Qualia: the quality or feeling of a conscious experience. Qualia can’t be described, they must be experienced to be known. A million years in the future, physics is closed. Humanity has computerized the brain, solved death, and spread across the galaxy. The greatest challenge that remains is figuring out how a quadrillion immortal, nearly omnipotent humans might survive the eventual end of the universe.

Lysandra is a million-year-old quale-diver, a person who designs novel neural configurations in search of new conscious experiences—qualia. When she discovers a conscious state that hints at a solution to the universe-survival problem, the entire galaxy erupts with renewed excitement and hope. The final question to end all questions might be on the brink of a solution. But there are those who believe that surviving the end of the universe will destabilize the timeless cycle of infinite universes, leading to eternal oblivion, and they will stop at nothing to prevent Lysandra from completing her work.