The Admiral of the Democratic Assembly. His right-hand man on a search for redemption. The lone survivor of a terraformed planet. A Defiled rebel unplugged from the Feed. And a memory of a time long ago. Five lives witness change in a universe that forgot it was possible. In the distant future every species is given a single vote to coordinate its existence. Humans, who sit at the top of this Democratic Assembly, require constant planetary terraforming to accommodate their booming population, which now includes naturally occurring genetic duplicates for every living sequence. This is the way it has always been. But when the one-thousandth Alien pyramid is found on a distant planet, and the murder of the marines who discovered it is broadcast across the public Feed, it seems change has finally come. Some would do anything to promote it, while others would die to prevent it. No one is ready for the truth: that change may come at the destruction of everything, and the ancient realization that “we are not alone” is about to take a whole new meaning.