These short stories provide a glimpse, part humorous and part troubling, into the homeworld of a character who will become one of the key protagonists of Conquerors of K'Tara.

In Part 1, we meet Ronin—a member of the human elite. Ronin hates life in Upside, on the Disk that surrounds the Earth and where humans are increasingly mechanized and less and less connected as individuals, and he craves a different life. His yearning takes him Downside one day, a place that ceased to evolve thousands of years before. There, we experience the awe as well as the anxiety he feels, despite being an Upsider, as he visits the ancient city of Boulder and he meets its people—fullhumans who still use their voices to communicate. And we understand how his meeting with a local girl, full of life, finally brings him to action.

In Part 2, Ronin has joined the empress' galactic army, and he discusses with his roommate the idea of getting Julia admitted into General Genghis’s mission to Kepler — a decoy for his true goal: K'Tara. This mission, according to Ronin, is the ticket to take both him and Julia to a world in the galaxy where humans live as they were meant to live, and which will allow him to finally put Upside's degenerate society behind him.

In Part 3, Ronin has succeeded in getting Julia admitted into General Genghis’s mission to Kepler. Here, we experience Julia’s shock in the face of the alien silence of the Disk and of the prejudice of Upsiders. Will Julia be able to adapt? And if so, at what cost?