Like Humans, they Dreamed

In 2190, Ninti arrives in Porte-la-Terre with little more than an indenture, a few papers, and the hope that a city of foundries, shipyards, and machine works will have a place for someone who knows how to keep machinery running. She finds work at Poudin Machine Works and a bed at Laneway Dorm, where meals are shared, wages are small, and ordinary life begins to seem possible.

Then one of her dorm mates is murdered in the Park of the Mechanics.

Ninti has always survived by paying attention. She notices machinery, languages, streets, people, and the small details others dismiss. Following those details through the drowned remains of old St. Louis and the crowded streets of Porte-la-Terre brings her among gamblers, mudlarks, soldiers, factory workers, criminals, and people who possess reasons to fear questions she has barely begun to ask. The farther she follows the dead man's trail, the harder it becomes to separate his secrets from questions Ninti has spent years avoiding about herself.

Like Humans, they Dreamed is a Project Negentropy novel about work, loyalty, memory, and survival in a future built among the ruins of the old world-where civilization has returned, history has not, and sometimes the most dangerous question is not what happened, but why you understand it.