Summary

The novel opens on a morning in April in the year 2000. 28-year-old capital trader Eric Packer is in his New York City apartment after a sleepless night. He had tried to read himself to sleep with poetry and science texts, but insomnia has become a frequent problem for him. He decides that he wants a haircut. He takes an elevator to the ground floor of his building where he is met by Torval, who is Eric’s bodyguard and head of security. Torval says that traffic will be slow because the United States president is in town. Eric enters his limousine, where he is met by a man named Shiner. Shiner is Eric’s chief of technology. Unsettlingly, Shiner expresses a vague uncertainty about his and Eric’s work. He says that he enjoys the trading of capital but that he sometimes feels...