When Ernest and his son Jerome use the last of their family's savings to purchase a robotic mule to deliver food rations to a work crew drilling water wells in the mountains above their home, they never thought it would alter the course of their futures so completely. Enter Flem with his designs on Ernest's daughter Mary and his hope to take back their land, which his father had once owned in the heyday of early 21st Century industrial farming. When Flem's desires are actualized through his brilliantly managed lies and careful manipulations, a series of events are set into action that will alter their young lives forever and Jerome will be forced to make choices that no child should ever have to make.