On the day before Halloween, 10th grader Bob Wright and 9th grader Esmerelda Keeley discover an inexplicable invisible doorway at the edge of a quiet suburban intersection, where they are befriended by an uncanny stray-the dog Hoodwink-who appears as if from nowhere. Together, the three of them venture through the invisible doorway, stepping into an otherworldly dimension in an unknown layer of space, and into the most incredible and perilous night of their lives. The size of a small planet, the malevolent living computer they find themselves trapped within is attempting to steal all the written and printed text on Earth. It is also infected with an alien rogue computer-virus whose deadly reach extends even into the future and the past. Bob and Esmerelda push deep into uncharted parts of their own ingenuity and determination as they try to navigate the hostile unnatural realm and somehow complete an extraordinary mission, save their own planet, and find a way home. But with each passing minute of their race against time, they become more entwined in strands of magic and myth, and more tangled in a web of time itself. Their only allies in the rapidly complicating struggle are the Seagies-quirky computer-generated creatures who exist only virtually at the fringe of the computer's programming-and Dantes, an enigmatic young man who has been trapped there in the other world for ten long years, long enough to have plots and plans of his own. And the one who seems somehow connected to it all, and who seems to embody everyone's best chance at survival, is the extraordinary dog Hoodwink."