Cassie Hayes is the idol of the universe. For a thousand years, she's been triumphant in the Reality Wars, a deadly series of real and virtual games played every 100 years and broadcast throughout the galaxies. But Cassie, a sentient software program, is tormented by the death of her virtual mother after her human father abandoned them 2000 years earlier. Now he's back...just in time to abandon her again as he goes off to save the universe with the help of a computer virus that thinks it's Buddha.

But to really rain on her day, the genetically supercharged warrior Clans unleash the perfect weapon, the beautiful and deadly Loac, to destroy Cassie and billions of other virtual humans. The Reality Wars pit woman against woman as they fight to the death in virtual and real worlds against the backdrop of an inter-galactic war that will change the very nature of the universe.