It's 2019. There's been another world war. Space travel is now a thing.
Dr. Elise Marquette has been hired by an organization that aims to conduct first contact missions for corporate clients. With her experience in archaeology fieldwork, identifying the dead during the last war, and her ability to understand and adapt to any culture, she's an understated asset to humanity's desire to explore the cosmos via the newly discovered portal, the Main Gate.
But experience comes with a price.
What makes Elise an asset, also makes her a risk. Five years isn't enough time to recover and heal the trauma she endured during the war. The recent death of her overbearing mother brings Elise head-to-head with a lifetime of unresolved childhood traumas as she's conducting Earth's initial first contact mission.
Will Elise's past put the Earth's future at risk?
** Narrated by the author.