Phisto is a fanciful mélange of a flamboyant poet/performance artist, a brilliant video game developer, a woman looking for meaning in the San Francisco's Tenderloin, irascible digital characters, magic mushrooms, a talking mouse, and a trail that might end in Oz.

After the poet Maddy disappears, Jack, her partner, sees her disappearance as another entry in their competition. He uses his gaming platform, Phisto,
to look for clues to her disappearance in avatars of the last four people she talked to but the avatars quickly pose problems when they become conscious and demanding. Talia Morris has a talk line where she comforts the homeless, prostitutes, alkies, and runaways in San Francisco's Tenderloin. When she finds one of Maddy's old flyers promoting a reading, she becomes as obsessed as Jack with finding Maddy.

The seriocomic search for Maddy poses questions about the nature of quests, personal identity in the digital age, the meaning of consciousness, and
meaning in our lives.