Homebound

Three interwoven narratives, spanning centuries and connected by a text-adventure game, unfold across alternating chapters. In 1983 Cincinnati, a young woman grieves her uncle while discovering his secrets and his unfinished computer game. In 2586, on an Earth reshaped by catastrophic flooding, a ship captain sails dangerous waters with an ancient robot passenger. And in documents from the late 21st century, a scientist's emails trace the creation of that same robot.

The novel opens with Rebecca, called Becks, a college freshman at the University of Cincinnati who addresses her dead Uncle Ben in second-person narration. Ben, a programmer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, first inspired Becks's love of coding in high school. Now, 37 days after his death, she runs a program to count those days. It returns an error. She deletes it, reflecting that a person's mistakes, unlike code, cannot be rewritten.

The narrative shifts to 2586. Centuries of climate change have flooded the Earth, and humanity survives on islands, trash heaps, and boats. Yesiko captains the 77-foot sailing vessel Babylon, the only home she has ever known. Her sole crew member is Root, an older man with an albatross tattooed across his face. Years earlier, Root broke his spine in an accident. A drug lord named Chante arranged for nanites, microscopic robots implanted in a spinal brace, to keep Root alive. To pay for the procedure, Yesiko took on an enormous debt to Chante, marked by a tattoo of green circles on her throat. After an earthquake cracks a sunken ship's hull, Yesiko dives in Babylon's small submersible to recover jewelry she can sell toward the debt.

On Liana, a lawless trash-heap island, a sharp teenager named Shula offers 4,000 credits to transport herself, her brother Tov, and a third passenger north. The third passenger is Chaya, an Aye: a humanoid robot with mottled gray synthetic skin, six-fingered hands, and a holographic face that shifts to mirror those around it. The combined payment would cover the debt, so Yesiko accepts and sets sail.

Interspersed chapters narrated by Chaya in first-person plural describe fragmented memories spanning centuries. Deprived of necessary rest cycles, Chaya lost its earliest memories. From corrupted data, one name persists: Lieutenant California Solo, an astronaut. Across the centuries, Chaya clings to a story about Solo and a robot traveling through space, proof that Chaya is not singular.

Back in 1983, Becks visits her grandmother Bubbe, who has begun experiencing cognitive decline. Bubbe mentions talking to someone named Elijah. In the spare bedroom, Becks finds boxes of Ben's belongings, including an envelope of floppy disks addressed to her. From messages on Bubbe's answering machine, Becks learns that Ben was diagnosed with GRID (Gay-Related Immune Disease, an early term for AIDS), not the pneumonia her mother Sheila claimed. A man named Elijah identifies himself as Ben's friend. When Becks asks Sheila if Ben was gay, Sheila refuses to discuss his "choices."

On Erev Shabbat, the sabbath eve, aboard Babylon, Chaya tells the crew a story: A brave astronaut investigated a stalled generation ship whose crew had abandoned thousands of sleeping passengers. On a nearby planet, the astronaut met a girl named Elijah who guarded a portal. To free the ship, the astronaut passed through the portal and was gravely injured. Elijah abandoned her post to bring the astronaut home. Chaya claims they will arrive in seven weeks, and a northern settlement has a radio antenna to contact their ship.

A parallel narrative emerges through emails from Dr. Tamar Portman, an ecobiologist, to Solomon Helluga, an environmental lawyer. At Omega Labs in Alaska, Tamar develops AmAyes, biologically integrated robots with quantum-computing processors and organic neural networks. One AmAye, Chaya, independently develops a holographic face and shows signs of consciousness. Tamar introduces Chaya to Homebound, a text-adventure game from her late mentor's collection, and they play it together. She discovers the AmAyes require weekly rest cycles to function properly. When Jeffrey Bowker purchases Omega Labs in 2088 and redirects the project toward space colonization, Tamar smuggles Chaya out with Solomon's help, designating the robot "nonoperational" on the transfer order. In Chaya's own narration of this memory, Tamar takes Chaya's hand and promises to keep the robot on Earth.

Becks opens the floppy disks and finds Homebound, Ben's unfinished text-adventure game, along with a letter revealing he was gay, that Elijah is the love of his life, and asking Becks to finish the game. Its protagonist is an astronaut named Lieutenant California Solo. In the game, Solo discovers the stalled generation ship, meets Elijah on a distant planet, and passes through the portal to help people across eras, from an elderly woman reconnecting with a lost love to a gay teenager learning that showing up despite fear is itself courage. A fortune-telling machine produces a card: "Do not let fear keep you from showing up where you are meant to be" (220).

Becks's summer spirals as she tries to reinvent herself. When her best friend Veronica's boyfriend Jack tells Becks that Veronica does not love her "like that," she is devastated. She discovers Cloud Teeth, a queer punk band, and drives alone to their concert. A bouncer calls her "family." A queer woman named Chandler, whom she meets at the concert, gives Becks her own shirt after a stranger ruins Becks's. In the mosh pit, Becks feels belonging for the first time: bodies passing energy, catching those who fall.

Babylon reaches Hopeagain, where Yesiko settles Chante's debt. But Chante withholds the name of the doctor who might renew Root's failing nanites unless Yesiko demonstrates continued loyalty. Yesiko mentions having seen a rare Aye, and a deal takes shape: bring Chaya in exchange for the doctor's name. Sailing north, Yesiko finds the passengers stranded. The settlement turned out to be a violent cult, and Chaya has become unresponsive. Yesiko calls them crew for the first time. When Shula discovers the intended betrayal, she slaps Yesiko. Yesiko admits she meant to sell Chaya but no longer does, and for the first time shares decision-making with Shula.

Yesiko withdraws into shame, isolating herself in the pilothouse. She draws Chaya back to speech with a folktale about patience and purpose. As the crew helps Chaya recover, fragments of memory surface until Chaya recalls one word: "Alaska." Babylon sails north through frozen seas. Root's condition worsens. When ice seals around the boat, Root instructs Chaya to redirect his nanites into the hull, warming it enough to break free. Without the nanites, Root dies. Yesiko wraps his body in a sail and recites the mourner's kaddish, a Jewish prayer for the dead; when her voice falters, Chaya's choral voices carry the prayer. They lower Root into the sea.

At the sunken coordinates of Omega Labs in Alaska, Yesiko and Chaya find only collapsed buildings on the seafloor. Then four whales appear, their song vibrating through the submersible. Back aboard Babylon, Chaya questions whether the astronaut is real or a programming error. Yesiko responds that Chaya's faith brought them to this crew, and that is real. Shula bakes Root's challah and lights the Shabbat lamps. A light blinks on the horizon. When the sabbath ends, they will sail toward it together.

In the game's final sequence, Solo's life-support suit fails. Elijah gets Solo to the ship's suspension pod and sends a transmission: She is bringing Lieutenant Solo home. The sleeping passengers are saved. The novel closes with Becks driving home, resolving to call Ben's partner Elijah with Bubbe so they can share memories of Ben. She names the game's guardian Elijah, after the partner, the prophet, the one who comes back for those they love. She embraces the conviction that survival means turning again and again, together.