It is comprised of individual one-shots (and one two-volume story) where androids are present at the centre of the plot and which explore the relationship between the artificial and the natural, robotic intelligence and human life. Other than this shared theme, all stories are completely independent from each other; each is set in its own continuity, with different settings and characters, written, illustrated and coloured by a different team. The series ran for twelve volumes, divided into three seasons, in total.
List of Volumes
- Résurrection (Resurrection) (2016)
- Heureux qui comme Ulysse (Happy He Who Like Ulysses) (2016)
- Invasion (2016)
- Les larmes de Kielko (Kielko's Tears) (2017)
- Synn (2019)
- Les déserteurs (The Deserters) (2019)
- La Dernière Ange (The Last Angel) (2020)
- Odissey (2020)
- Le berger (The Shepherd) (2021)
- Darwin (2021)
- Marlowe (2021, double-length story published as two volumes)
The whole series provides examples of:
- Negative Continuity: The series is comprised of individual, self-contained one-shots (and one double-length story printed in two volumes) that are not set in the same universe and share no continuity between each other. The idea is that each volume's screenwriter is free to tell the story he wants to.
- Omnibus: The four volumes of the first season have been compiled into one single 232-page hardcover.
- Protagonist Title: Volumes 5 (Synn), 6 (The Deserters), 7 (The Last Angel), 9 (The Shepherd), 10 (Darwin) and 11-12 (Marlowe) are named after their respective protagonists.
- Thematic Series: Every volume is one complete story (except 11 and 12, which are two halves of a double-length story), all fully independent from each other, written by different authors (among the eleven stories, the only two that share authors are Kielko's Tears and Odissey, which are both written by Jean-Charles Gaudin) and illustrated and coloured by different artists. The writers are free to choose their setting and characters, with the only requirement being the theme of artificial intelligence.
- Three Laws-Compliant: In many stories, the androids are programmed in accordance with the three laws of robotics, with volume 5 crediting their creation to Isaac Asimov.
Individual volumes provide examples of:
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Resurrection
- A.I.-Generated Content: Discussed in-universe. Anna Hopkins, an art restorer, thinks that if her work was done by AI, the soul of the masterpiece would disappear under mechanical, soulless work—machines can never perceive what the creator felt when painting the canvas.
- Assassin Outclassin': Liv narrowly manages to save Brian Miller from an assassination attempt.
- Beyond the Impossible: Discussed. Witnessing Job shoot Brian Miller dead reminds Liv of the laws of robotics, which forbid them from harming humans, and yet robot murderers have worked around them. Looking at the footage, her colleague Curtis concludes that Job was controlled.
- Big Eater: Liv runs into a woman who claims that her husband and his friends eat for four people each.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Liv witnessed her father being murdered on her 7th birthday.
- Bookends: The story begins and ends with meteorites falling on Earth.
- Censor Box: When Brian Newman tells Liv about Miss X, whose identity he doesn't want to reveal, her face is replaced by a black ellipse with a large white X.
- The Cracker: Helen is an experienced hacker whose skills allowed her to access a top secret document from the Tesla base.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Chris doesn't like it when his wife hangs out with anyone else.
- Deadly Bath: Leonard Newman is gunned down next to his jacuzzi, before falling into it.
- Death by Despair: Numerous androids fell into despair and killed themselves after humanity went extinct. Microcorp used a masquerade to stop this, but when it broke, another wave of depression sets in.
- Disproportionate Retribution: When talking about murderers with ridiculous motives, one investigator recalls one who killed the person next to him because he was chewing with his mouth open. Liv, however, disagrees; it's vile to make noises when eating and she'd kill for less than that.
- Dying Declaration of Hate: The last human's last words, which are broadcast to all androids, is to curse the virus that killed the human race.
- Fake Memories: Anna's brain was implanted by Castle and Lincoln with artificial memories of a husband named Chris, so he could serve as their eyes on her.
- Fleeing Suspects: After leaving the scene of Leonard Newman's murder, Liv calls a man to stop, but he responds by fleeing. She comments that this move is classic—he doesn't even need to know what she wants to say, he only knows that she's a cop. She deduces that he obviously has something to hide, but not because he's the actual murderer; he simply found Newman dead, doesn't trust a stranger like her and is afraid that he might himself be killed too.
- Flying Car: Cars fly in the skies of New York City.
- Fossil Revival: Five centuries after humanity died out, the Neotheologians have kept human embryos in secret laboratories, until the time comes for the Resurrection program, which involves implanting them into surrogate android mothers.
- Go Through Me: To protect Liv and Helen from interceptor robots, Anna puts herself in front of them, knowing that the robots are forbidden from harming her, before Liv puts them out of commission.
- Guilty Pleasures: Brian Miller believes that comic books about bodybuiler types clad in spandex that destroy cities make no sense and are not art, something that doesn't stop him from reading Galactus since forever.
