In the year 2020, a landslide off the English coast uncovers an alien escape pod that had crashed into a prehistoric swamp. The dormant AI awakens to a very different world it entered millennia previously. Now, it must utilize stored ancient patterning technology to reconstitute its Master. However, this proves no easy mission as it scours this strange new world for essential materials to rebuild its ship.

As a homeless man, Zeke has worked hard to claim a back-alley as his own territory where a restaurant's staff leave him food scraps. As if things aren't bad enough Zeke's escaped a dark Government agency. He has a partial metal skull, forged in the Middle East from a meteorite and hammered into shape by a backstreet blacksmith. Over time the strange alloy irreversibly bonded with his brain and is leaking into his DNA, changing it. Now the DARPA scientists want him back to find out why he's still alive.

When the newly-revived Master discovers that the only source of an essential component for its ship is the foreign material in Zeke's head, the alien faces a difficult moral dilemma. The Master comes from a species that reveres all biological life wherever it is found, and Zeke will die if the metal cap is removed. It's left to the AI to find another way?