Ominous booming sounds have shaken the Carolina coast for over a hundred years. Sent to investigate their growing frequency and strength, journalist Silas Tharpe finds his estranged wife Donna slipping away with the mysterious Payne, the Security Chief for an operation known only as The Colony. Silas finds help from an unlikely pair of allies: the retired mathematician Gus and his roommate Jules, a Cajun sailor who allegedly died in WWII. With their help, he crosses a Gateway to Pristine, an Earth where humans never evolved. Faced with a growing rebellion from the Colony's downtrodden labor...