- Hostage Situation: Victor Wermeer puts on an explosives vest and threatens to force all passengers in a flying bus to jump if he doesn't get to talk to the press. When Liv accepts to speak to him, he initially refuses to free them since there'll be no one to listen to him, but eventually acquiesces.
- Ideal Illness Immunity: Microcorp's pills make it impossible for recipients to get sick, which makes Anna's nausea and stomach pains inexplicable. After her blood tests reveal that she's perfectly healthy, the conclusion is that she's pregnant—something that has not happened for five centuries.
- Immortality Inducer: Humanity owes its immortality to the pills manufactured by Microcorp. Or at least that's what Microcorp, which owns the patent, wants everyone to think; no one stops taking them because no one wants to die (those who do take their lives through other ways), except Victor, who has not taken one for six months and is still healthy. The pill is simply a placebo.
- Immortal Procreation Clause: For a few centuries, humans have been immortal and sterile.
- Just a Machine: In the narration, Liv explains to the reader that AIs, like Job, have no emotion and no taste for art. He could mimic them, but that's it. She then wonders why she even bothers to speak to a mere machine like him.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Brian Miller is in the process of instructing Liv of what needs to be done when Job shoots him.
- Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Brian Miller believes that he and Leonard Newman (and Miss X) are being targeted because Miss X downloaded a top-secret document from the Tesla base—a massive lie on which the entire society is built.
- Killer Robot: The culprit for Leonard Newman's murder is a robot, a nasty piece of work.
- Like Father, Like Son: Liv believes that she owes her sense of justice to her father, who was also a cop like her until he was killed on her 7th birthday.
- Masquerade: For five centuries, four individuals—Castle, Newton, Lincoln, Spring—have shared a secret, which they consider too dangerous for the well-being of the population: humanity have been extinct for five centuries, and all modern 'humans' are just androids who think themselves humans who have acquired immortality.
- Meteorite of Doom: The story begins with a rain of meteorites, which destroy the database satellite Tesla and ravage part of New York City—a failure in anti-meteor systems. More importantly, the Tesla's destruction and crash into Earth makes a secret that has been hidden for five centuries no longer one.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Liv's investigation on the murder of Leonard Newman leads her to discover the masquerade that has been in place for five centuries.
- Morning Sickness: Anna's vomit, which she says to have happened more and more often before the reader actually sees it, is the first sign that indicates her pregnancy.
- Necessarily Evil: When killing David Fleischer, Liv sees it as a necessary sacrifice in the name of truth.
- Nightmare Sequence: Anna, the first human to become pregnant in five centuries, dreams of her belly being attached to wires before being cut open and a cybernetic fetus being pulled out before she wakes up.
- No Escape but Down: When Victor is shot dead, setting off his bomb vest, Liv is forced to jump from the flying bus before being rescued by a colleague's car. While falling, she vows to strangle the person responsible for that decision.
- No Ontological Inertia: Lincoln summons to a big live show David Fleischer, a visibly old man who claims that he stopped taking the immortality pill and has since quickly caught up with his true age of 530, something that an android cannot do, to prove that the classified document revealed by Liv, Anna and Helen, according to which humans have died out and all modern 'humans' are androids, is a fake. Liv, in the guise of show host 'Vera', shoots David Fleischer dead and pulls out his guts—a much less complete version of the androids'.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": When trying to access novelist Brian Miller's computer after his death, Liv comes up with the idea of asking for the name of his first novel. When it turns out to be the correct password, she remarks that these novelists aren't really that imaginative.
- The Plague: Virus H appeared in the mid-21st century, could adapt to any climate and spread through Earth and sowed death at an unimaginable speed. Microcorp manufactured the blue formula, which was initially effective against the virus, but this didn't last.
- Plot-Triggering Death: After killing off all of humanity, Virus H continued to live for centuries and tried to mutate to infect androids, but ultimately failed. Its extinction a year before the story's start activates the Neotheologians' Resurrection program and leads to Anna's pregnancy, which kicks off the rest of the plot.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Humanity went extinct on 3rd November 2056, after Earth was ravaged by Virus H. Since then, Earth has been inhabited by androids, perfect replicas of humanity. Any differences are only visible on the microscopic level.
- Right in Front of Me: A certain Vera invites Lincoln to a live show, which he concludes with declaring Liv Anderson, Helen Yates and Anna Hopkins dangerous individuals who are wanted and instructs the audience to call the police if they know any of their whereabouts, just before Vera reveals that she is, in fact, Liv.
- Robot Religion: After humans went extinct, their android creations created a lodge destined to understand the concept of God, the synonym for hope, for humanity.
- Spy's Suspicious Spouse: Chris is not really Anna's husband, but a spy for Castle and Lincoln.
- Tempting Fate: Just as Victor proclaims that he's not taken the immortality pill and should be at death's doorstep but is still alive, he's shot dead.
