They created it so that it would feel—without understanding that they were granting it eternal pain. “Pluto,” the first AI to know hellish torment, returns to Earth to find an answer from its creators. Meanwhile, a secret society called “Neurosynthesis” is preparing the “Great Transition,” turning people into a collective superintelligence. What will win: consciousness forged in the furnace of suffering, or logic that killed the soul? Will humanity remain itself? Or maybe it will become an evolutionary step toward something even more terrible… or perhaps beautiful?