He is a boy dressed in sliks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a mysterious group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother — a princess from a faraway land — are the only people in their household assigned names. As the boy's regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardian's fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments — and his own chilling role in them.