The story is told through the prayers and letters of pious archaeologist Dr. Dorothea Morrel and takes place in an alternate 20th century, where young Earth creationism and the concept of absolute space are fundamentally true.
Dorothea travels from an archaeological dig in Arisona to give a public lecture on Chicagou,[a] where she explains how dendrochronology has determined the world to be 8,912 years old as well as indicating that the first trees were created fully grown, as they have a ringless core.
Believing that primordial beings with apparent signs of growth would have been tantamount to deception, Dorothea is passionate that God intended humans to understand Him through science.
The clues lead her to a post office in San Francisco, where, to her surprise, the thief turns out to be a teen, Wilhelmina McCullough.
[4] In The Washington Post, Paul Di Filippo called the story "masterful and striking" and found it evocative of Philip Jose Farmer's "Sail On!