The first interstellar ship, John Glenn, fled a solar system populated by rogue AIs and machine/human hybrids, threatened by too much nanotechnology, and rife with political hazards. The John Glenn’s team intended to terraform the nearly pristine globe Ymir in hopes of fabricating a utopian society which will limit smart technology, but by some miscalculation they possess landed in the wrong system. Short in the antimatter needed to continue steadily to Ymir, they need to shape nearby planet Harlequin’s moon, Selene, into a new, temporary home and rebuild their store of antimatter through years of terraforming.

Gabriel, the top terraformer, now network marketing leads this nearly impossible task; his principal tools the uneducated and almost illiterate children of the original colonists, created and bred to create Harlequin’s moon into a digital antimatter factory. With no concept of the future and with existence defined as responsibility, one young lady, Rachel Vanowen, begins to consult herself, what will become of the children of Selene once the terraforming is complete?