The Starship Kai

A shattered timeline. A cosmic ultimatum. A crew forced to choose between the laws of the universe and the lives of a doomed world.

In the far future of the Prime Buffaloverse, the Commonwealth thrives on the principles of restorative justice, mutual aid, and horizontal organizing. MoTif and the crew of the CS Kai-including a multi-tasking Artificial Superintelligence and a polyfidelitous family-are tasked with a simple, cloaked mission: observe Sen-5, a pre-FTL planet tearing itself apart through corporate greed and environmental collapse.

But the mission shatters when a terrifying 32nd-dimensional entity known as Ma'at manifests on their bridge. Viewing the corrupt planet as a cancer that will infect the multiverse, Ma'at accelerates their destruction, presenting the crew with the ultimate cosmic trolley problem.

Complicating matters is a catastrophic surface accident that forces the crew to restore a crewmate from a three-day-old backup-only for the original to miraculously survive. Now, navigating an unprecedented continuity paradox within their own family and facing a deeply fractured Mission Hub, the crew must drop their shields and risk everything.

They must prove that chaos is a choice, and harmony can be built.

Blending the grand utopian vision of Iain M. Banks' The Culture with the sharp moral dilemmas of classic speculative fiction, The Starship Kai is a brilliant, thought-provoking novella about the physics of morality and the architecture of a better world.