This is a novella; but wait!  If you're the type (as I was once) to dismiss it as not being "meaty" enough or that a full story can't be told…this one should prove you wrong.  I actually had to read it twice…right away.  But this was mostly because there was much that I didn't get the first time.

So…there's this spaceship and crew whose apparent job is to find and nudge asteroids or comets in the right direction so they can be mined.  But this spaceship and crew are nothing like what we're used to….they are tiny.  The ship is about 1mm in size.  Which is, of course, incredibly tiny.  The crew….well, they are digital.  This is said but it was difficult to keep in mind because we learn so much of how they look, how they interact, and…most interestingly…what their private crew quarters are.  One boggles at the implication that the processes to both run the ship and keep four digital signatures that interact can be fit inside a 1mm sized ship.  The human 'verse is completely run by the Company.  Three of the crew know they began life as a human but they were digitalized because of a crime.  The fourth member was the first AI.

The story begins when the ship detects an anomalous body in space; a like-sized perfect sphere that doesn't reflect light.  The crew bicker and debate and finally decide that it must investigate in person before a report is made to the Company.  The Company runs everything in the human 'verse; and this ship belongs to it.  The crew wants to be sure they have correct data before they bring themselves to the attention of the Company.  After all, their 300-year-long voyage hasn't been too bad; but if the Company became unhappy, they might find themselves doing something less pleasant.

So here is where the fun begins.  To investigate the strange object, they must first pick a body to inhabit; and each of the crew still have personal (and sometimes baffling) foibles.  Then just as they are debating how best to approach the sphere, their communications array with the Company go down.  They know a repair ship will soon be on the way but for the first time, they are utterly alone and private in their thoughts and actions. 

Then the most incomprehensible thing happens.  As they debate the "away mission", one of the crew panics and reveals that their own back-up memories insist they've already done this.  They then discover that no matter what they decide, Quin (who is a hive creature and has a redundant memory backup so that all his parts function cohesively) is there to tell them how it went.  The sphere attempts to communicate by transporting each of the crew to a distant memory and then observing their reactions.  The crew is amazed and flummoxed by the realization they are really back in their original body and well and truly in the past.  This part was (hmmm, hard to pick an adverb) disturbing…especially for the AI.  And I will pass along the author's warning on the dedication page: this story displays transphobia and homophobic behaviors, which might disturb some readers.  But through this experience, the crew finally deduces just what the sphere is trying to determine about both them and probably all of humanity.  Only one of the crew is brave enough to say out loud what they are all thinking and that changes everything.

As I said above, I had to read this twice.  Partly because I was being a lazy reader and expected the author to eventually explain everything to me.  And partly because the concepts were uncommon.  By the time I got to the last few pages, I knew I had to reread it.  It was brilliant both times.  ~~  Catherine Book

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