An elegant, elegiac examination of identity, fictionality, God and humanity itselfTamsyn MuirA multilayered, locked-room science fiction novella from Paul Cornell in which five digital beings unravel their existences to discover the truth of their humanity.The crew of the Rosebud are, currently, and by force of law, a balloon, a goth with a swagger stick, some sort of science aristocrat possibly, a ball of hands, and a swarm of insects.When five sentient digital beingscondemned for over three hundred years to crew the small survey ship by the all-powerful Companyencounter a mysterious black sphere, their course of action is clear: obtain the object, inform the Company, earn lots of praise.But the ship malfunctions, and the crew has no choice but to approach the sphere and survey it themselves. They have no idea that this objectand the transcendent truth hidden withinwill change the fate of all existence, the Company, and themselves.