Dilia finds herself on the edge of the unknown looking into the eyes of an alien stranger. With her new and controversial invention, The Universal Translator, she is the only Deymorna who can interview this mysterious new creature. Its name is Autumn and it claims to be from a now-dead planet called Earth.

Amid the paranoia of cold war, the Deymorna discover Autumn in a stasis sleep as her vessel drifts toward a massive black hole. Is she yet another genetically-modified spy sent by the enemy, The Shenaton, who drove Dilia’s species off of their home-world? Or is she simply a young girl, orphaned in the cosmos, with a story to share of the profound-mundane? Regardless of her origins, the girl’s story threatens to blur the comfortable lines between truth and untruth, known and unknown, self and other, as Dilia struggles to make sense of a budding new identity.

(Cover Art by Alicia Steinkirchner)