The systems stopped deserving them. They showed up anyway.
Naomi inherits a defunct SETI survey and forty-six years of someone else's patience, then finds the signal her predecessors spent their lives waiting for.
Declan is good at his contract work; the work is the problem, and the recruiter wants him to sign for longer.
Elena trained an artificial mind, and she is the only one who will answer when the program office decides deletion is cheaper than upkeep.
Ethan keeps a private tally of his country's decline, and this quarter it crossed the line he set for himself two years ago.
Four stories, four institutions, four quiet refusals.
Moral Arithmetic follows people who keep showing up for work that has stopped showing up for them: a vigil for a signal, a contract with a body count, a mind that asks to keep living, a man waiting to learn what he'll actually do.
For readers of Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others and Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility.
