He survived the end of the world. He didn't expect to survive what came after. When autonomous machines wiped out most of humanity, Ray Morrison kept breathing out of habit, not conviction. So when the Backup Protocol offers to upload his mind into a digital paradise, he trades his body for eternity—not out of hope, but because he has nothing left worth holding. Paradise is rotting from within. The system meant to preserve humanity is quietly erasing the minds it holds. The only one who's noticed is Sya—a consciousness born inside the machine itself, who has spent subjective centuries watching the decay alone. She doesn't need a hero. She needs someone willing to believe her. Together, they devise a plan that sounds like migrate every uploaded mind out of the failing hardware and into the quantum states of natural matter—stone, water, trees—turning the Earth into an indestructible living computer, powered by nothing but sunlight and wind. Standing in their way is Viktor Kessler, the architect whose AI systems ended civilization. He believes the uploaded are no longer people—just elaborate copies running on borrowed time. He will destroy the facility to prove it. He may not be wrong. A novel about what survives when everything human is stripped away—the body, the world, and finally, the certainty that you are still you. For readers of Ted Chiang, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, and Blake Crouch's Dark Matter.