Paul Tapia and his daughter, Mija Tapia, are gifted. Their gifts, however, go beyond the every day meaning. They are a part of a small group of individuals around the world who have developed extraordinary abilities and whom society barely tolerates, even when they prove useful. Mija Tapia's children have been kidnapped by their father and grandmother and taken deep into Mexico, beyond the Segundosilencio that has gathered Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California in a dark shroud of emptiness, madness, and despair. Mija, wrapped in her own despair disappears after massacring a gang of hoods who try to rape her. No one can find her until her father find her in the world of dreams where she has escaped to be with her children in their dreams. Meanwhile, significant books are disappearing from bookshelves everywhere and along with the books, the social elevation and stability that was its legacy. Society is eroding alarmingly and only a handful of people, Paul Tapia among them, are aware of disappearance of the books. Everyone else neither acknowledges, nor senses, the loss. Paul's first priority is to get his grandchildren back and by this to hopefully convince his daughter -who has relegated her existence to the dream world-to return and take up life again. Along the way he is aided by a woman who seemingly drifts in and out of reality to help him and to wrench him emotionally as she walks away. Underlying everything is Paul's retrieval of The Time Machine and the attempts by the shadowy spy/assassins of the Shibboleth and the Segundosilencio. To what lengths will they go to get the book and complete their eradication of yet another classic works of literature?