The novel begins with a strange invasion: a probe carrying a benign ET virus lands in South Africa, and the contagion soon spreads worldwide, creating homo sapiens 2.0. In the second part, the new humans become motivated to establish a Mars colony, which leads to first contact. In the background, a shadowy group, promoting xenophobic fear, works against the ETs and those new humans who embrace them. This saga takes the reader from a paranoid Earth to the far reaches of the solar system as the author plots a new and peculiar future for human beings.