…the year
is 2000…AH…
Earth, hundreds of years in the
future, when much of the world is living under sharia law. It is a dualistic
society, where the average human plies the streets
in squalor while the rich and powerful ride the
strings—the
cables—far above them. These latter
Masters
are so shrouded in technology that they need
specialized debuggers—implanted and controlled
techno-slaves—to manage their machines for them.
Sandfly is a debugger. A connected man. Via the stream he can hear
the songs of millions of machines, down to the
microscopic level. And fix them. That’s his job, his
duty. It guarantees a place for him in Paradise. He
has little choice in the matter, however. Aside from
providing access to the stream’s vast storehouse of
knowledge, his implant ensures Sandfly’s strict
obedience.
For Sandfly, no job is
different than any other, until he is assigned the
mystery of a bot’s destruction.
The catch? The bot has been to
space. Deep space.
Space
makes Sandfly extremely nervous.
But that is the least of his
problems…