Imre Bergamasc awakes in the 43rd Millennium to the realisation that he is the victim of an elaborate murder plot. Resurrected from the fragments of a bizarre time capsule - an iron drum half a kilometre long, upon which was recorded his every last detail to vast degrees of redundancy - Bergamasc finds that parts of him that could not be recovered have been extrapolated or made up from scratch. He may feel whole and sane, but vast chunks of his self and memories are lost forever. He has much to discover, but clearly finding out who killed him is his first priority. Bergamasc's recollections of the Milky Way are of an astropolis full of vigorous life, united by instantaneous transport from end to end in an unfathomably complex milieu known as the Continuum. What he finds is ruin and decay, the scattered embers of a fire that once burned long and bright, but it is now all but out. Bergamasc sets himself the task of reviving the Continuum. It would be a daunting goal even if the shadows of his past weren't trying to kill him.