[3] Kalypso Deed is the professionally disappointing test tube offspring of genius Earth based parents that she has never met.
In her role as shotgun on the environmentally inhospitable planet T'nane, Kalypso is charged with the unchallenging responsibility of babysitting Earthborn colonist Azamat Marcsson, as he enters a virtual reality world, called Alien Life, in order to solve the terraforming obstacles that prevent the Earthborn colonists and their T'nane born children (such as Kalypso) from venturing outside the man-made station.
Through the merging of high level mathematics and the dream world controlled by an artificial intelligence entity named Ganesh, Marcsson attempts to solve the 'oxygen problem' that makes their lives so precarious but instead he crashes the system, thanks to an unauthorised bridge from Alien Life to the core processing unit (The Core), that was created by the rebellious Kalypso so that she could listen to jazz music.
With the life supporting systems that underpin their lives crashing around them, Kalypso takes on the real-world responsibility of shepherding a now seemingly crazy Marcsson to the witch doctors who are trying to fix Ganesh, whilst fielding angry accusations of sabotage from those she loves the most.
Forced to accompany, the stranger, Neko, in a small canoe like boat, Kalypso learns that much of the knowledge she has been brought up to believe is instead, a lie.
Before Kalypso has time to process her new knowledge she is once again kidnapped by Marcsson, along with the biologically morphing corpse of the legendary mother, Sieng, who is revered by the dead (her research transformed them into genetical mutants but enabled them to breathe and survive in the wild).
No longer completely human, thanks to Sieng's flesh, she not only succeeds in restoring Ganesh, but transforms it, as the full potential of Marcsson's research is realised.
As the revitalised Ganesh spreads its new awareness through the station, and then into the planetary luma, it triggers a positive transformation in the environmental fabric of T'nane.
Earthborn women, and former mothers, who were cast out into 'the wild' when they were unable to perform their main task, giving birth to 'the children'.
Shotgun - colonists responsible for babysitting more academically productive members of their society who enter Ganesh in a dream like state.