In a very near future a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don`t tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, proud author of what may well be the world`s last diary. Despite his job at an outfit called `Post-Human Services`, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn`t it? Lenny`s from a different century. He TOTALLY loves books (or `printed, bound media artifacts` as they`re now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel 24-year-old Korean-American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in `Images` and a minor in `Assertiveness`. When riots break out in New York`s Central Park, the city`s streets are lined with National Guard tanks, and patient Chinese creditors look ready to foreclose on the whole mess, Lenny vows to convince his fickle new love that in a time without standards or stability, there is still value in being a real human being.