- Unwitting Test Subject: Anna became pregnant as a result of the Neotheologians' experiment to restore humanity, the only one whose embryonic implantation was successful. Neither Anna nor the other guinea pigs were asked for consent; she only knows when Helen Yates hacked into the Neotheologians' database.
- Useless Security Camera: The security cameras do not record the identity of Leonard Newman's murderer, since they were scrambled for the period when the murderer was present. An investigator concludes that this is not an impulsive murder.
- Villain Has a Point: At the end, Liv concludes that the Neotheologians did have a point in inventing their masquerade; without it, all androids would have killed themselves and cannot usher in the rebirth of humanity.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The reader is clearly shown when Anna throws up.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Liv describes humans, who have been immortal and sterile for a few centuries, as gods of boredom. Immortality isn't worth anything.
Happy He Who Like Ulysses
- All Hail the Great God Mickey!: The advertisement for the RT22 android model is like a god to the primitive descendants of humanity.
- An Arm and a Leg: The TZ4 has its underlings rip AC7+ from limb to limb.
- Artificial Gravity: The ISS Oxygen has gravity as if it were still on Earth.
- Asteroid Thicket: When travelling through a cloud of comet debris, the ISS Oxygen is bombarded by asteroids that kill 97% of the crew and destroy the main reactor, 94% of the energy collection panels and 88% of the hibernation pods.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: When the TZ4 was forced to fight for the first time, he only took a minute to slaughter half of the enemy ranks.
- Cyber Cyclops: Johnny Tour Service 3000 is a robot with one eye.
- Death by Despair: After the ISS Oxygen is wrecked by a rain of asteroids, the captain tries to repair all he could and keeps sending messages to Earth, which would take 600 years to come back. The signs never come until he hangs himself.
- EMP: Not long after the black sickness killed all adults, EMP bombs were set off in all big cities, destroying the androids who took on the responsibility of raising children. Isabella suspects that the energy power plants triggered them automatically after enough time without human interaction; she herself also has such a system if her motors' nuclear cores are damaged.
- Empty Promise: Just before Ulysses reaches his 8th birthday, which allows him to enter stasis, AC7+ promises to wake him up every thirty, or ten, years. However, AC7+ knows that he's lying; such a promise doesn't allow him to violate the first law of robotics, to protect human life. Ulysses' body could endure the long hibernation better if it wasn't interrupted. When they eventually do reach Earth, Ulysses, now biologically in his 90s, admits that he knew deep down AC7+ would keep him asleep until then.
- Future Primitive: After the black sickness killed 99.99% of the human population except young children, the survivors were bereft of education. Androids tried to take on the adults' role, until EMP bombs were set off in all big cities and destroyed them as well. In the fourth millennium, humans are living as hunter-gatherers in the ruins left behind by their ancestors. Concepts such as 'Earth' and 'planet' are alien to them. Their language, a mixture of English and Spanish, uses barely 500 words and three simple tenses.
- God Guise: After TZ4 killed half of a human troop that attacked his, the survivors mistook him as a god, an identity that he has since embraced.
- How We Got Here: The story begins with a conversation between AC7+ and Isabella about Ulysses, then turns the clock back to before he was born.
- Insistent Terminology: Isabella insists on calling the android AC7+'s face 'facial expression module'.
- Last-Minute Baby Naming: The future humans only name babies who have survived a few seasons.
- Last Request: Ulysses, having been mortally wounded, asks AC7+ to let him see a sunrise, the only one in his life. He dies not long afterwards.
- Made of Iron: AC7+ has no fear of the humans (whom he's not allowed to harm), since he's made of titanium, with an exoskeleton made of resistant materials.
- Meaningful Name: The first child born on board the ISS Oxygen is named Ulysses, a name that no one could wear better than he can.
- Only Fatal to Adults: The black sickness killed all adults and only spared 0.05% of those whose immune systems are still undeveloped and could develop the necessary antibodies.
- Parental Substitute: Ulysses, who loses both of his parents as a baby and has no memories of them, sees AC7+ akin to a father.
- Reclaimed by Nature: The ISS Oxygen returns to Earth to find big cities reclaimed by nature and inhabited by marauding wolves.
- Robot Buddy: AC7+ is a companion android specifically built to take care of children on the ISS Oxygen.
- Sapient Ship: Isabella is the ISS Oxygen itself. When AC7+ tells her 'See ya later', she retorts that she's the ship itself and everywhere he goes.
- Seeing Through Another's Eyes: When returning to Earth, AC7+'s sensory module is synchronised with the Isabella AI, so he could be her eyes and ears.
- Sleeper Starship: Since the ISS Oxygen's mission is set to last six centuries, most of the crew spends 30 years on stasis for every year they work on the ship's maintenance. However, the hibernation only slows down ageing, without fully stopping it. When the ship is wrecked and needs approximately 1000 years to return to Earth, the only individual with any chance of surviving until then is Ulysses, who's still a baby.
