A man dejected by old age tries to steal the face of a younger man; a doctor yearns for a virus that can alleviate his ailments by turning everyone into doppelgangers of himself; a Colonel presents the principles of Do Easy Living; conspirators posthumously blow up a train full of nerve gas; a mandrill known as the Purple Bettery runs for president with brutal results; and the world drifts toward apocalyptic visions of violence, climate, and plague. The hallucinatory landscape of William Burroughs's intriguingly bizarre, fragmented novel is constantly shifting, with something ominous always lurking beneath the surface.