Time looks deep into the future from the vantage point of an eerie giant artefact that visits the orbit of Earth … carrying a fate machine back in time.
The official story is that the unmanned probe, Kepler, malfunctioned and stopped transmitting soon after its discovery of object 3753, an asteroid called Annlios, which circles the Earth in a complex orbit. The truth is, in a way, the exact opposite. Instead of failing, Kepler began sending signals far beyond its capability at launch.
Led by NASA astronaut Drum Lee, a secret space mission heads for Annlios. Annlios is an asteroid like many others; small, black, pitted. But a portal leads to its interior … which is far larger than appears possible from outside, with green grass, a blue sky, gravity. In this uncanny Earthlike ‘landscape’, Kepler awaits them. It directs at them a powerful signal which Drum’s lover, Marcia can feel affecting her unborn child.
Marcia and Drum’s unborn child has received into its nascent consciousness information and memory from the future: the downloader is the fate machine. Other unborn children on Earth, also receive the information. But are the affected children human still, or something else?