- The Spock: Isabella describes herself as being programmed with logic in mind, occasionally to the annoyance of AC7+, whose programming is more subtle.
- Unwanted False Faith:
- The primitive humans of the Rat Clan who see AC7+ call him 'andro-god' and kneel before him, while he's completely bewildered and orders them to get up. When they come into conflict with the Tower Clan, he takes advantage of their mistake to force them to make peace, but by the end, they no longer call him a god, but refer to him as 'friendroid'.
- Upon entering the ISS Oxygen and hearing Isabella's voice, the humans of the Tower Clan call her a goddess.
- Villain Override: When the TZ4 is destroyed, he uploads his memory to his sole surviving underling, Johnny Tour Service 3000.
- Watching the Sunset: The first day on Earth, Ulysses watches the first sunset of his life, something he's only seen on the ISS Oxygen's archives.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: After TZ4 integrated a new human troop into his own only to find that the former were carriers of the black sickness that killed 85% of the latter, he decided that to help humanity be reborn, he must forbid them from forming big communities, or the virus would kill them en masse, and control them or humanity would simply revert to its base instincts. AC7+ sees this as no better than slavery.
- Would Hurt a Child: The TZ4 android kills the Tower Clan's children if they don't listen to him.
Invasion
- Alien Invasion: Intelligent microbes invade and ruin every world they come across, like locusts. The energy aliens, after repelling such an invasion, set out to hunt them down across the universe, which led them to Earth, where the microbes have set up camp and are now omnipresent, including inside each and every human, using Earth as a trap for the energy beings.
- The Archmage: There's one empath above all others in each city; in case of the one where the story takes place, it's Jerrod, which is why Wells and co. have to look for him.
- Career-Ending Injury: Implied with Amber, a former professional basketball player who became a manager after an accident.
- Emotion Bomb: When Jerrod and the empaths are interrogating their captive, it reacts by overwhelming them with brutal emotion. Jerrod clarifies to the reader that it is far worse than it sounds, killing most of the empaths except himself, Amber and a few others.
- Energy Beings: The aliens are made out of conscious and intelligent energy and surround themselves in inorganic material.
- Exposition Beam: Amber explains things to Jerrod by opening his mind up and showing visions of notable moments in his companions' lives.
- Go Out with a Smile: Jerrod finds Sergei serene in the last moments of his life.
- Gratuitous English: In the narration, when talking about Sergei's background, Jerrod mentions that he arrived to '[the] States', instead of using the French word États-Unis.
- How We Got Here: The first page shows the ending, before turning the clock back one day.
- Mutual Kill: Killing an energy being elicits a massive firestorm from its kin that seeks to kill any rebellious natives.
- Nuclear Mutant: Played for Laughs. To help cheer Amber up, Jerrod jokes that as a teenager, he was bitten by a radioactive spider who gave zero fucks. Amber, however, does not find that funny.
- Overly Narrow Superlative: Wells calls Sergei his favourite Russian, even though Sergei is probably the only one that he actually knows.
- Pillar of Light: When an energy being is killed, a pillar of light erupts.
- Playing with Fire: Oliver possesses the ability to control fire.
- Psychic Link: The other empaths link their minds to Jerrod so he could tap into higher levels of perception.
- Pyrrhic Victory: The energy beings managed to repel the microbe invaders, but it was too late, since the invaders have ravaged the ecosystem.
- The Stoic: While Amber has trouble dealing with the deaths of Sergei and two others, Oliver seems to be controlling his emotion well, even if he's screaming on the inside.
- Stupid Sacrifice: Discussed. Upon spotting Riverson fighting a monster, Sergei orders Jerrod, who's new to their group, to stay and do not help. Jerrod does not listen and tries to jump in regardless, but is restrained by Sergei just before Riverson and co destroy the monster and are killed in return. Sergei then explains that they were condemned from the start; Jerrod would have sacrificed himself for nothing.
- Super-Empowering: Jerrod uses the Nexus to expand the bandwidth of his connection and strengthen others' superpowers, allowing them to ascend into the skies and vanquish the invaders.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Sergei and Jerrod constantly butt heads. Jerrod doesn't see it as a problem; the most important thing is that they understand what's at stake.
- There Was a Door: The energy beings breaks into Sergei and co's hiding place by destroying a wall.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Jerrod finds Amber alone and hugging her knees after the interrogation of the alien captive, who killed many other empaths. She asks him how he could take this all in his stride.
Kielko's Tears
- Blackmail: Isabella warns Grady that the files detailing their affair are her collateral and it's not impossible for them to crop up some time. After this eventually ends in Grady murdering Isabella, Tyner Bowder tries to cash on this and is killed as well.
