A slightly above average college student, Gus has to finish his final class project before graduating. If he fails, his college career is finished along with any prospects for success in any future career. His entire life faces ruin if he doesn't succeed. The goal? Relatively simple, really, but one that has eluded him several times as he developed his approach, honed his skills, and improved his various designs. At least it seemed simple when he started out: "create self-aware, adaptable, sustaining and autonomous intelligent life."
He'd achieved portions of the goal many times in the past in his lab, which includes the blue planet near the yellow sun. But all his previous attempts at tying all the required project elements together in one design were somehow lacking.
Now he had one last chance before the end of his last term. He had one last hope: Levi.
Naturally, Levi doesn't believe the situation he's in! He is the only human to pass Gus' gene pool tests and become the single originator of the Gus' new-humans - the Levites. He becomes a reluctant believer when, with Gus' humorous, error-prone intervention, he is mysteriously liberated from a straitjacket in a locked, windowless padded cell and finds himself in Gus' lab. The lab is like nothing Levi knows on earth - because it is NOT on earth. His sanity and humanity are further challenged as he finds himself alone as the single originator of Gus' new-humans - the Levites. His life, his future, and his concept of what it means to be human are forever changed, dramatically, when he is introduced to his three newly-made female clones: Mariam, Ingmar, and Lucy, with whom he is to create the Levites.
As Levi struggles to accept and adapt to his new reality as the genesis for the new humans, Gus struggles with looming deadlines, design issues, and Plan B. He is also obsessed with the Levites' pending return to earth ... and his grade.
