No one would have willfully chosen the generating of places we called marooned places, just as no one would have chosen the extinction of frogs and of polar bears, or the decimation of our pine forests by the explosion in bark beetles.
-- Narrator (Part I)

Importance: Early on, the novel invokes widespread environmental destruction as an event that precipitated the sweeping changes which led to authoritative rule in AutoAmerica. Grant likens the changes that happened environmentally to the changes in technological automation, which caused the elimination of millions of jobs, including Grant's. The narrator acknowledges what led to AI systems like Aunt Nettie gaining superior power, noting that he initially gave in to its "associated convenience" (8). The same notion applies to climate change, he believes, saying, "It was we who were responsible" (8).

And as a father, all I wanted was to see my daughter, in all her idiosyncratic humanity, bloom.
-- Narrator (Part I)

Importance: Grant's narration shows that...