In Atocha, New Mexico, in the early years of the Twenty-first century, Police Chief Loren Hawn's word is law -- except when it comes to the scientists and security officers at the top-secret lab on the outskirts of the town.

But then a dying man falls out of the bullet-riddled car of one of those scientists, crawls into the police station, and dies in Loren's arms.

That's bad enough. But Loren Hawn knows this man: Hawn pulled his dead body out of a wrecked car, twenty years before.

Like particles in an accelerator, hurtling at near-light-speed, the citizens of Atocha are about to smash into the strange space and time effects of ultra-high-energy physics. The resulting explosions will change the people, and the way they live, forever.