Two recent graduates with mountains of debt and grim prospects meet two girls who claim that humans are larval stages which, on earth, never undergo metamorphosis. The girls are refugees who want to keep their fleshy bodies all their lives instead of changing into all-knowing energy creatures like the rest of their species.
One of the human men – stuck in a dead-end job of endless pipetteing – thinks metamorphosis would be a wonderful idea. But when he passes himself off as one of the escapees to a bounty hunter, he finds that becoming an intergalactic creature of immense power isn't as good as it sounds.