The story takes place in a dystopian future where the world is controlled by a capitalist regime. Despite advertising being illegal ("ad" is, in fact, a dirty word), corporations are still able to persuade and control consumers by the celebrities they create for product placement. The protagonist, seventeen-year-old Philadelphia Burke, or P. Burke, is enlisted to become one of these celebrities after a suicide attempt fueled by society ostracizing her due to her Pituitary Dystrophy, better known as Cushing's Disease. While recovering in the hospital, she is chosen by a scout to become a "Remote Operator" for the beautiful corporate creation, known as Delphi, who was grown without a functioning brain from a modified embryo in an artificial womb. Though Delphi appears to be a normal fifteen-year-old-girl, she is controlled through a satellite linked to P. Burke's brain, which is still physically located in her original body.

THE HUMANS ARE DEADBut their history survives. The inspiring saga of a race that dared the stars—and the darkness between. The Rift is the River Darkness between the arms of the galactic spiral, a standing wave of nothingness, a region filled only with visions and voices, innocent terror and mortal atrocity, sacrifice, tragedy, victims.. .and heroes.A teenager finds an intimate friend in the utter void.A space hermit reunites with the lost love of his youth—twice.Explorers cross impassable chasms of language, biology, and hallucination to prevent a new age of war.Adventures of passion and courage are the seeds of this epic of humanity's conquest of the galactic frontier. And the epic becomes a whisper, echoing down the rays of starlight, shimmering up through time....

"The Screwfly Solution" is a 1977 science fiction short story by Raccoona Sheldon, a pen name for psychologist Alice Sheldon, who was better known by her other nom de plume, James Tiptree, Jr. It received the Nebula Award for Best Novelette (1978) and has been adapted into a television film.