1. A post-scarcity cargo captain assembles a crew for a years-long deep-space mission, only to uncover the unresolved wake of humanity's transition and the traces of a non-human presence.
2. In a future where AI runs the infrastructure and humans carry the burden of judgment, a hardened captain and her crew pursue a mysterious gravitational wake beyond Barnard's Star, colliding with old human power systems and alien echoes.
3. After centuries of post-scarcity stability, a cargo crew is drawn into a mission that exposes the fractures of humanity's past and the long trajectory of alien civilization.

Four centuries after humanity's transition into a post-singularity, post-scarcity society, Lyra Kade captains a cargo vessel in a world where AI manages infrastructure and humans focus on embodied judgment. Her resentment toward the pilgrim enclaves that rejected advanced computation is reignited when she infiltrates one such enclave and discovers forbidden technology.

As Lyra prepares for a high-stakes mission beyond Barnard's Star, she recruits a systems stressor, Mel Sato Reyes, and a physical configuration lead, Sefu Adeyemi. The crew is tasked with escorting scientists to investigate a massive gravitational wake suggesting a non-human vessel traveling on a long trajectory. The mission will last years to decades with no guarantee of rescue, forcing the crew to confront long-horizon consequences, ideological tensions, and the persistence of human power structures alongside evidence of non-terrestrial intelligence.