They tell him his name is Captain Pierre Jacobs of the Merchant Corps rigger TH-2401. OK. So why the hell has he just woken up in the body of a lesbian who people keep calling Mrs. Magdalene Benson?

He's also told that after a long journey through hyperspace with his mind digitally stored in TH-2401's virtual reality "womb," he and his crew have had their minds reintegrated with physically ideal cloned bodies—"knockouts"—on a decadent pleasure planet called PleshaCore for one month of anything-goes R&R.

But there's a catch: Mother, TH-2401's AI overseer, demands to know why the fundamentalist theocratic corporate-state Terra Corporation is paying for this morally repugnant R&R. Captain Jacobs must find the answer or Mother will cancel all planet leave, and yet he doesn't even know who he is.

Prescribed medication for his memory loss and ostensibly married to his ship's first mate, Captain Jacobs decides to enjoy himself until his memories fully return. That enjoyment comes to an abrupt end, however, with a series of rapid and disturbing shocks: mysterious kidnappers, assassins claiming to be him, betrayal by loved ones, and a growing paranoia that he may not be Captain Jacobs after all—or even genuinely human. Assisted by Alan Willsham Ortmeyer, a former sea captain turned innkeeper, Captain Jacobs must work his way through a tangled web of conspiracy, covert operations and obfuscations while struggling with a shifting sense of his own identity and gender.