When scientists break the final frontier of death and find a way for the soul to live forever, humanity leaves Earth with a bang, bound for a man-made paradise. On the Orbiters, supercomputers riding beyond the edge of Earth's atmosphere, these Eternals live out their wildest dreams or build fantastic idylls, free at last from the tyranny of Evolution.
Back on Earth, however, the man known to history simply as the Missing Link is hiding out in the woods. Luis Oriente was the product of a brutal but successful experiment to capture a human mind and synthesize it into ultra-human form. Not quite mortal, and fearful of heaven, Oriente has spent centuries fleeing his past, living a quiet life in the woods, far from prying eyes.
But when a giant wolf disrupts the rhythm of the forest to deliver a cryptic message, Oriente is dragged back into the turbulent currents of the history he has tried so hard to forget. Something is rotten in paradise, and Evolution is not quite done with humanity yet.