Charlie, an employee at NOVA, the world's biggest manufacturer of robots, is given the most important project of his to live with humanity's first sentient android, Julia.. Charlie is an American engineer working at the Berlin headquarters for NOVA, a giant Japanese firm that just a few years ago created the first ever robot capable of performing limited blue-collar jobs. When he finds himself in his home before a top secret company prototype of the first machine using sentient artificial intelligence in history, Julia, he is forced by his employer to supervise and take her in as a roommate for a month-long trial. Within days, Charlie and Lenka, his best friend and coworker, notice that Julia not only looks human but also possesses a human personality, intelligence, and vague memories that differ significantly from the firm's account of her creation—an account that downplayed the technological leap needed to create her. This prompts Charlie to try and uncover the truth without raising suspicions from his company.When frictions between Charlie and Julia's increasing resistance to his authority arise, they find themselves in a catastrophe that puts Julia's secret identity and the firm itself in jeopardy. With his career on the line and facing possible criminal prosecution, Charlie is forced to comply with the ever more suspicious NOVA and its terms to accompany Julia and Lenka in a covert extraction to Japan. Here, they must uncover the truth about their company's real history, Julia's fate, and the looming future of mankind amid the apparent sentience of artificially intelligent robots roaming the world.
