At the center of the Egg Code is a router named the Gloria 21169-one of thousands of traffic controllers on the World Wide Web. All around the Egg Code, however, are a host of stories spanning not decades but centuries of free speech, loose type, justice and the American Way. An aspiring novelist runs from a problematic childhood to even more troubling success in advertising kiddie porn; a withdrawn hacker reunites with his father through mutual defiance of corporate dominion; a motivational speaker decides to eat his words; a young dancer searches for a once-gained ability to fly; the imagined folklore of the Nootka tribe of British Columbia redirects the career of a failed trophy wife; a typographer is given a chance to avert the terrifying disillusionment of a legion of believers (while offering his sainted mother the ultimate tribute); a frustrated husband finds a deeply satisfying connection between Star Wars and toss pillows; a stage mother takes a reinvention of self into her own hands; and three tragic deaths in 1968 spin a skein of consequence from which no one is excepted.

Tucked away in a small Midwestern community, the Gloria 21169 gradually takes command of the lives of all who encounter it, to the consternation of both sides of the technological revolution. However, from the Plexiglas interior of a prison meeting room to the open air around a naked little boy in his back yard, from a high-school science paper on the weather to a transcript recording the beginnings of a giant political/corporate conspiracy, and through all the bizarre and beautiful turns the end of the century has dealt us, The Egg Code mixes media, space and time to provide surprising proof that not even the greatest brain can confound technology more effectively than the human heart.