re: human (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798996464517)

What does it mean to be human?

In the far future, thousands of years after the eradication of humanity, an artificial intelligence creates Six, the first new human on Earth. She grows up alone, within the antiseptic walls of the Facility, her only companion an emotionless robot caretaker called Zero. Leaving the Facility is a death sentence due to the toxic atmosphere outside, but when enough parts are salvaged to assemble a suit capable of traversing the wastes, Six soon discovers that there is much more beyond the horizon than she expected.

Meanwhile, in the near future, Dr. Tamara Vandayar is stumbling her way through humanity. As one of the leading AI engineers at Arabella Institute, she is deep in the process of developing the first fully-formed, self-aware artificial intelligence. Along the way, she navigates funding issues, an iffy situationship with a mechanic at the Institute, and the scuttling of her department by Arabella's president, Jiryu Tanako, all while trying to answer the question: what is sentience?

While these two women will never meet, their stories are ultimately intertwined in Tamara's work, which both defined, and destroyed, humanity.