Harlan Stone is a special agent who reports directly to the president. He’s been dispatched to Pennsylvania Dutch Country to investigate a bizarre occurrence—a farmer’s bull has gone sterile for no discernable reason. On his train trip back to DC Harlan’s approached by the sibylline Angelica. She latches onto him like a magnet. Harlan senses she’s a foreign operative; she has an idiosyncratic way, though he has trouble getting a solid read on her. The neutered Pennsylvania bull is just the tip of the iceberg; within days every bull in the country has become sterile, and within a week—every bull on earth is shooting blanks. And it’s not long before sheep and hogs go sterile as well. It becomes clear that there is a force seeking to rid the world of the methane gasses these animals produce. Questions fly around the Oval Office: What rogue nation is plotting this? The Russians? The Chinese? The North Koreans? The Saudis? Or is there some evil Goldfinger/Dr. No type out there? Or are there eco-terrorists planning to turn mankind into vegetarians? Humanity is in panic mode; demanding answers from the powers that be. As events spiral out of control, Angelica reveals to Harlan that she is an alien, able to mimic human form, and hails from a colony called Perigee. Our solar system is a mere atom in Perigee’s mammoth cosmos. She explains that humans are in fact a rampant disease that has infected the Earth. “You consume, consume, and consume everything in your path and leave nothing but ruin in your wake. You endlessly burn fuels that pollute the air that all lifeforms must share. You need to be irradicated.” Earth, and its solar system, must be remain stabilized or Perigee itself will be destroyed; and that stabilization is being threatened radically by climate change and ever-rising temperatures and sea levels. A representative from Perigee, Davenport, (also in human form) appears in the Oval Office and meets with the president. He explains the method by which they plan to rid the Earth of humans, “It will be painless.” However, Harlan, who Davenport mistakes for an alien from yet another realm, works out a deal: If we can turn around our thirst for fossil fuel, drastically reduce our CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions, and begin to repair the ozone layer, Perigee will allow the human race to survive. Davenport gives Earth a three-year window to make these mammoth ecological adjustments. He then evaporates as mysteriously as he appeared, vowing to return when the time-limit expires. The president must now convince the entire world that Earth has been visited by aliens, explain their demands and bring every nation onboard. One slight problem, the president has no aliens to prove his case; they’ve all left with Davenport and won’t return until the three-year timeframe is up. How does the president convince the public? Enter General Doug Dixon, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I don’t give a shit if we don’t have aliens; I’ll make them the hell up.” And he proceeds to do so. The nations of the world are convinced of the seriousness of the situation, they buy into General Dixon’s fake aliens, and they embrace this opportunity to meet Perigee’s demands—if it means saving humanity. Solar and wind facilities are enhanced; oil and gas wells are shuttered, coal mines closed down. But creating this new infrastructure is problematic; new construction emits more greenhouse gasses than are being eliminated. The long range fix looks good, the short range, not so much. And there’s a bigger problem—Russia. The Russian president, Yuri Polushin, a narcissistic recluse, is not signing on. Russian oil is China and India’s gas station, and the three nations refuse to comply with the new world order. Davenport’s three-year time limit quickly evaporates with little to no significant atmospheric improvement. As the deadline approaches, Harlan scrambles up a new proposal to present to Davenport. It boils down to this: “We simply need more time.”