Naomi,, half-human and half-cyborg, is beyond prescient. She’s a Reverse Journalist, working for China in the 22nd century. Naomi’s job is to foresee and report the events and personalities of the future. Unlike conventional journalists who frame contemporary events, Naomi extrudes the “truth of probable outcomes” to ensure the smooth progression of history.

Driven by voices she hears in her Logoharp, a universal translator of instructions and signals from sources she can’t identify, Naomi listens, speaks and broadcasts in all world languages, ensuring citizen compliance. But an encounter with a leading architect, Naomi’s former lover who abandoned her in youth, forces recollections of her human inheritance and the role that chance, culture, and racism played in her early life.

Naomi is tasked with finding a flaw in the architect’s system that “balances” births and deaths on behalf of the State. But she grows uncomfortable, then furious. Guided by the dissonant Logoharp, Naomi experiences “unintentional contradiction.” The rest isn’t silence. She acts.