Alexa remembers a grandmother with icy blue eyes. An unmanned ship that came to their mountain village from the sky, bringing technological wonders from the Galactics. Security troops with laser guns who took villagers away. She remembers her proud years at the Academy, her work on the open Net doing glass. Then there was the war, the explosion, the hospital. Alexa is not Alexa now but Ivy ... or is she Augustine? Psychologists lecture her, hallucinations visit her. Mr. Existence, frowning, gives advice; Needle, silent and smiling in his panama hat, offers death. All Augustine knows for sure is that the extraordinary talent she once possessed is even stronger now, and that the Guardians of the Rose need her desperately. They want her to contact the Galactics. Jean Mark Gawron creates a haunting world where information is God and artificial intelligences have joined ranks with misfit hackers to undermine a fascist state.