Former artist Viktor Krubloobian is invited to Rome by the church authorities to help create an opera about Queen Mary Tudor and the burning of heretics at the stake. But his sponsor, Monsignor Rossi, falls foul of the Papacy and is forced to flee to Mars, where the City of God remains unfinished, taking the priceless 'Tabulum Vitae' with him. In his post-digital transformation, Viktor accepts the sparse conditions up there as the true configuration of Paradice, which has eluded him before.