Late in the 21st Century-ravaged by the deadly Sept virus, the one time United States has disintegrated into The Fundamental Christian Territories, where Catholics, Baptists and Jews are registered as heretics, and gays are herded into walled ghettos: the Zones of Perversion. Harvey Milk Walton, a runner, finds his way to the ghetto in Angel Land, oldest of the territories, where a legend says that his long ago martyred namesake will return one day to lead his people to freedom-but even to speak of freedom, of leaving the FTC, is punishable by death. In a crumbling totalitarian society, where evil masquerades as piety, two men fall in love, and begin to dream of escape from Angel Land.