About the book: 2023 / What is a person: a collection of bones, muscles and nerve endings, a kind of biorobot - or is personality at the core of everything? What is immortality: a blessing or a curse - if you sometimes have to die several times a day? What's more important: following protocol or just living? Such difficult questions confront Mickey Barnes, who has escaped from debt bondage to a new colony of people on a planet lost in space. Edward Ashton's science fiction novel goes beyond the genre, rising to the level of philosophy of "Solaris" and "The Martian", but at the same time remaining understandable and close to any thinking being.