A girl and her space crew are trapped inside an alternate reality by another sentient intelligence after a mission gone wrong. She must free her crewmate and come up with a way to escape.

On a far-future Earth, a young man accidentally commits adultery and is exiled to a distant planet that has undergone catastrophe—only to realize that this planet is an experiment to create a second Earth, and he has an opportunity to lead the inhabitants in building an interstellar empire.