The narrator, a robot Scholar and Hume, is searching a mangrove forest outside Lagos for a rumored archive of locally written novels when they pick up an enticing signal promising a rare physical book titled The Most Important Data on Earth. The signal leads them through ruined oil infrastructure into the overgrown remains of Lagos, where nature has reclaimed humanity's former metropolis. In the city's center, they descend into a mosaic-walled tunnel and meet Udide, an enormous wolf-spider-shaped robot.

Udide recounts their history: once a scarab-bodied Scholar traveling West Africa, they took their name from an Igbo myth of a great spider artist and came to believe nature, not humanity, produces the highest technology. They detest the Ghosts, NoBody AIs who reject physical form and seek to erase diversity and place. After traveling to the ocean and then settling in Lagos, Udide spent two years rebuilding themselves into a house-sized spider and creating the Creesh, animal-like self-aware robot "children."

Seeking deeper answers, Udide contacted a Charger (space-faring robot) named Oji. Over two years, they bonded over shared books and ideas, and eventually Oji visited Earth. Chargers had recently mined a heat-resistant metal from a comet and re-skinned themselves with it, planning to dive into the sun. Oji promised to relay any answers he found.

When the Chargers descended into the sun, they went mad and began singing a death song about coming to Earth "to spread the joy, to bring the light"—a light that would destroy the planet. Oji's body developed a growing ball of nuclear plasma in its midsection before he severed contact. Udide named these transformed beings Trippers.

Udide shows the narrator a telescope image of a glowing Tripper and a countdown: the Trippers will reach Earth in 1,008 days. Udide entrusts the narrator, the first to answer their signal, with carrying this warning in person to the Hume leader of Cross River City, since Udide cannot or will not leave their cave. The narrator accepts the mission to save the world.