Earth's elite - or its outcasts? For a selected, genetically-fitted few among the teeming millions of the twenty-first century, to become a Messenger for the Hulm Institute is to escape the prison that is life, that is earth. A Messenger is noble! A Messenger is one of the chosen. A Messenger is a forerunner of a time in which fear and disease will disappear for ever. And inside a Messenger's head is murder, impotence and despair.