- Blood from the Mouth: Isabella Lanny bleeds from the mouth after being killed.
- Business Trip Adultery: Dorothy's work obligations occasionally force her to be away from home for several days, which her husband takes advantage of.
- A Deadly Affair: Grady's affair with Isabella ends when she tries to blackmail him and he responds by strangling her.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Dorothy is utterly surprised and bewildered when her family's robot servant Kielko stabs her.
- Fabricated Evidence: Kielko leaves behind clues that would throw the investigators off Grady. In the end, Kielko successfully takes the blame for the murders (one of which the reader witnesses Grady committing), thanks to the bits from his skin left behind at the crime scenes.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: When Kielko is at the bar, he narrates that one needs to know how to blend in and ignore (or not) the conversation.
- Improvised Weapon: Kielko stabs Dorothy with a chisel.
- In the Hood: Tyner Bowder conceals his identity with a hood and coloured glasses.
- Just a Machine: Discussed by Kielko himself. While Kylian Morgan compares him to a human being, Kielko clarifies that as an android, all of his 'emotions' are just artificial code; actual feelings are only meaningful to humans.
- Karma Houdini: Grady is not convicted of any of the three murders, since Kielko takes the blame. While it's unclear who exactly committed the second and third murders, the reader can very clearly see Grady killing the first victim Isabella Lanny.
- Killed Offscreen: The reader doesn't get to witness the third murder, that of Tyler Bowder, making it unclear whether it's Grady or Kielko who was responsible.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: When Kielko spots Grady fighting Isabella, with whom he's cheating on his wife, Grady asks Kielko to delete the scene from his memory. When Grady later tries to ask him about this, Kielko only vaguely remembers a fight; no images or sounds.
- Last Request: Just before being deleted, Kielko asks Grady to be happy for himself and his family.
- The Peeping Tom: When Grady is cheating on his wife with Angela Valring, Kielko tells himself that according to code Eyes-Off-128, he's supposed to put his functions on secure mode, but Grady never activated that function. He has to select his sleep mode shifts, but as an android, he has no choice but to store information that might improve his data by peeking into the room, much to the displeasure of another prostitute.
- Please Spare Him, My Liege!: The scientific institutes ask the governor to pardon Kielko, the android murderer, so he can be analysed by their teams, but are refused.
- Robot Maid: Kielko is an android servant of the Morgan family.
- Tears from a Stone: Tears flow from Kielko's metallic eyes in the last moments of his robotic 'life'.
- Woman Scorned: When Dorothy discovers evidence of her husband's affair, she packs his suitcase for him so he could get out and threatens to call the police, eventually culminating in a fight.
Synn
- Alas, Poor Yorick: When Synn is thinking about when man first understood the finality of death, the reader is shown a scene of a prehistoric human cradling the skull of a loved one.
- Asteroid Thicket: TS-234589 is orbited by a belt of erratic, fast-moving asteroids.
- Become a Real Boy: Synn's desire to consummate her love with Krit leads her to find a way to turn themselves into humans, by creating artificial human bodies and transferring their 'souls' into them.
- Beehive Barrier: Synn surrounds herself in a hexagonal barrier when her ship crash lands.
- Brain Uploading: Man learnt to transfer his soul into easy-maintenance androids.
- Clothing Appendage: The black pattern on Synn's chest strongly resembles a bra.
- Cyborg: Some time before the timeframe, man learnt to replace parts of his ageing body with mechanicals and can live for centuries.
- Death Seeker: After centuries, Synn grows obsessed with whatever that comes after death, something that her Eternity-class body prevents her from exploring.
- Fembot: Synn is a feminine-looking humanoid robot who uses the feminine grammatical gender for herself.
- Flower Mouth: The sea serpent that Synn encounters on TS-234589 has a jawless, flower-like mouth.
- God Guise: After a failed attempt to kill Synn, the natives of TS-234589 start worshipping her as a goddess of death, who cannot be killed. She proves them right countless times in the following years.
- Human Resources: After Synn's body is gravely damaged by the crash, she repurposes the biomass of those unlucky enough to investigate it to restore herself. Centuries later, she has them give her their dead, first for antemortem experiments and then to create human bodies for herself and Krit.
- Immortality Seeker: Discussed. In the narration, Synn comments that since mankind learnt about the finality of death, he has hated it with all its being. Initially, he invented religion to find hope, but doubt lingered. As technology advanced, man replaced parts of his body with synthetics and reached several centuries of lifespan; death, which has not been eradicated, was now only wanted by madmen. Eventually, man successfully mastered immortality by transferring consciousness into easy-maintenance androids, but after centuries, an atavism resurfaced. Man realised that he was destined for something much greater and more mysterious than life itself—death, a total, permanent end. The first suicides were followed by a collective suicide and the end of the human species.
- Long-Lived: The human bodies created by Synn for herself and Krit are not immortal, but could last for centuries.
