Jed DeLanda, a descendant of the Maya living in the year 2012, is a math prodigy who spends his time playing abstract strategy games on his computer and raking in profits from online trading. His secret weapon is something called the "Sacrifice Game"--a divination ritual that the ancient Maya used to predict the birth and death of civilizations. But Jed's life is thrown into chaos when his former mentor, the game-theory scientist Taro Mora, and a mysterious game designer named Marena Park, ask him for his opinion on a newly discovered Mayan codex--an ancient book that contains an account of a Game predicting the end of the world. For thousands of years, the fate of mankind has been etched into the fabric of history, and not even the greatest advancements in modern science and technology have been able to thwart it. Now at the brink of the end of time, Marena and Taro need someone to travel back to AD 664, to learn to play the original version of the Sacrifice Game, and Jed, who has spent his whole life hungering to retrieve his lost heritage, convinces them that he should be the one to go. With the future of humanity in his hands, the scientists replicate Jed's brainwaves and send them through a desktop wormhole straight into the mind of a Mayan king. Only something goes wrong. Instead of becoming the Lord of the ancient Mayan city of Ix, Jed arrives inside a Maya ballplayer named Chacal, who is seconds away from throwing himself down the temple steps as a human sacrifice. If Jed can survive the next few minutes, he might just save the world.