The Forever War raged for centuries... but Marygay was there to see it all. During the interstellar travel that took her years, generations came and went on Earth. She eventually arrived on Aleph-10 sometime after the end of the war, when humans and the enemy Taurans were at peace. There she learned that what's left of humanity is a hive mind known as MAN, that inhabits 10 thousand million entities.
Making use of the time paradox, Marygay spent the next 286 Earth years in the Time Warp, where she aged just one month every 10 years. This allowed her to arrive, along with other Forever War veterans, on Middle Finger. There she was reunited with her lost love, William, and free to live amongst other heterosexuals and to procreate in the traditional mammalian way.
But life on Middle Finger is not as idyllic as Marygay and the others assumed.
