Kilgore Forbush is a chronically late literature professor with a failing heart, a sarcastic streak, and a lifelong obsession with science. His quiet life revolves around teaching eccentric material to distracted business majors, and bowling nights with the same three friends he has had since childhood–until he loses a bar bet to the physics department chair, Caroline Rajagopolan. As they work together, Kilgore is drawn to her brilliance but unsettled by her compromised past. With her help, along with tutoring from a science-specific AI assistant named Jonny Roket, he achieves something impossible. On Kilgore’s kitchen table, a stuffed plush mouse begins to float.

Kilgore has discovered a way to locally neutralize mass. The billion-dollar breakthrough could transform transportation and manufacturing. It could also revolutionize warfare.

Veteran NSA agent Winston Stillwater is assigned to contain the technology before rival nations can exploit it. But as Winston becomes aware of the accelerating international scramble to acquire the invention, intuitions rooted in his Native American upbringing cause him to suspect that suppressing the breakthrough might do more harm than releasing it.

The conflict culminates with a chaotic confrontation at the Nuremberg Toy Show, where Kilgore and his friends fight together against the NSA and foreign agents for the invention, for friendship, and for their lives.

No matter what happens, Kilgore is not going to miss bowling night. In a world unbound by gravity, friendship may be the only thing keeping him grounded.