Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of "Trace Italian"--a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail--Sean guides players through his intricately imagined terrain, turn by turn, as they seek sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. But when Lance and Carrie, two teenaged explorers of the Trace, take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called on to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, toward the beginning and the climax: the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.