Synopsis Part One

This is the full synopsis of the book, broken into 4 parts. Beware of book spoilers in the page below and the following pages.

Part 1

When BROOKE LAFORGE, a graduate student working on her doctoral degree, is denied permission to test her new invention on human volunteers, she is sent into a tailspin. Without test data, she can’t graduate and, given her modest finances, would have to leave the university. Her invention, the Memex, is designed to reawaken memories in the human brain in the fight against Alzheimer’s, stroke, and amnesia, but so far, it has only been tested on mice.

Brooke decides to secretly test the Memex on herself and convinces her lab mate ROBERT CHEN to help her. When they finally get the machine to work, Brooke finds herself in the body of a man who lived in medieval times, seeing what he sees, hearing what he hears, and feeling his every pleasure and pain. Following clues from the past, she learns that her host is a goldsmith named DAMIAN BALSAMON living in Constantinople in the year 1093.

Brooke hides her illicit experiments from her other lab mate, CHAD MORGAN, a tall, lanky, westerner who is deeply attracted to Brooke. Still bruised from a painful break-up and wary of getting involved with men in the workplace, Brooke has rejected Chad. Returning early from a trip home, Chad catches Brooke using the machine and blows up in anger and fear. Brooke fights back, refusing to stop her experiments. Worried that he will miss exciting research discoveries and seduced by Brooke’s charm, Chad agrees to keep the testing secret and be the second person to try the Memex.

Chad is transported to a farm in medieval England, where he suffers from boredom, toothache, and drunkenness. Not liking this host, Chad searches for others, eventually finding a variety of men, women, and children in England and Italy. Meanwhile Brooke learns that the Fourth Crusade is bearing down upon the goldsmith Damian and his family. She knows that the crusaders will sack and burn Constantinople and worries about Damian’s safety, while realizing, guiltily, that she might have a front row seat to an infamous moment in history.

Damian is angling to wed his 16-year-old daughter, JULIA, to the local glassblower’s son, FLORIAN. But Julia is not interested in the shy youth. At a family dinner, Florian gives Julia a beautifully crafted glass dragon that he made for her, but she is unmoved.

Chad, with Robert’s help, comes upon a host in colonial New England and recognizes her name from his mother’s genealogical chart. Excited, the team realizes that they are accessing ancestors. That’s why Chad only found people in England and Italy, countries of his heritage. Robert works out an algorithm to home in on a particular ancestor and Brooke uses it to access Julia.

To Brooke’s dismay, Julia is sneaking around with the slick and dangerous locksmith’s son, ORIGEN. Her father, Damian, is struggling with a noble customer, LORD PREPUNDOLUS, who won’t pay for the earrings he commissioned, and has no inkling of Julia’s dalliance.

One night, Chad drops in late at the lab and finds that a mouse has died.

Continue to part 2 (spoilers) →