Jon Ryan is living his dream.

To say his life was good would be a silly understatement. Sure. Come on, he did CPR on his very first girlfriend, Jenna, when they were in their tweens and narrowly saved her from drowning. Then they dated throughout high school and were only temporarily separated when he went off to the USAF Academy and she to UCLA. But their future was looking so bright they both needed welding goggles.

But, way back there in the reality that seems to always kick anyone named Jon Ryan in the a-s was...er, an uncomfortable truth. His life, Jenna's life, and their life together never happened. Oops. Something happened to the timeline of mid-twentieth century Earth. Something OMG big. Fixed events that had happened never took place. No, the entire world was living a lie but had no way of knowing that they were. How could they?

Well, turns out there was one person who could know. Toño DeJesus, tired from all his battles and torments, decided to live the life of a hermit. Two billion years in the future, Toño moved into an abandoned asteroid. His only companion in his solitude was a sentient robotic recreation of Miguel Cervantes that he created. Together, these two Spanish gentlemen shared quiet times, aged sherry, and nostalgia for their homeland. But, eventually, Cervantes grew restless and convinced Toño to join him in establishing relationships with society outside of their cocoon. Specifically, it turned out Miguel was horny as hell and could no longer abide by their monastic lifestyle.

When Toño acquiesced and took Cervantes outside the time lock that shielded their asteroid from the rest of the universe, it did not take the scientist long to discover that something was very wrong. History was not what he knew it to be. The temporal changes seemed to center on the mid-twentieth century, so they journeyed there to investigate.

Meanwhile, a completely new and unstoppable threat arose that promised to destroy the entire galaxy. Giant building superstructures were defeating all the advanced civilizations they encountered and then assimilating their substance. When Toño learned of this existential threat, he could only think of one solution: task Jon Ryan with, yet again, saving our collective asses.

But there was just one little problem. The only Jon Ryan available to him was the one living in the altered timeline. He'd never defeated even a single alien aggressor. He had barely begun his NASA career. How was Toño going to bring a man whom he'd never even met up to the speed necessary to do what no advanced galactic civilization had so far been able to do—stop The Structure? How? It was not going to be easy. In fact, the challenge was so enormous he came to believe he needed to call upon more than one Jon Ryan. Yeah, baby! What could possibly go wrong?