Balloonheart tells the age-old story of the struggle for freedom. The novella is set somewhere in middle America after a post-war collapse of society. Remnants of the government and the military-industrial complex have forged an alliance and cooperate in a re-ordered and fortified microcosm of post-modern civilization known as ""the Project,"" which produces arms and materiel and seeks to enforce some order in what they attempt to portray as a very hostile world. A man whom we come to know only as ""Hombre"" narrates his path from his civilian home to the bowels of the Project and out again. He is aided in his quest for freedom by the ghost of a friend of his who was killed in an industrial accident within the Project. ""Ed's Ghost"" appears to the Hombre at critical times and helps the Hombre ask the right questions. The reader comes to see that perhaps some things are not quite as they seem - in the Hombre's world and in our own, as well.