Meet Jack Meter, Private Investigator. Two years ago he was a happy, if slightly cynical, man. He had a cool job and a woman he'd fallen hard for. His nirvana came to an abrupt end when his lover Annie was blown to bits in a lab explosion. Now he doesn't give a damn about much, except maybe finding the meaning of life at the bottom of a bottle.

He doesn't know it but his life is about to take a strange turn.

Jack is abducted to the alien world of the Thrittene, restored to full health, and offered the case of his life: to stop the person responsible for destabilizing and destroying the universe. He’s not a fool. The Thrittene have chosen him for a specific reason, and they're not telling. In the end, though, he has no choice but to take the case.

He begins to gather clues across alien worlds and on his own home turf, and is stunned to discover that Annie, his dead girlfriend, had been in deep with the Thrittene right up until her death. Did she have anything to do with the current threat? Was that lab explosion really an accident? How will Jack reconcile the discovery that Annie lied to him with his memory of her? And, above all, will Jack be in time to save the universe?