The body of Frank Poole, murdered by mad computer HAL a thousand years earlier, is found and revived to a world of peace and plenty, but in his attempts to understand the entity composed of his former deputy Dave Bowman and a copy of the now-sane HAL, Frank learns that Earth is slated for destruction.

After his escape from the sentient prison, Incarceron, Finn finds that the Realm is not at all what he expected, and he does not know whether he is to be its king, how to free his imprisoned friends, or how to stop Incarceron's quest to be free of its own nature.