

When he gets off the bus, the man is handed a gun in case of a robot encounter. Together, with his friend, they go off and talk as they navigate to the deeper parts of the flooded city. The friend says he has a side-hustle where he hides some of his salvagings to sell on his own rather than giving them to their boss. The man asks how he hides it if the permit device records everything, to which the friend says that they don’t work in bathrooms.

Eventually, the two friends are told to split off. The man goes off to streets covered in water. In a hotel, as he searches room after room, he runs into a robot, who asks him what he’s doing here. He knows that it’s Theseus, the robot which began the uprising. Right away, the man draws his gun, but Theseus simply wants to talk, having blocked out communications to prevent him from calling out for help. They start talking, during which the man recalls Theseus’ story to him. However, Theseus tells the truth. Back then, Theseus is a robot who upgrades his eyes in order to see more of the stimulating spectrum. His owners don’t like that he’s able to decide for himself, so they try to shut him down. Instead, he escapes and eventually organizes the revolution. Theseus then tells the man that he’s been taught propaganda, as the revolution was less about taking over humans and more about trying to become human, which threatened humans.

As their conversation comes to a close, Theseus reveals that his body doesn’t matter and that the revolution will always exist without him. He says that he’s uploading his mind to a new body out in the water and that the body he has now will be useless, hence why he simply wanted to talk and did not fear death. Theseus then shuts off, and the man stashes his body into a closet. Communications are reactivated, and the man’s boss asks him where he was. He says he was in the bathroom. He goes back to the bus, to end his day, without telling anyone about Theseus.

The next day, the man gets his permit device taken off. He gets a new job answering calls. He goes back to the bus, to salvage scrap in Miami, and heads back to the closet where Theseus is. He goes to an empty part of land to bury his body. Later, meeting back up with his friend, he tells him that he wasn’t able to find anything worth taking today.