Living the ideal life is a human right, unless you're unregistered. Living under the watchful eye of the Metrics Worldwide Government has its perks. Citizens are assigned a life, so they don't worry about finding schools, jobs, or spouses for themselves. They're even allowed to have one child, enabling them to focus on raising an ideal son or daughter and experience an optimally satisfying family life. The only people left out are the unlucky accidental second children, called the unregistered. For 20-year-old Bristol, this is the only life he knows. But he can't shake the feeling that something is wrong with his world, and spends his nights painting controversial murals in low-profile parts of town. Metrics doesn't like the murals, or the frustrations of the unregistered citizens they represent. They enact their long-debated unregistered solution: publicly, they announce the relocation of all unregistered citizens to far-off desert states. But when Bristol and his friends discover the dark truth behind the plan, they must work together to escape the clutches of their motherland, and survive long enough to discover an unknown world.