Jim Ludwig spent years and a fortune building GAEA. A monument to grandeur, elegance and energy, GAEA is five monolithic domes like windowed pearls, the massive central dome capped by a diamond. Sunshine and wind give her the power to support even a fleet of next-generation electric hot rods. And when food production of Phase II comes on-line, GAEA will offer utter independence and luxury for a platoon of futurists.

But September 11, 2001, has gotten in the way.

No survivor of that epochal day is more changed than Jim. He was at ground zero---not in Manhattan, but at a defunct crystal mine near GAEA on the Colville Indian reservation in north-central Washington State. Disruption of local space-time at the mine has left him so intimately tangled with one of America's greatest heroes that Jim must fight to maintain his identity. And as realities of September 11 pour in from different directions, suggesting the genesis of The Project for the New American Century's Manifest Destiny II, The Sequel, Jim is making decisions that on September 10 would've been absolutely outrageous.