It starts with a hypothesis on the Internet that a dream hundreds of thousands of people around the world report having is actually a shared dream. Details noticed in one person's dream are found to be independently verifiable in another. Once you enter The Dream, you stop having normal dreams. Night after night you fall asleep and reenter the same dreamworld you left, a corresponding amount of time having passed in it as well.

With each day and night that passes, the number of people roped into this phenomenon increases until very quickly most of the world's population are sharing this second life in their sleep. This dreamscape quickly develops its own rules, nations, dangers and wars, and fundamentally changes everything about humanity's waking and dream lives.