Joe learns time travel, while feasible, is also quite rude when he sends his mind back in time to Louis XIV, as he becomes absolute monarch in 1661. Louis can't believe what this brash fellow from nearly 500 years in the future is doing. Joe makes a number of flubs, infuriating nobles and nearly igniting a number of revolts as he tries to make the world better. When the pope calls him on the carpet he must flee for his life after what he says. The advances he introduces change the world, but he ends up creating a much different history than he knows, and must determine how France should respond to a number of events in Europe. Finally, he must decide whether to go back to his own history and a body dying without its brain and soul, or to stay in that past which he has created. Indeed, he wonders if he can be pulled back. Will Joe make it? What kind of alternate world will he create - and can he make it a lasting change?