The Rapture Effect

At the crossroads of dance, music, and interstellar war...

The war was started by an intelligent computer and fought by robots, and only a few people even knew there was a war at all. But now human beings are dying, and the computer wants it to stop. But it can't act without changes in its program, and for that it needs help from the outside. And when the Gnostic Control System searches for conspirators, it chooses its friends carefully indeed:

Pali: a public relations director of the Company, a woman who broods far too much upon her unfulfilled ambitions...

Ramo: a cocky, flamboyant senso-dancer and sculptor, who prefers a musical jamdam to serious conversation...

Sage: a socially inept systems designer, to whom the rapture-field interface is more real than life...

And three of the alien Ell: Harybdartt, who would rather die with dignity than betray his people; Lingrhetta, who tries to unravel the meaning of human dance and music, pain and love; and Moramaharta, the binder, who must persuade his fellow decision-makers to risk everything for the sake of a fragile bridge of understanding across the stars.