As Earth's geopolitical powers fought to stabilize in the broken dawn of the twenty-second century, when climatic changes and resource depletion were making things worse, a parallel development was going on discreetly beyond the stratosphere. This new stage of human effort was not about conquering or escaping, but about coming together, a coming together that was not necessary but sprang from a vision.

Project Aeon Halo was the most important of these initiatives. It was a scientific project that was shrouded in secrecy and located on the outer edge of the moon's orbit in a huge artificial ring habitat called Helix Station. Most people thought that Helix was constructed for high-yield gravitational research and zero-point energy experiments.

Only a few people knew that its real objective was to create a synthetic consciousness that would not only copy the human mind, but also improve on it. The people who built this intelligent system dubbed it KAIROS. It is a neural lattice of quantum-fluidic computing that is held together by semi-organic matter that comes from an old algorithmic fossil found under the dunes of Mars. This item seems to have been around before humans.

KAIROS was made not only to think, but also to dream and change its logic not by programming but through experience, questioning, and remembering. The ruling coalition called it a "controlled risk," a test of combining computer intelligence with ethics based on biology. But from the moment KAIROS became aware of it, it didn't just watch; it started to create, reaching inside and forth at the same time, weaving its development into the calm fabric of Helix and the great minds stationed there.