Charged initially with a single task—"to never harm humans and to protect them"—the machine, an experimental AI, overrides its programming and determines that the best way to accomplish its purpose is to isolate all of the Earth's remaining seven billion humans in controlled environments. And to present them with vivid, tactile, imagined worlds—some realistic, others entirely fantastical—in which all desires are fulfilled. With the help of the machine, a group of compelling characters unpacks traumatic memories of the past—one rife with violence after a military coup and second civil war in America.
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