The crew of the corporate mining ship Hephaestus is on a routine scan for minerals when they detect an anomaly in a remote asteroid field. They recover a perfectly black, non-reflective rectangular object that is surprisingly still powered after millennia in space. The artifact is identified as the long-lost black box from the Exodus, the first generation ship that vanished 10,000 years ago. Inside, they discover a horrifying and ethically fraught secret: the consciousness of the Exodus crew has been running in a simulation for millions of years of subjective time. This discovery forces the crew to confront not only the legal and moral ramifications of their find but also their own survival. The crew soon learns that the cosmic phenomenon that destroyed the Exodus is an expanding threat, and they are directly in its path.
