A world at the mercy of an AI overlord. Who will lead the rebellion? Isobel Lemont, raised in an abandoned factory and orphaned at thirteen, talks to the saints and sees leaves of grass where others see only the ashes of a despoiled planet. She and others of her kind, branded heretics or 'Atrophines' for their refusal to embrace the new technological order established by The Architect, are driven to the ass-ends of the earth and left to famine and disease, the "humane way" to thin the herd and prepare the world for the post-human era. But Isobel has been given a mission-a ministry-and it's nothing less than the reclamation of the earth for the lowliest of its citizens and the restoration of an ancient faith in the anima mundi (the soul of the world).