1885, the NW frontier, Young journalist Rudyard Kipling to a bizarre encounter between the British army and a piece of impossibly advanced technology: a hovering sphere, mysteriously watchful. And then, shockingly, a helicopter from the year 2037 comes clattering over the hill. Meanwhile, elsewhere, scouts from the great horde of Genghis Khan are puzzled to find that familiar landmarks on the great steppe have disappeared-as if they had never been. And elsewhere again, the courtiers of Alexander the great wait anxiously for news of the great king, who seems to have vanished. Across human history, nothing is as it was. Kipling, the helicopter crew and other castways in time must make an epic journey across a transformed world. It is a journey that will lead them to mystery, wonder and danger - and to a devastating truth. For if human history is long, our future may be shorter than any of us have dreamed.