Offering a freshly imagined world of bizarre creatures and strange
customs, this unique and sardonic allegory explores the power and price
of science and the ambiguity of morality.
Humorless and drug addicted, physiognomist Cley is ordered by the Master
of the Well-Built City to investigate a theft in a remote mining town.
Well-versed in serving justice, arrogant Cley sets out to determine the
identity of the thief using the pseudo-science of judging people by
their features, but becomes distracted from his task by a beautiful girl
from town. When the young-but-wise woman rejects him, he looses faith in
his abilities, and in a drug-induced frenzy he remakes her features. The
subsequent horror of what he has done, what he represents, and the
shallow life he leads forces him to seek atonement and true justice,
risking the Masters wrath, which may entail death by head explosion.