Eighteen-year-old Zeke longs to find a mythic university dedicated to the further evolution of the human race. He also seeks sanctuary from the decaying society of 2065, by which time the world has been conquered by the stagnant new religion of Carnationism. Zeke emigrates to Sydney, Australia to work in a Carnationist bookstore in an underground shopping center, and falls in love with Tansley, who owns a candle shop in the mall. After Tansley recovers from a serious car accident, Zeke convinces her to sell her store and accompany him to the wasteland of West Texas, recently devastated by war and polluted with nerve gas toxins, to enroll in a crackpot university in the ruined city of San Angelo. But Tansley quickly pegs this fraudulent University of Mars as a mockery of their dreams, and they both begin to wonder whether aliens have infiltrated the school to research their own psychological flaws.
