Content Warning: This section references existential dread, disaster and its aftermath, and emotional and psychological distress.

The question of the value of an individual’s life—what gives a life its value, who defines that value, whether a person’s value can be defined in multiple ways, whether all lives are of equal value, etc.—runs throughout the novel. This is most evident in the character arc of the protagonist: Mitchell struggles to value himself and also struggles to understand how others value him.

Mitchell’s work at Fitzsimmons Sherman requires him to calculate, in dollars, the value of each employee at the company—i.e., what they are “worth” in life and death. Mitchell painstakingly does the calculations and creates a hierarchy of employees based on their profitability/cost. This introduces the notion (which the novel will heavily critique) that one can measure the value of human life in money. Tellingly, Mitchell himself does not feel valued at Fitsimmons and Sherman, but he believes that the completeness and accuracy of his work will show his bosses his worth. When Sandy Sherman refuses Mitchell’s request to join the Risk team, failing to live up even to this transactional understanding of human worth, Mitchell sees that he is undervalued and leaves to work at FutureWorld.