Six hundred years in the future a nuclear winter endures. This never-ending winter has persisted hundreds of years longer then scientists predicted. Earth had been reduced to a smattering of cities and a small population all under the control of the Regalcy. The religious and political wars of the first half of the millennium, that left the surface of the earth in this perpetual winter, have given way to a neo socialist system where birthright indicates the transference of leadership, but the real power is wielded by corrupt political brokers. Determined not to repeat history, the Regalcy identify the renaissance of the fifteenth century as the turning point in human evolution; the very cause that plunged civilisation into the depths of despair. With the aphorism, Invention is unnecessary. Innovation is uncontrollable. Intelligence is a crime, the deacons of The Regalcy rule without compromise. In these times, Ashley, condemned to the prisons as a consequence of her intelligence quotient testing, finds herself serendipitously rescued by the resistance to the ends of toppling the Regalcy and bringing civil rights back to the people.