Ren Gerdvilis is a young physics professor whose family immigrated to the South Pacific nation of Aotearoa after World War II. He has long had a sense that there is more to life than meets the eye, and yet he proceeds with his life normally, spending time with friends and colleagues and falling in love.

After a horrible accident that leaves Ren clinically dead for some time, he returns from heaven with a profound sense of the immense disparities occurring on the planet. He sees what his own family has endured, and he also observes how the present time has deteriorated to the point of...