Charles Phillips hates the "meat" of himself—the asthma, the weak bones, the fragility of being human. In a desperate bid to become "durable," he visits a back-alley geneticist who promises a software patch for the human soul using the DNA of the world's most resilient bacteria. The treatment is a success, but Charles soon learns that evolution is never safe. As he begins to shed his humanity in the breakroom of a grey corporate office, his coworkers realize that the lockdown isn't to keep people out—it's to keep the "optimized" predator in.