The town itself is composed of futuristic looking buildings with walkways swaying between them, which suits many of its inhabitants---which are neochimps, chimps with their intelligence increased twelvefold by the Lyons-Burns effect. Other citizens include the neoelephants, who roam the Sanctuary outside the town, and the neoparrots, who fly around the Sanctuary. Late every night a larger version of the locket device that changes Lorelei to Mindmistress rises out of the water tower, and turns all the animals within range back to normal for the night. (The neoelephants and the neoparrots specifically come close to the town at night, for that very reason.

One of the ways they support themselves is through Mindmist Technical Support, an IT based web and firewall service, which many of the neochimps work in, outsourcing as technical support for a variety of customers and companies. They communicate through the outside world by email and chat, and their customers have no idea they're speaking to someone nonhuman.

Theo Angusson is one of the prime tech support representatives, a former movie star before his inteligence was increased. His father Gus, was the alpha male/mayor of the town, the foremost of four alpha males who led four troops of chimps within the town. His mother was Angelica, and Theo's son is a young neochimp named Paul.

Mindmist has an electrified outer fence, and an inner wall around the village and the rest of the Sanctuary. The matriarchal neoelephants do not have the hands for detailed work, but they tend to be the deeper thinkers, the philosphers. The communication experts are the neoparrots. The neoelephants and the neoparrots can mimic human speech. The neochimps, whose vocal chords are not placed correctly for human speech, communicate by sign language face-to-face, when they're not texting each other messages.