Joe Fernwright is a pot-healer by avocation, but jobs are few and far between. As a harried petty bureaucrat, Joe spends most of his work time playing the Game via computer with fellow timewasters. But when it suddenly becomes very inconvenient to be Joe Fernwright, he decides to take seriously the mysterious messages he's been getting from someone, or something, called Glimmung, who is assembling a group of talented people to travel to Plowman's Planet and raise the ancient city of Heldscalla from its grave in the watery depths—not unlike the depths of Joe's confusion when he finds out what it really means to work for Glimmung.