A government special agent known only as the Signalman gets off a train on a stunningly hot morning in Winslow, Arizona.
In a ranch house near the shore of the Salton Sea a cult leader gathers up the weak and susceptible -- the Children of the Next Level -- and offers them something to believe in and a chance.
Later that day he meets a woman in a diner to exchange information about an event that happened a week earlier for which neither has an explanation, but which haunts the Signalman.
A government special agent known only as the Signalman gets off a train on a stunningly hot morning in Winslow, Arizona