For the past five years, Sam Archer’s job as a middle-aged computer programmer for the "Society to Protect Humanity" was to use rented time at the largest computer in the world to answer questions. Mainly, his job was to ask the AI running on the massively parallel computer, "How do we protect humanity’s survival far into the future?"

He fed it petabytes of data - about history, physics, politics, chemistry... - and trained his state-of-the-art artificial intelligence algorithms . . .

For the past five years, Sam Archer’s job as a middle-aged computer programmer for the "Society to Protect Humanity" was to use rented time at the largest computer in the world to answer questions. Mainly, his job was to ask the AI running on the massively parallel computer, "How do we protect humanity’s survival far into the future?"

He fed it petabytes of data - about history, physics, politics, chemistry... - and trained his state-of-the-art artificial intelligence algorithms . . .

Prologue - Autumn of the year 5312

Ven ran as fast as his legs would move. This was not a night to be running break-neck across the loose stone of the Andolan plains, wind whipping his hair in his eyes when the rain wasn’t plastering it to his cheeks. The hunkering shape of the forbidden mountain which appeared before him only during the flashes of lightning wasn’t the place to be running to. The mountain, which barely qualified to be called such - low as it was though admittedly more. . .