When Euclid (real name Lydian) ventures onto the Random Queries and Idle Speculation bulletin board she meets Proteus (real name Merle), a self-described misfit who admits to unemployment. Lydian is wary of this impossibility. After all, it is the 29th century and such oddities have been eliminated. But curiosity and a desire to jettison her culturally induced techno-stupor lead Lydian to rendezvous with Merle, igniting an unlikely meeting of the minds - and bodies. Lydian and Merle's careening love affair takes them from Paris to Jamaica, from the wrong side of the law to the far side of late-millennium family values, and ultimately, to a face-off between technology and civilization that spurs Lydian to question - and then dismantle - the very essence of human existence.