The end of the universe happened at around ten o'clock at night on 22 December 2032. It's just that humanity hasn't realized it yet.

The Chaga, the strange flora deposited from the stars, has been busy terraforming the tropics into someone else's terra. A little like a multi-coloured rainforest, part coral reef and wholly, indescribably alien, the Chaga changes everything - and everyone - that it comes into contact with.

Gaby McAslan was once a hungry news reporter who compromised her relationship with UNECTA researcher Dr Shepard for the sake of her story. But for the past ten years Shepard has been incommunicado on board the Big Dumb Object, the huge, mysterious craft that is orbiting midway between Earth and the Moon, while Gaby lives within the Chaga zone in an experimental community of artists, writers and dancers ... but Gaby is no longer a journalist and she doesn't want to be an artist - and she doesn't want to be a full-time mother, even though her child Serena is her last link with Shepard.

Gaby's fire has gone out; she's gone soft. But the massive political and military upheavals that are rocking the world are about to drag her back into action. Humanity has been changed by the alien invasion; now mankind is fighting new battles.