Then Lyle was recruited for private-industry by the mysterious industrialist Geoffrey Iphwin -- and that's when everything stopped making sense.

His fiancee turns out to be a gun-toting weapons expert who saves him from assassination -- and who, immediately afterwards, remembers nothing of what she did. But what she does remember is that she grew up in a world with an entirely different history, in which America surrendered to the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

Even more strangely, several of their friends turn out to have each grown up in worlds with different histories as well. Worse, they gradually realize that not a one of them has ever talked to anyone inside the continental United States. In fact, just thinking about the United States is hard -- as if something is trying to stop them.

Something, in fact, seems to be trying to kill each of them. And Geoffrey Iphwin is trying to pull them together -- for a quest into what's actually going on.