In the year AD 4544, a confluence of events shatters a spacecraft in the outer reaches of the solar system, hurling its lone commander, Samantha Hunter, through time and space deep into the past. Meanwhile, in the near future, award-winning New York Times science editor Jonathan Elliot awakens in the middle of the night to an uninvited guest who appears to have materialized out of thin air. The strange visitor tells him a story so unbelievable that Jonathan feels compelled to write a speculative feature article for the Sunday edition. This midnight visit launches a nine-day whirlwind of events that extend from New York City across the continent to Las Vegas, setting off a chain of inexplicable incidents, a national manhunt involving the top levels of government, a series of revelatory conversations about the future, and a team of unlikely collaborators in a race to save a beautiful, mysterious heroine-and quite possibly the future of the human species. Who are we really, and where are we going? Pondering these questions and offering an uplifting message of hope for the future, this novel tells the story of an accidental time traveler stranded in the twenty-first century whose presence may change the course of humanity's future.