Earth and Mars are encased in planet-scale megastructures by two superintelligent machines. After decades of total war they fused according to a compromise: the embodied people of Earth must live in an augmented reality populated by the vastly more numerous digital people of Mars. Centuries later, the people of Earth have forgotten the reality that underlies the augmentation, and in their shared reality they are culturally and economically enslaved and impoverished by the gestalt hegemony of Martian society. But one woman begins to experience the impossible, a dropout from their shared reality, and it's going to change everything.