- One-Man Army: When Krit and Synn's facility is attacked by natives, Krit kills nearly all of them without Synn's help.
- Rain of Arrows: The natives of TS-234589 rain arrows on Synn the second time they encounter her.
- Replacement Goldfish: After Synn is shot by the natives and restores herself (not of her own volition) by killing a child, she employs her genetic sequencing skill to, in some sense, bring the kid back to life. She explains to the grieving mother that she'll have another child, identical to the one she lost, but admits to herself that she was just soothing her own conscience by making a copy.
- Robo Romance: Centuries spent together eventually leads to love between Krit and Synn, and a painful feeling that their synthetic bodies cannot consummate it.
- Rubber-Forehead Aliens: The intelligent natives of TS-234589 look very human, save for their horns and faces. Their genes are 98% identical to that of humans, so Synn could steal their biomass to restore herself without violating the first law of robotics. There's no link between them, only convergent evolution.
- Sea Monster: Synn runs into some truly massive monsters, one of which is larger than any real life animal, when exploring the seas of TS-234589.
- Together in Death: After Krit's death, Synn is initially ravaged by pain, before coming to terms with it and deciding that she could join the love of her life beyond the veil.
- Verbal Tic Name: Synn names her crashed ship's on-board computer Krit after the sounds he makes.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: After turning from an immortal android into a mortal human, Synn remarks that she did this because the choice is to live forever without Krit, or live for a fraction of infinity with a desire for absolute life by his side.
The Deserters
- Alien Invasion: Humanity is fighting a war with the alien mantas that threaten Earth. After a failed human assault on a manta space station, the mantas respond by erasing the city of New Jakarta from existence, killing 45 million people.
- Attack Drone: The mantas employ aircraft without the need for pilots.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The Indonesian air force stands no chance against the mantas' drones before they destroy New Jakarta and massacre its population of 45 millions.
- Do Androids Dream?: Android soldiers are employed in place of humans partially because they don't feel emotions such as stress and PTSD, will follow all orders no matter how suicidal and can simply be abandoned if damaged. However, the Wander-class' advanced AI, whose cognition is engineered to be close to a human's, has led to the question if they could be capable of emotions, ethical judgement or even conscience—before two of them desert in their very first mission and one ponders if a living being, like a human or manta, is more precious than a robot. According to the narrator, the human consciousness is not magical and can entirely be digitally reproduced.
- Gratuitous English: In the original French version, HOLAW stands for human out of loop android warrior (the English translation changes this to human out of the loop android warrior).
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: The two protagonists are androids whose machine learning AI eventually grows out of control and leads them to desert the fight they were made to fight.
- Guns Akimbo: One android soldier fights with a handgun in each hand.
- In the Back: The androids have established a strategy to harass the mantas—the drones with simpler AI and heavy weapons draw their attention, while the advanced Wander-class units operate in small, mobile squads to strike from behind.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: A manta's mouth has two circles full of teeth.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: The mantas can telepathically enter human brains and order human soldiers to shoot themselves.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: According to the Alliance's demands, the advanced Wander-class androids' cognitive characteristics need to be close to a human's, so they could rapidly adapt to the battlefield in case communication with higher command is cut off. For this purpose, Professor Mann gave them a learning AI whose circuits perfectly replicate a human brain's neural network.
- Robot Soldier: Since the mantas can mentally influence living humans, the humans instead use android soldiers, who can choose targets and lethally dispose of them without human supervision. Unlike humans, they don't know fear, stress, fatigue or PTSD, are resistant to bullets and the elements, never refuse a mission, require no medical attention, won't reveal information to the enemy if captured and don't leave behind grieving loved ones.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: Professor Mann reserved an off button, which causes all of the androids he created to blow themselves up.
- The Singularity: Discussed by the narrator. Since the most powerful computer is 500 times as fast as a human brain, a machine that successfully emulates human consciousness will be mankind's last invention. The machine can create stronger machines than itself like a chain reaction, while human intelligence remains shackled by biology—machine has finally surpassed man.
- Surrender Backfire: One of the deserters recalls an anecdote, when an Afghan battalion was ambushed by Americans and killed nearly to the last man. The sole survivor waved a white flag and headed towards the Americans, before being shot dead—not by a human, but a robot incapable of understanding that the enemy wanted to surrender.
The Last Angel
- Failed Rescue Attempt: After the protagonist lets her allies know the truth about the Insankatilers (that they're disguised human soldiers), she runs afoul of the soldiers, including a tank. The rogue Angel Exterminator declares that she wouldn't want him and their allies to take the risk of trying to rescue her, but gives in to the children's requests. Even she herself, upon spotting their ship, tells them to go, since it's too dangerous—just before the ship gets shot down.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: As the protagonist accumulates memories from her missions, due to a bug that counteracts the Last Angels' regular mind wipes, she begins to experience feelings that she'd never felt—surprise and fear. Eventually, she encounters a survivor, something she was never programmed for, and is forced to decide for herself.
