Agents of Dreamland

A government agent known only as the Signalman steps off a train in Winslow, Arizona, on a brutally hot morning. That afternoon he meets a woman in a diner to trade information about an incident a week old. Neither of them can explain it, and it still haunts him.

The incident took place at a ranch house near the Salton Sea, where a cult leader has gathered vulnerable, easily swayed followers who call themselves the Children of the Next Level. He offers them something to believe in and a chance at transcendence. The future is coming, he tells them, and they will help bring it in.

The events at the ranch house disturbed the Signalman so deeply that he and his government turned to help from other, unofficial sources. A day later, NASA's interplanetary probe New Horizons goes silent, and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory cannot reach it. Something beyond the orbit of Pluto has made contact.

A third thread follows a woman floating outside of time, who looks to both the future and the past for an answer to what might save humanity. The book blends government secrecy, cult fanaticism and first contact, and it moves between several characters and places rather than staying with one.