Lloyd Gypsum is tired. Having served in the UN World Military in a little-known theater dubbed the Third Opium War --fought exclusively in the South China Sea-- Lloyd now finds himself in a retirement community built specifically for those in that theater of war. Lloyd is friends with his gunner, Stanley Hillis, and has a crush on another senior veteran, Liz Camden from Britannia. Life is good in Everdale. The UN World Government takes care of their former soldiers. One morning, Lloyd wakes with a few cuts and bruises. Unable to explain their origin, Lloyd chalks it up his recent spate of insomnia and subsequent sleepwalking. But when Stanley Hillis informs Lloyd that he watched him injure himself from within Lloyd's dream, he and Lloyd begin re-examining the world around them, revealing the true nature of their "retirement".