Sometimes, honour and bravery can win a reprieve from destiny. A story of hope and despair, as Artifical intelligences, posthumans, and other minds struggle against their fates.
Amongst other events...
The too-biological Zee leaves, feeling the call of an older blessing than the ones her peers have received.
An old man, who knows more than he should, arrives at the school, to try and show Zu that here is a path other than the one others have demanded of him.
Hofstadter, the AI in the form of a teddy bear, begins her own complex journey into being.
A life that could have been filled with light is instead infected with darkness, and the Soldier passes on to his reward.