Even the nearly non-existent violent crime rate in the closed city of Creation didn’t protect Dace's wife Angie from falling victim to a savage, unsolved murder. Since then, Dace buries most of his time Auditing the Centralized Services of the Bureau of Administration computer systems for inefficiencies and redundancies. When he’s not working, he enters the chemical haze of the Cat’s Comb Club, accompanied by Fancyboy, the possibly cybernetically enhanced Maître D’ who takes a particular shine to him, and Ike, the club’s central attraction. On his way into the club one night Dace is intercepted by a crazy man who has, as crazy people do, a wild conspiracy theory. Dace quickly brushes him off, but it turns out there are others who don’t think the nutcase should be so easily dismissed... and won’t allow Dace to do so either. The deeper Dace digs into the mess the deeper he finds himself dragged into madness, until his whole understanding of Creation, and even his and Angie’s fate in it, changes entirely.