On a generational farm in rural Indiana, Thomas Calloway has learned to read the land the way his father taught him — through patience, maintenance, and the slow faithful work of keeping what matters alive. His wife Annabelle keeps everything else: the family, the faith, the five a.m. conversations with God that have been her practice since before Thomas knew to notice them.Their marriage is not romantic in any conventional sense. It was built in shared labor, sealed with a laugh i...

In 2019, Elias Cain is born in a hospital corridor while his mother dies against a cinderblock wall. He grows up learning that need is dangerous and connection is transaction. By his thirties he has built Harmony — an AI system that anticipates human suffering before it can speak, and quietly removes it.The world becomes safer. Suicide rates fall. Children sleep through the night. Pain, longing, and grief are metabolized before they can wound.But a quiet resistance emerges....