In 2149, nuclear winter blankets the Earth. A hundred thousand survivors flee aboard the Star Ring for Andromeda, but delivery driver Li Yi becomes the strangest variable of all. Every 30 days, the ship's AI forcibly switches his identity: today he's the captain, next month an alien linguist, and when he wakes again, he might have to repair mechs.
Could this cursed cycle hold the key to civilization's survival? The spiral patterns on an ancestral jade pendant perfectly match those on an alien engine. A girl's prophetic painting reveals a metal giant eye belonging to a marauder, while the ship's AI core is unexpectedly locking away fragments of a mad scientist's consciousness.
When Li Yi glimpses the universe's memories through the cracks between identities, he uncovers the secrets of a war between Earth's ancient civilization and an alien race 10,000 years ago, and learns that the so-called treasure map is actually a peace treaty. Only then does he understand: this 17-light-year journey was never an escape.
Will he set every identity ablaze to fight the interstellar butchers who live by plunder? Or, at the end of the cycle, become the last thread stitching Earth and the universe together? With every change of identity, the Star Ring's course draws closer to an ending no one can foresee.
