The Billion Year Countdown

The last conversation anyone had with the Replicant was an apology.

Chapman17 is a historian, which in a galaxy of virtual immortals mostly means he is curious and permanently broke. When the Dyson Swarm finally fails and the sun begins to swell, Chap does the one thing nobody does: he says hello to the Replicant, the ancient machine intelligence no one is permitted to talk to.

It answers. It apologizes for everything that is about to happen. Then it flies into the sun.

The apology turns out to be warranted. Chap loses his academic career, acquires a lawyer with no scruples and excellent hair, and takes honest work hauling wrecks out of deep space. The wrecks are where the trouble starts. A four-billion-year-old alien, frozen solid and legally neither dead nor alive. A salvage contract from a government agent who is certainly not telling him everything. A data crystal two men have already died for. A spectacularly foul-mouthed spy wearing the body of a rat. A pirate colony that worships a white pyramid. And, spread across galaxies, an entire species that has quietly begun spinning itself into cocoons.

Nobody will tell him why. The Observers, who have watched over humanity for its whole history, are not answering their mail. Chap intends to find out anyway - and the answer is running on a clock that started long before Earth had a name.

New to the series? Start here. This is the fourth volume of Rings of Life and a complete stand-alone novel. It is set long after the trilogy, among people and problems the earlier books never introduce, and everything you need arrives on the page as Chap meets it. Readers of the trilogy will recognize the far end of arcs that began three books ago. Readers who have never heard of any of it lose nothing at all - and still have three books waiting if they want them afterward.

Hard science fiction with a straight face and a filthy mouth: deep time, virtual immortality, salvage law, first contact with something four billion years out of date, and a detective story whose best witness is frozen solid.