Colt is a teenage boy, the only child of divorced parents, living in Nevada. For all his brilliance, he is impossible at school and is being home-schooled by his mother. At least in theory. His mother is a biologist, on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough, his father works for a mysterious government agency that isn t supposed to exist. Socially awkward and benignly neglected by his parents, Colt spends most of his time living in a virtual reality gaming world.Colt is on the spectrum, to say the least. Like most people who are borderline autistic, Colt tries to keep his life simple. But when Colt meets a girl online, when he submits his mother s breakthrough scientific paper to a conference and the paper comes to the attention of the organization his father works for, when his father comes to see his own son and ex-wife as threats to national security, things start to become complicated. Very complicated indeed . . .