For forty years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia’s home. On
this planet far away in space and time from the world of
her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of
her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly
tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here
that she fully expects to finish out her days–until the
shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company
dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its
residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere
new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her
fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult
readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the
promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the
hurly-burly of a new community . . . but closing out her
life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no
intention of leaving. A population of one.
With everything she needs to sustain her, and her
independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start
life over–for the first time on her own terms: free of the
demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others.
But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic
domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia
realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise
after all. And, when the inevitable time of first contact
finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again–
in ways she could never have imagined. . . .
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