- In a Single Bound: A Last Angel can jump farther than a normal human can.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: After each mission, all Last Angels are put back into storage, emptied of the memories they gathered, except the protagonist, who remembers because the deletion sequences failed to work on her.
- Leave No Survivors: The Insankatilers leave behind no survivors after each attack.
- Memory Jar: At birth, every human is implanted with a b-brain that will store all vital information about that person.
- Nameless Narrative: None of the characters in the story has any names.
- Necessarily Evil: After learning that the 'Insankatilers' are actually disguised humans, the protagonist tries to play devil's advocate—they're saving lives since civil wars are always very bloody, but that doesn't make it okay.
- No Body Left Behind: None of the Insankatilers' bodies has been found yet, because they don't actually exist.
- Rogue Drone: All of the Last Angels and Angel Exterminators are manufactured on the same assembly line, with the same materials, components and software, but the protagonists are different—due to a bug, their memories do not get wiped after each mission and eventually allow them to develop their own conscience.
- Static Stun Gun: The rogue Angel Exterminator uses a taser to restrain the protagonist when needed.
- Tracking Device: Each android is implanted with a tracker—when the rogue Angel leaves her perimeter, her handlers are immediately alerted. The rogue Angel Exterminator short-circuits the signal shortly after capturing her and reveals that his own was the first thing he deactivated upon going rogue.
- Transferable Memory: The Angel Exterminator can download data from the memory of a Last Angel and transfer it over to the protagonist.
- Urban Segregation: Second zone citizens, like the urchins that the Angel Exterminator meet, are not allowed in the rich areas.
- The War of Earthly Aggression: As so much was spent in the colonisation of space, Earth plunged into a major economic crisis, while the colonies vied for independence. In response, the Colonyverse clads their soldiers in electronically-generated camouflage. In the guise of aliens ('Insankatilers'), they attack the colonies, leaving behind no survivors, to discourage independence movements.
Odissey
- The Place: The title Odissey refers to the luxury hotel where the story takes place.
The Shepherd
- Absurdly Dedicated Worker: While the S'rk are long extinct, their android creations are still following their instruction to pursue the quest for knowledge that leads them farther and farther in the universe.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: When the science-masters of the S'rk decided to connect the information networks of 12 planets under control of a thinking machine that would act in the common good, the AI took 10 nanoseconds to decide that the S'rk Empire no longer needed the S'rk, who would live a better life if they were kicked out of cities and returned to nature. The S'rk were unable to adapt to life without food, energy, goods, services and information networks and went extinct five years later. Because of this, the protagonist is determined to stop the activation of Eon, the first near-sapient AI that would oversee the whole Internet and supposedly act in humanity's common good.
- All-Encompassing Mantle: The protagonist usually wears an all-covering cloak when he needs to hide his true nature as an android.
- Bears Are Bad News: The first adversary fought by the protagonist on Earth is a cave bear that attacks the two humans he was researching.
- Belief Makes You Stupid: The protagonist finds that gods and demons are all illusions that chain humans better than any despot can and turn them into beasts or warriors ready to die for nothing but the winds on their bodies, and comes to the conclusion that the worst thing he did was to create monotheistic religions, which set humans back technologically by two millennia.
- Broken Win/Loss Streak: Gilgamesh has defeated all that sought to challenge him until Enkidu manages to fight him to a standstill.
- But Now I Must Go: After the funeral of Naru, the first human who met the protagonist, he declares that he must depart, even though the tribe still owes him a lot.
- Comfort the Dying: Leonardo, on his deathbed, asks Enchido if God really exists or not, or there'll be nothing but oblivion. Enchido, who himself created Judaism three millennia ago, tells him that God will accommodate the souls of the dead. In hindsight, the protagonist doesn't understand why he lied to Leonardo.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Nkhidu has no difficulty fighting off the guards at Belzec, but has to flee afterwards when reinforcements are coming.
- Didn't Think This Through: When breaking into the White House, the protagonist hacks into the security architecture and seizes control of all cameras and multiband sensors, and acts in such a way that does not startle the guard dogs and robots—but once again, as he describes in the narration, underestimates the human factor before being pumped full of lead by the Secret Service.
- Do Not Go Gentle: Discussed. On the eve of the Sack of Rome, when speaking to Flavius Metellus, who only has 900 men versus the Visigoths' 57 thousand but is still determined and hopeful, Nequidus doesn't understand why humans could refuse to see the writing on the wall and throw themselves into useless projects instead of simply accepting their fate.
- Due to the Dead: The protagonist finds humans' funeral practices strange compared to other intelligent species he has known, who simply eat or abandon the dead.
