2030. While studying the statistics of expanded suicides and self-destruction, big data analyst Kevin Moss notices that the spread dynamics of these incidents resemble the progression of a pandemic. However, he never manages to understand the nature of the disease that would later be named after him – and neither does the reader understand at first, until the truth is revealed.

Among the characters in the novel are Thierry and Sonia, a young couple spending their second honeymoon on Pleasure Island, a hidden tropical paradise; Michelle, Thierry’s lover, her son Quentin, and her non-binary lover Vic; Sonia’s parents, Russian-Jewish immigrants who have made a successful business in the US; Mirabel, a flight attendant suffering from alcoholism and nymphomania; Charlie Kumamoto, a Japanese- American marine stationed on the other side of Pleasure Island; participants and victims of the war in Yugoslavia who are futilely trying to forget their past and heal the wounds that have already been passed down to their children.

All of them, in one way or another, will encounter Moss’s disease.

Its first stage resembles the flu, the second – a transcendental trip, and in the third, an immense guilt emerges inside the afflicted individual, growing to a point where it becomes unbearable. This guilt could be towards parents, children, spouses and lovers, the underprivileged, the ravaged nature, the victims of wars and outbreaks of violence. The feeling of unbearable guilt pushes the afflicted person to the edge, where suicide seems like the only way out.

However, not everyone succumbs to the disease. Some possess innate immunity, for some, the disease takes a mild form, and others are saved by the arrival of a vaccine. But how safe is the vaccine itself? By safeguarding people from the sense of guilt, wouldn’t the vaccine kill conscience itself?

And now, groups of religious extremists storm the medical laboratory building...