A young girl finds herself engulfed within a world of disappearing boundaries, what becomes a heightening decentralization, especially of national authority. Already entire territories of the U.S. are on the brink of secession. Paranoia and unending civil war are about to become norms of life as we know it...

The story starts out right on the cusp of it all, almost as we are now, on the verge of something very uncertain, we know change is coming, but we don't know how it will happen.

Sprawl has become slum, all that is left of the suburbs is the upper middle class in very well designated communities, outside of which lies the omnipresent 'city' whose grapple hold on those communities continues to tighten.

Rachael Linderen, gifted and rebellious, begins as a runaway to this mysterious 'city' she's always been sheltered from, for reasons we can't initially figure out. She is the last of the suburban girl; so used to the all-pervasive environment of the good life: bedroom communities, shopping malls, parents, school, her peers, a boyfriend, first kisses... and 'Smart,' computer surveillance in every home, where every wall is literally made of eyes. The computer system, Janus is the 'National Overseer,' who controls this terminal world of suburban nightmare.

But there is something Rachael is trying to figure out about herself, she's able to get away with more and more it seems...without being 'seen.'

Her adventures lead her to an on-going philosophical quest to find out who she is, what it means to be an intelligent human being, and how incompatible hers and others she meets are with 'the old way of life.'

The story encompasses her lifetime, her dreams, and the world around her as it morphs into the inevitably unrecognizable future. She confronts the blurry and convoluted moral line of just what is it that makes us human? Are we all really human as modern science has defined it? This becomes especially pertinent in a world where most human intelligence is teetering on the edge of an animalistic existence, while science is uncovering the genetic roots of human cognition. The old tenet that "all men are created equal" is submerged by reality, and surfaces as illusion.

As nations fight their dying days through the squeezed military-consumer complex, mass media falls and central authority yields itself to pockets, and pockets become closer to tribes. That is, this is all before Adwin and the leading corporatists have their last stand.

Adwin is a tall handsome and distinguished man, a kind of dark aristocrat at the calm center of the storm. He is the marketer, he is the higher authority that keeps the corporate commercial interests of the old world going by means of the ol' reliable way: nationally instituted terrorism, intra-community violence and silent wars hidden behind a veil of faith in modern corporatism.

People have always known that this is what modern politics rests on, but Adwin knows they don't care so long as they can sit in their living room theatres, as long as the transports keep bringing them their products. --Nevermind that they were made by third world slaves, 'we have many outreach groups on-route to sticking up for their rights,' many like Adwin reassure them, while legislation 'scarcely trembles.'

When the central political apparatus finally does begin to be transparent enough, the real evil of the civilization we knew, yet was previously implicit, reveals itself to us as Adwin begins televised ad campaigns organized as non-profit groups, some of which are called 'War is Classroom,' 'Paranoia is Sixth Sense,' and 'Terror is Feeling.'

Adwin and other corporatists show the world how a retro based focus on literacy in the schools, high-definition Readers and Views (nano-HDTV) can passify people into voting in a 'post-war' liberal candidate, and as its own prequel--conversely how a mass insurgence of cosmetics and soap ads increase suburban conservatism, renewed faith in capitalism, and curiously--random cereal killings. While augmenting OCD and fear to the suburban voting masses, a pop-rock music phenomenon can condition liberal revolutionary nostalgia: all perfect ingredients for 'social patterning,' and the sense-life of a populous ripe for a conventional war, ready to re-fortify the conventional political machine.

He stands against everything Rachael comes to know. And yet Adwin is also the man with whom she will fall in love.

Vesper Heliotropic, literally, if you understand the two words, would mean 'a plant or flower's evening prayer toward the sun.'

Vesper begins at its own end: the final answer to the old question of what is it that grants the ethical authority to power? In a world where technology is replacing virtually all manual labor, adding hordes of frantic mobs into the mix of feudal niches--Democracy is finally witnessing the limits of its political hold on society.

Rachael becomes Camille, and Camille becomes Halea.

In the end it is Halea who faces the ultimate question inherent in where the story begins...