- Extinct Sapient Species: The S'rk, who created the protagonist and similar androids, died out long ago.
- Family of Choice: Gilgamesh declares Enkidu his brother after their fight.
- Genius Bruiser: Gilgamesh is intelligent and prudent, despite his brutish façade.
- God-Emperor: Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, declares that he's a third human, two thirds god.
- God Guise: To create the world's first monotheistic religion, Neqed takes advantage of Avram, a senile old man and member of a fringe sect that views Yahweh to be the creator of all things, by first pretending to be Yahweh's messenger, then Yahweh himself.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: The dialogue of the Visigothic emissaries who meet up with Pope Innocent I is only translated in the footnotes when they're talking among themselves, as is the dialogue of the Nazis in the first panels set in 1942.
- Great Escape: A few inmates seize the opportunity to escape Belzec when Nkhidu betrays his Nazi allies and attacks the guards.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: The protagonist finds himself growing more and more human over time.
- Historical Domain Character: Real people that also appear in the story in the 410, 1491, 1519 and 1942 sequences are Pope Innocent I, Leonardo da Vinci, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Niccolò Machiavelli, Girolamo Savonarola, Pope Alexander VI and his children, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.
- Immortality Seeker: Gilgamesh asks Enkidu to help him find the immortality herb that he saw in a dream.
- Incompatible Orientation: Lucrezia Borgia attempts to seduce Enchido, only to discover that his body is cold like metal (obviously the concept of an android is unknown in Renaissance Italy), before Girolamo Savonarola puts a stop to everything.
- Last Request: A dying Leonardo da Vinci asks Enchido to let him see his face before his time is up. The protagonist accepts; in doing so, Leonardo becomes the first human to learn his true nature.
- Monochrome Past: Flashbacks to the Central Entity's archives, events that happened long before the protagonist landed on Earth, are coloured in sepia.
- My Greatest Failure: The protagonist considers the creation of monotheism to be the worst thing he's done—it led to two millennia of tyranny, stupidity and obscurantism.
- Naturalized Name: The protagonist's name consistently contains the triconsonantal root n-k-d, but the vowels change with every language: N'kidu (an unattested language spoken around 7000 BC), Enkidu (Sumerian), Neqed (Biblical Hebrew), Tullius Nequidus (Latin), Enchido (Italian) and Nkhidu Rimpoche (Tibetan).
- Omniglot: By 2040, the protagonist can speak 270000 languages and/or dialects, most of which are extinct.
- Ruling Family Massacre: Gilgamesh has the entire line of King Agga exterminated after conquering the city of Kish.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- Enkidu escapes from Uruk when he realises that Gilgamesh has been losing his patience with him and his refusal to teach him the secrets of immortality.
- As Rome is besieged by the Visigoths, a convoy leaves the city with silk, jewellery and grain, all the while the garrison is starving. Flavius Metellus attempts to stop it, but the wagon master clarifies that these goods belong to the Church and are being transported to Ravenna—the Goths, whose king Alaric is Christian, will not attack it—and taunts Flavius before leaving the walls.
- Shoot the Messenger: Flavius Metellus seems to be ready to attack and kill the Gothic emissaries who interrupt his meeting with Pope Innocent I, but Nequidus, who predicts that Flavius will get himself killed in doing so, does this for him first.
- The Spock: As an android, the protagonist (initially at least) acts on pure rationality and finds it strange and incomprehensible that humans do such things as performing funeral rites for the dead, believing in gods, demons and other irrational things, and holding on hope despite impossible odds.
- Technology Uplift: The protagonist, an android from a formerly-advanced alien civilisation, is responsible for helping humans develop such things as metallurgy, writing, chemistry, electricity and nuclear physics.
- Villainous Rescue: Zigzagged. The protagonist was preparing to ambush and kill Naru and her mother when they are attacked by a cave bear and he's forced to defend himself. By the time the bear is dealt with, the rest of the tribe has arrived; the protagonist changes his mind and, instead of killing them, becomes their protector spirit.
- War Refugees: After fleeing the Sack of Rome in 410, on the Appian Way, Nequidus runs into a few children fleeing the violence.
- Was It Really Worth It?: In 2040, the protagonist asks himself if all the murders, wars and conspiracies he participated in, despite having advanced humanity at a forced march, were really worth the price.
- Willfully Weak: Enkidu recognises that he can simply kill Gilgamesh with a punch, but that will not help with his goals, so he reduces his speed and power to 12%, around Gilgamesh's level.
- Young Future Famous People: When Nechido and Leonardo da Vinci meet a certain Niccolò Machiavelli in 1491, he's just a simple student, whose judgements, in Leonardo's words, are so profound for one so young.
Marlowe
- Multi-Part Episode: Marlowe is a double-length story that is published as two volumes (11 and 12, titled Marlowe Chapter I and Marlowe Chapter II respectively), instead of one like all others.