The Intrusion, a metaphysical zone of temporal anomaly, occupies a single neighborhood of metropolitan Seattle. How it came to be is unknown – perhaps as the result of technological experimentation by the Morgen Aerospace Corporation, working on behalf of the defense industry, perhaps through the intervention of non-human intelligences that are ubiquitous but hidden – but within it, the rules of physics and the rules of the psyche are subtly different. It appears that a divergent historical timeline or parallel dimension has been transposed into this one, specific zone surrounding Morgen Airfield. Those who visit from outside might meet their doubles in this place, should their otherSelves – differently affected, differently developed – happen to have been in the neighborhood at the time of the Change.
Such is the case for Joe. Beleaguered by his struggling grocery business and a loveless marriage, living within a near-deserted city that has been psychologically and economically wrecked by the Change, he finds a version of himself as citizen of the Intrusion who seems to live a more full and authentic life, who is well-adapted to the bizarre conditions of his own world, but who utterly baffles Joe number one.
As circumstances at home rapidly unravel, this Joe choses to take refuge in the only place he feels he might be suited to. But it’s not as if conditions in the Intrusion are intrinsically better, nor are the rules of survival clear in this place either. Only different, only other – where the influence of something which may or may not come from another world entirely is more in evidence…
