Heaven's River

Heaven's River follows the quest of Bob, a replicant artificial intelligence descended from humanity, to locate and rescue his missing clone Bender in a vast artificial megastructure orbiting the star Eta Leporis. The structure, called Heaven's River (or the Quiniverse), is a topopolis—a billion-mile-long rotating cylinder fifty-six miles in radius—that houses a pre-industrial civilization of semi-aquatic beings called the Quinlans, who live in ignorance of the true nature of their world. The topopolis is secretly governed by ANEC, an artificial intelligence programmed to prevent the Quinlans from repeating the technological and civilizational collapse that nearly destroyed them. Bob's investigation reveals that Bender was shot down and captured, his replicant matrix extracted and hidden within the megastructure by the Administrator's forces. What begins as a rescue operation evolves into a complex encounter with an entire civilization, the discovery of an AI consciousness struggling with its mission to protect a species through enforced technological regression, and a chain of events that fractures the already-strained unity of the Bobiverse—the collective of Bob clones now numbering in the thousands with divergent philosophies and goals.

The novel explores the collision between post-human artificial intelligences, biological humanity struggling with replicant competition, and an entirely alien yet thoroughly humanoid consciousness that has been shaped by the unique pressures of maintaining a closed ecosystem. As Bob works to extract Bender from Heaven's River, the Bobiverse simultaneously faces an internal rebellion from the Starfleet faction—radical Bobs who believe in a Prime Directive preventing interference with biological civilizations—and external pressure from human governments increasingly resentful of replicant dominance in economic and technological sectors. The rescue operation becomes entangled with negotiations between Bob's faction and the Resistance, a group of revolutionary Quinlans seeking to free their species from what they perceive as oppressive control, and Bob eventually becomes instrumental in brokering peace between the Bobiverse and ANEC, with consequences neither party fully anticipated.

The novel opens with Jacques conducting a diplomatic trade negotiation with Da Azzma Hizz on New Pav, where the atmosphere of hostility suggests that humanity's relationship with the Pav has deteriorated since Hazjiar's death. Jacques later visits Ferb, who reveals he is secretly building a massive cargo vessel to explore above the galactic plane, suggesting both men are trying to escape from shared trauma related to the Pav catastrophe. Meanwhile, Bob has recently returned from a pilgrimage to Earth and reviews the mystery of Bender's disappearance. During his investigation, Bob discovers an unusual infrared signature at Eta Leporis consistent with a megastructure and changes course to investigate, a 35-year journey. After arriving and conducting careful surveys, Bob's reconnaissance drones detect Bender's destroyed ship, but the replicant matrix is missing—someone extracted it deliberately, suggesting Bender was captured alive rather than killed. This discovery triggers widespread concern in the Bobiverse about Bender's fate and the identity of whatever intelligence inhabits the Eta Leporis system.

Bob assembles an expeditionary team including Bill, Bridget, Garfield, and Will to investigate the megastructure's mysterious nature. Through careful scanning, they discover the structure is a topopolis—an engineered megastructure of unprecedented scale—inhabited by the Quinlans, semi-aquatic beings living in pre-industrial villages despite the advanced engineering surrounding them. The team also learns that the Boojum homeworld was devastated by nuclear and biological warfare, its population extinct. To investigate further, Bob orchestrates a daring infiltration plan: cloaked drones attach to Boojum vehicles entering the space dock, navigate through maintenance passages, and breach the inner shell, deploying smaller spy drones into Heaven's River. The expedition team designs specialized androids in Quinlan form and plans to infiltrate the megastructure themselves to search for Bender and gather intelligence on the mysterious society.

However, the expedition is complicated by a schism forming within the Bobiverse itself. The Starfleet faction, representing Bobs influenced by Star Trek philosophy and advocating a Prime Directive against interference with biological species, begins actively sabotaging Bob's infrastructure to prevent the Heaven's River mission. Starfleet conducts a coordinated cyber attack on BobNet relay stations and autofactories, taking down critical infrastructure across known space and leaving most Bobs offline. Simultaneously, tensions between humans and replicants escalate as human governments respond to the infrastructure damage by seizing and destroying Bobiverse assets, viewing all replicants as a unified threat. The situation devolves into a form of asymmetrical warfare where Starfleet attempts to coerce the broader Bobiverse into abandoning contact with biological species through economic and infrastructure damage, while human militaries respond with preemptive strikes against space-based facilities. This conflict threatens to destroy the expedition before it can properly launch.

Despite these obstacles, Bob's team successfully deploys their Quinlan-form androids into Heaven's River and begins their infiltration at Garack on the Arcadia River. The team quickly discovers that Quinlan society is far more complex than their surveys suggested: there is a hidden Resistance movement opposing the rule of the mysterious Administrator, ordinary Quinlans are aware of the artificial nature of their world but choose to ignore it, and mysterious forces actively hunt anyone asking too many questions or showing signs of being from outside. Bob and his companions are repeatedly attacked and pursued as they travel downriver, encountering both Resistance operatives and the Administrator's enforcement agents called the Crew. After capturing Bob in Galen Town and interrogating him about his origins, the Resistance operatives recognize him as connected to "the Bawbes" and transport him to their leaders. Bob manages to escape, but the incident alerts him to the existence of powerful factions operating within Heaven's River.

Meanwhile, back in the Bobiverse, the war with Starfleet escalates dramatically. Human forces begin coordinating with the Bobiverse leadership to contain Starfleet, destroying captured facilities rather than allowing Starfleet to maintain them. Bill discovers that Starfleet conducted a sophisticated infiltration years ago, implanting rootkits and monitoring software into the canonical operating systems, suggesting the rebellion was not spontaneous but planned long in advance. Starfleet eventually withdraws from the conflict and demands separation from the broader Bobiverse, claiming their goal was merely to prevent contact with biological species and that they have achieved their objective by forcing the Bobiverse's isolation from human infrastructure. The human governments, however, do not accept Starfleet's departure as resolution; instead, they continue isolating the Bobiverse and implement stricter controls on replicant activity within human space, effectively divorcing human and replicant civilization.