The ship needed to hear voices, to know he was not alone. The pilot thought they were going to fight an enemy, to find someone responsible and mete out justice. The Interlocutor thought they were going to help.
The ship only wanted to hear the chaos of life and know he wasn’t alone among the stars. The Arcology is a pan galactic utopia whose people live entirely online. Tired of paradise, Praveenthi ‘Prab’ Saal had herself printed into the physical world of Sirajah’s Reach, working as an Interlocutor – a go between for the Arcology and the cultures it meets in flesh and blood. One evening after a call with her family - who are pressuring her to abandon her body and rejoin the Arcology, the city stops. Stops completely – nothing electronic works anymore.
Terrified that the Arcology has just up and disappeared, she receives a call for help from a ship in dock whose pilot, Kercher, is a prisoner printed into a body to serve out his sentence in the physical world. Between them they discover it’s not just her planet, but the entire Arcology that’s gone missing. If they don’t find out what’s going on it could be the end of everyone and everything that calls the Arcology home. Their only resource is their living ship, into which all the knowledge and culture of the Arcology has been downloaded.
Asked to be a life raft for the Arcology, the ship, a frigate without a name, is dying – slowly being swallowed whole by the literal universe of information it’s been asked to carry. Featuring worlds made entirely from gold, an enemy who has no consciousness, allies made of lichen and the grand Ring World of Akhanda - the physical heart of the Arcology. Prab and Kercher will need to put aside their dislike of each other and the Arcology if they’re to help their ship and save anything at all. Can they restore the possibility of hope to their lives?
