Chapter One

This is it: the book regularly reviewed as one of the most difficult hard science fiction novels of the last two decades. Tremendously rewarding for those few that are able to complete the book, this is not a book for casual fans of speculative fiction.

Edmund returns home after The Fall, a decade's long journey that ends in success: he discovers his parents dead, which means they did not live through The Fall, and did not suffer. He relaxes just long enough for the scavengers to find him.