A kidnapped American spy's consciousness slowly disintegrates among his jihadist captors in east Africa. He is alternately tormented and comforted by the recesses of memory, together with the future's hopes and terrors, and recalling his romance with a marine scientist. As a devotee of Roger Williams and Augustine and the persistence of history, the intellectual explorations of those churchmen-philosophers become a vital source of inspiration and diversion for the agent whose brutal captors threaten him with execution at any moment. Through the painful, forced journeys with his captors, he confronts the contradictions of modern civilization and ancient societies. The marine scientist – vivacious, independent, at the forefront of scientific discovery, and unaware that her lover has been kidnapped – delves into her own edgy history as she sails to the dive point and begins her own descent into the abyss.In flashbacks, like particles in a chaotic system, the lovers scrape monotheism, jihadism, biology, and a sense of a dormant superconsciousness that lies below, precedes, and outlasts all human activity and ritual.