Seven years. Countless sacrifices—friends, family, love. And now, anthropologist Zadie Thornton’s doctoral work—on how humanity might adapt to AI—is obsolete before it’s even published. With her career in jeopardy, she accepts her uncle’s mysterious offer to glimpse AI’s future, expecting a top-secret research facility. Instead, she wakes up on another planet.

Mushēški is home to the Anunnaki—descendants of ancient Sumerians who merged AI with their DNA five millennia ago. The result? Superhuman cognition… and a civilization on the brink. Their emotions are fading. Their identities, dissolving. They believed they’d reached the pinnacle of evolution—until a destabilizing disorder called Quantum Psychosis began to threaten their existence. In pursuit of a solution, the Anunnaki have recreated extinct human species in vast biodomes, hoping to rediscover what they’ve lost.

For Zadie, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. The chance to observe what humanity once was, while living among what her people might one day become. As fascination battles unease, she agrees to stay. To revive her career. To stop Earth from hurtling toward the same fate.

But as the disorder spreads, the Anunnaki’s noble intentions give way to increasingly unethical measures, forcing Zadie to confront the true cost of progress—and what it really means to be human.

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