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 Forever. And inside a Messenger's head is murder, impotence and despair.