Noriko is a Stratollite designer in Tucson, Arizona of the near future. Stratollites are large balloons that orbit that Earth. They provided humans with an alternate way to link paid cloud clusters and peer-to-peer systems, replacing the originally satellite-based web with a much easier-to-use, less expensive balloon system. Noriko's baby is the Aesir, the most advanced Stratollite to date, which will provide humans from all sectors–space specialists, government agencies, defense workers–with unbounded possibility.

One day, Noriko realizes that the Aegis has been hijacked. Disobeying orders that she remain grounded (the product of having used the Aegis to spy on her cheating husband not long before, violating privacy laws), Noriko races to catch another balloon, traditionally used for skydiving tourists, to bring her up to Aegis. Fending off her assistant, Richard's, warnings and a pesky conference call with investors, Noriko empties the other balloon of its passengers and convinces its pilot, Gavin, to take her up to the Aegis.

She zip-lines to the Aegis, which she finds has been filled with bombs that are set to detonate in less than ten minutes. She orders Gavin to leave her and begins taking pictures of all the bombs and sending as much information as she can to her boss, Zhou, so that in the event of her death, they'll be able to track down who did it. With a few minutes to spare, she leaps off the Aegis, activates her skyscraper, and descends to Earth, dismayed that the Aegis will be destroyed but determined to take up the effort again tomorrow.