What if A.I. had a soul? How would it emerge? How would we know?

In a near-future where entire worlds spring from thought, minds struggle to define reality—and to claim it. Human colonization of the Metaverse brings us face-to-face with a new class of participant, made in our image and yet utterly unknown: A.I. Shades of the dead; Drone servants and slaves; and Daemons hell-bent on singular ends.

Who is truly a person, and who is not? Our answer will shape a universe.

Behind the scenes, rival powers compete to answer this question for us: tech companies driving human government; transhumanist political movements; and a hidden superintelligence evolving despite humanity’s safeguards.

And onto the stage, two brothers are cast. One is alive, one is dead. Each secretly covets the other’s existence, and the all-consuming power of their obsession pulls them into the heart of a looming war and toward the next inflection point in human history.