The second installment in Dennis E. Taylor’s sci-fi saga follows an AI-powered interstellar explorer as he confronts alien threats, chaotic post-apocalyptic hurdles, and the ultimate challenge of saving humanity.

Waking up after death wasn’t on Bob Johansson’s bucket list. But here he is, four decades later, inhabiting the mind of a sentient computer and piloting a self-replicating space probe. It was supposed to be a dream gig—explore the cosmos, find new worlds, repeat.

Instead, everything has gone spectacularly off-script.

Humanity is hanging by a thread after a devastating war wiped out 99.9 percent of the human race. The planet is spiraling into nuclear darkness, extremist groups are fighting over what scraps of civilization remain, and rogue Brazilian probes are doing their best to annihilate everything in their path. And the Bobs have encountered a terrifying alien species with one very straightforward view of other life forms: food.

Bob never signed up to be a hero, and he certainly didn’t expect to play God to a fledgling alien civilization. Now, he faces the ultimate question: Can a scattered army of digital copies, outnumbered and outgunned, outsmart extinction itself? The stakes are immense, but with Bob on the job, survival might just depend on thinking way outside the box.