Thou shalt not go supraluminal. When the spiritual and the physical universes collide, a cosmic mystery places humanity into a stellar prison where the inmates are dangerously nearby. Will mankind succumb to the same distractions as their alien predecessors; the struggle for survival, the quest for power, the fanaticism of faith, the random ravages of nature? A telepathic border collie gathers a young cab driver, a teenage physics prodigy, and a washed up diplomat into a cell in the Resistance. Why were they chosen? What can they do? Will humanity be destroyed by barbarians or absorbed by an alien Empire? Before you dismiss the possibility of a few individuals changing the cosmos, recall the Butterfly Effect. Beware. Metaphysical science fiction may be an anti-scientific sin. You might be punished for exploring. The mathematical formula for your soul might be corrupted so you can no longer compute the ordinary. Certainly, we are the observers, God's eyes, perturbing the reality field by our very existence.