The main character and first person narrator is forty-nine-year-old Currie Curtis Curran, a retired mercenary soldier and "cowboy hunter".
Currie's contact with One True is through a copy of the Resuna "meme", a "neurocode" program uploaded into the brain, and an implanted "cellular jack" radio device.
In his briefing by One True, Currie is shown the recorded memories of a mother and daughter beaten, raped, and robbed by Lobo days earlier.
After goodbyes to his wife of 23 years, Mary, Currie is dropped of by diskster (a futuristic, automatically piloted hovercraft) with various high-tech equipment, including an advanced cold weather suit, shape-adjusting ski/snowshoes, and a shelter that self-assembles from collected carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen matter.
Currie's search for Dave resulted in enough information being uploaded that they must abandon his lair and attempt to build another, while remaining undetected by One True's network of surveillance satellites.
While caching supplies, Currie has a skiing fall, and, shaken up and angry, reflexively says "let overwrite, let override", to find himself immediately calm.
The story closes a few years later, with Dave, his wife Nancy, Currie, and Mary listening to Dave's daughter Kelly give a philosophical speech at her high school graduation, while Currie, his cellular jack repaired, converses with One True about Kelly's speech, the reluctance of many people to replace their old, more controlling version of Resuna with new ones, and the nature of the human experience.
Barnes is at least asking us to look the seductive surface of one of SF's moist popular current buzzes and examine what the idea of memes might actually tell us about matters of freedom and human nature.
"[1] Locus reviewer Russell Letson found the novel to be "one of the more intriguing, ingenious, and entertaining chunks of the conversation [in science fiction] about freedom and responsibility, collective good, and individual needs.