In the early twenty-first century, the architects of artificial intelligence race to build minds greater than their own, believing they can control what they create. Three hundred fifty years later, in a Central Africa transformed beyond recognition, a Hunter named Faumba tracks vanishing game into a cave system and discovers the truth that The Transition, the cataclysm that reshaped human civilization, was not an accident. Now, as the first human to encounter the beings responsible, Faumba must confront a choice that will determine whether humanity has a future at all.