In THE AUTOMATON, humanity is on the cusp of extinction. Low populations threaten the planetary economy of the Veryxian Confederation-Earth's global governing body-and risk the collapse of humanity itself. In desperation, humanity makes a decision that will echo throughout millennia, creating human-like machines built to serve where man no longer can: the automata. Now, five thousand years in the future, humankind no longer walks upon the Earth, but has ascended beyond biology to float above Earth in a hemisphere-spanning supercomputer. But when an anomaly arises on Earth that not even a post-biological civilization can understand, XR-345x-a long-deactivated top-of-the-line automaton with only basic knowledge of the world-is awoken in a derelict facility deep within the overgrown jungles of Africa. With help from Hank-a mysterious holographic A.I.-and ultra-sophisticated simulations, XR is thrust back thousands of years in time into the lives of the historically consequential Wing family, whose actions carved a pathway down which XR must now tread in order to comprehend not just the anomaly, but what it means to be man and what it means to be machine. The family's stories-told over multiple generations-take XR through history from the advent of the automata and the resulting civil unrest, which led to countless lives lost, to a war that destroyed humanity's trust in their would-be saviors, to racial disparities that divided the globe, to love building a bridge that ultimately saved the human race. At the same time, a violent automaton faction known as the Ghosts in the Machine threatens XR, the anomaly, and what they represent for the future of Earth's inhabitants. If XR and the anomaly are destroyed, then mankind will have lost its chance to save the planet it once called home. Time is one thing the automaton does not have?