The planet is becoming increasingly uninhabitable thanks to escalating climate change, dwindling resources, and the anarchy resulting from the breakup of the World Federation. Humanity faces a dilemma: which way to escape total disaster? There are two possible routes: the long one via interplanetary migration, and the short one - the inner one - via direct communication with an alien civilization based on quantum cognition. The first of these seems more and more unlikely to succeed, but Professor Thorvald's experiments with Controlled Lucid Dreaming opens the door to the latter a crack...