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What does it mean to be human?

In the far future, thousands of years after the eradication of humanity, an artificial intelligence creates Six, the first human. Her only companion is an emotionless robot caretaker named Zero. She grows up alone, within the antiseptic walls of the Facility, and longs to explore the ruins of the City just on the horizon. She can't leave, however, due to the toxic atmosphere outside. But when enough parts are salvaged to assemble a suit capable of traversing the wastes, Six discovers that there is much more beyond the horizon than she expected.

Meanwhile, in the near future, Dr. Tamara Vandayar is stumbling her way through humanity. As one of the leading AI engineers at Arabella Institute, she is deep in the process of developing AAI-01, the first fully-formed, self-aware artificial intelligence ... assuming her entire Heuristics department is not shut down due to funding first. Along the way, she navigates an iffy situationship with a mechanic at the Institute while also butting heads with Arabella's president, Jiryu Tanako, all while trying to answer the most important question: what is sentience?

These two women will never meet, but their stories are ultimately intertwined in Tamara's work, which both defined, and destroyed, humanity.