He dreams big. Visions of pulp era superheros and sci-fi heros fill his thoughts, and a man matures from childhood into young adult. Taking advanced physics and robotics, he dreams big. Unfortunately, harsh reality cuts in, and he torpidly accepts a job building surveillance drones for the military. But it's a ruse, a feeling out process. Apparently he clears the grade, because the government moves him into the clandestine world of investigating crashed alien craft. He fascinated beyond anything he thought possible since his days of tearing through worn, second hand tawdry paperbacks. He involves himself so much, he becomes brusque and curmudgeonly, short of temper with his more light hearted and short sited coworkers. And, more unfortunate, his superiors. Eventually, he gets fired. But he's seen too much, fallen in too deep, and there is no going back to a mundane existence. And he's thinks he's found the way to make all his dreams come true. Work killing for, worth dying for.
Playing along with his new job assignment, he plans his grandiose scheme. He stockpiles, outfits himself, and schemes.
A year later, he ventures back down south to his former lab, and pulls off a tense, bloody heist.
Fleeing into the woods with his newly acquired alien technology, the military in hot pursuit, he makes a mad scramble up the coast. He's driving a modified truck, and he has another vehicle stashed at the halfway mark. A house in the boonies bought under a false name awaits him. But that's only the beginning, and he has no idea what he is in for.
It takes him over a week, and he makes it to his upstate cabin. But the world has grown strange. Businesses are closed. Highways deserted. After a couple locals with guns break into his cabin, and meet a bloody demise, he runs yet again, trying to head down to Mexico.
Only the US is not the US anymore. It's fallen apart, and he must battle his way from upstate New York all the way down into Central America. States have descended into a brutal state of martial law. Shoot first, and maybe ask the corpse why it's twitching. Not exactly the best time to make a smooth, under the radar exit. Things only get worse as he gets further down south.
Barely making it into Mexico, he heads for the wilderness, trying to get away from the predations of advanced society. Rough and tumble cities lead into jungle, but there is no peace. Guerrillas assail whatever they can't understand, and the protagonist hardly looks human anymore.
The violence and bloodshed fall back, and finally he gets to explore and think.
But the jungle holds secrets. Ruins aren't always what they seem, and advanced civilizations have been there centuries before humans. More than one advanced civilization, and they weren't exactly friends. Unfortunately for the narrator, his stolen technology isn't from what he stumbles across. He accidentally summons creatures from a far distant star, and they are none too happy to see him.
Taking him prisoner, they transport him to a far off local, first cajoling, then threatening their curious find.
The threats are the final straw, and he makes good an escape, into the recesses of an alien planet he neither knows anything about, nor understands.
He struggles to hide, only to stumble across a deserted, hidden base by the very race he stole his technology from. Grabbing a transport, he tries to head back to earth, only to realize once he reaches orbit, that he has no idea where he is.
Almost completely lost and desperate, the race he stole from shows up. A war he barely understands breaks out, the new brood tries to assuage him with promises of earth, if he just pulls off one dangerous mission for them. It involves a wormhole, and a possible suicide mission.
With no alternative, he agrees.
A last minute surprise attack by his initial abductors, a double cross by his supposed allies, and somehow he ends up back on earth, alone amid crashed spacecraft in the jungle, and running for his life.
