Gyges the Terrible

Welcome to the United States of the not-so-distant future. Our Republic has given way to a new form of government, Freemocracy. The President rules virtually unopposed. The Supreme Court is the only alternate center of power, and the tension between the President, Samuel Judas Epstein, and the Chief Justice, Xiling, is set to boil over into open conflict.

The Earth, too, has changed. Society has fractured into the permanently privileged and the permanently working. Water is tightly rationed. The world powers vie with each other for territory on the lunar surface.

It is in this setting that a group of ordinary hooligans led by Marcellus Gyges storm the halls of empire. Possessed of a magic ring that confers the power of command, spurred on by his friends, Marcellus is in a unique position to depose the President.

At the same time, Marcellus is being tutored by his Guardian Angel. For it is the choices that we make in this life that determine what becomes of us in the next.