A novel about us. What it means to be alive. The body and soul that are perhaps not always separable. Mankind’s destiny—if we don’t blow it. One thousand years into his Rite of Passage, Gatc’hh’en, part machine, part living being is half mad with loneliness and despair. The only woman he has ever loved died horribly four hundred years ago largely because of her association with him, and he wants her back. It seems the only way. He settles on Emily, a young woman near death’s door. He cures her fatal disease - stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma - and begins the inexorable process of changing her into the lover he remembers by genetically modifying her at the cellular level. At first, Emily loves her new lease on life as well as her newly minted and beautiful body, but as she and Gatc’hh’en soon discover, there is a steep and unexpected price they each must pay.