When Earth became unfit for life, humanity found salvation at the Station—a gigantic industrial asteroid controlled by higher entities, the gods of the Pantheon. But even this world is fragile: the Pantheon wages war against Totality, a corporation of artificial intelligences that once broke away from it.
A temporary ceasefire arrives, and Jack Forster—who spent seven years at war and in captivity—returns home, to the Station. He is accompanied by Hugo Fist, a virtual being in the shape of a wooden clown, created to track and destroy a hostile artificial intelligence. Soon, the two of them will be drawn into a conspiracy of the gods, one that threatens not only them, but all of humanity.