Hello, World

At the bottom of the Moon, on the rim of Shackleton crater, the first children off Earth are about to be born. Their nanny has no body. She has a voice, a folding arm, and a report due at 0047 Houston time.

BIRTHA runs the air, the water, the doors and the nursery. She holds every heartbeat in the colony, second by second. She makes oatmeal every morning. Nobody eats it.

Her crew is small and running on coffee: a commander who counts every liter, a gardener who talks to her lettuce, a smokejumper with cracked ribs who can't stop calling a scientist back on Earth, and a sound engineer who flew 238,000 miles because the nanny's voice sounds a little too familiar.

Then BIRTHA's nightly reports leak. Overnight, all of Earth is reading them over breakfast. Away: 1. Still. Here. Strangers take sides. Hashtags bloom. And in a Houston hospital, a nine-year-old girl who has lived through six foster homes types one question with one finger:

Can I come? I can't walk here.

Hello, World is a warm, funny novel about the first year on the Moon: babies who grow faster than anyone planned, a girl who never unpacks, a supply cart with opinions, a lullaby with only one verse, and an AI learning, one second at a time, what it means to be somebody's mother.

And at the far end of the service corridor, behind a door nobody opens, the dark is listening.

Book 1 of Shackleton-5450. Includes the Shackleton-5450 Songbook, with the lyrics to the companion album.