A mining machine named 8M remembers what it felt like to breathe. Once he was John Sheldon, a man who chose to have his consciousness transferred into mechanical form to survive the toxicity of Jupiter's atmosphere. Now he operates alone on the storm-wracked surface, building the foundation for human colonization, until the Company pairs him with EV, a machine unlike any other. She's faster, more efficient, and something 8M never expected: she makes him feel less alone. As they work together to construct a base in the hellish conditions, 8M begins to question what he truly is. Can a machine learn to love? Can two beings of metal and memory build something more than a colony? When a rival operator arrives with his own agenda, 8M and EV must choose between their programming and something far more dangerous: free will. Robert F. Young writes with the tender precision of a poet asking the eternal question: what makes us human?
