A vast computer network controls every minute of every day of every citizen of Eden, the last civilized place on a shattered Earth. But it's not the tyranny of artificial intelligence that worries David and his ragtag group of misfits, it's the all-powerful Church of the Great Awakening. They don't take kindly to deviants or heretics, and David and his friends are both deviants and heretics. To complicate matters, the barbarians beyond the border are getting restless and there are whispers of yet another war.