In a glass-walled city ruled by the totalitarian One State, citizens have no privacy, no identity, no freedom, and no names: they each bear only a number. As they prepare to launch their first spaceship, The Integral, citizens are implored to write poems, treatises, and manifestos glorifying the One State and honoring this extraordinary time. D-503, the builder of The Integral, is not a writer, but he gamely takes up the challenge and discovers something quite shocking: he has a soul, a spirit, desires which exceed the container that the One State has set out for him, that make him long for something new. In the discovery of his own power of imagination is the greatest threat the One State will ever face—and his one chance for freedom.