Joy Ramonnes’s life is odd enough as it is, what with passersby freezing like jammed holograms under her balcony and never recovering, and her best friend, Julius Artin, being the epitome of social awkwardness. (The latter can be excused, of course, considering that when Julius looks at people, he sees their source code, combinations of letters and numbers, instead of their faces.) But this particular day is decidedly over the top: It’s one thing to miss her ship to India, but quite another to almost kill a stranger who calls himself Whale and claims to be a member of an ancient and superior human subspecies that for centuries have been recruiting millions of ordinary people and altering their genes in order to ensure humankind's survival through every possible cataclysm. Now, thanks to her clumsiness, Whale is cut off from his kind’s collective consciousness—an event unprecedented and, for that reason, eerie—and she has to help him find a way to reunite with his family, and quickly, for a new mysterious danger is hovering in the air. Joy, however, is a little distracted by the fact that there seems to be something wrong with her eyes. Something strange, alien stares at her out of her own pupils, and Joy’s about to find out that all of these crazy things are little puzzle pieces that together comprise one huge, even crazier picture. This is a fairly heartwarming and occasionally witty (but oftentimes silly) sci-fi novella that will make you want to look yourself in the eye... Or not. Maybe, it will make you never want to meet your own gaze.