Isola spends all her waking hours on a starship on the edge of a massive black hole called Tenembro, studying a revolutionary theory about what exactly happens when two singularities collide. For a strange image has been captured in the laboratory when micro-singularities are smashed together at great speed. Isola believes that they are truly gateways to other universes, that behind the impassable, crushing forces surrounding the event horizon and beyond, a universe with its own laws and physics exists.

Isola has also been chosen for a very special task, that of carrying a child to term. Humans are now selected on the basis of genealogy for the right to reproduce, and while some are selected, others are not -- and resent it. For Isola, giving birth to a new life is eerily similar to what's going on inside of Tenembro. Can a small, vibrant being such as Isola find common ground with the immense, cold entity we call the Universe?