Spindown

For over a century, the Marius 516 mining base on Jupiter's moon Ganymede has extracted the galaxy's rarest resource using an army of clone workers, their minds suppressed by chemical control and managed by the omnipresent AI system Prinox. When outsiders attempt a doomed rescue mission, clone Fowler 3085 witnesses violence that marks him for termination as "contaminated." Fleeing through the base's lethal infrastructure with fellow workers including Sholve, a teacher clone, Fowler's enforced ignorance crumbles as their behavior-suppressing drug Hemlo runs out. For the first time, they experience fear, love, and the terrible weight of knowledge-discovering that all clones face incineration when deemed no longer useful. Their desperate search for the mysterious "Superintendent" station leads through flooded kelp farms and processing plants where former allies become threats and every choice carries fatal consequences. In this powerful debut, George Wright Padgett crafts a visceral exploration of consciousness, freedom, and what makes us human. Spindown delivers hard science fiction at its best-philosophical depth wrapped in relentless suspense, where awakening to humanity might be the cruelest fate of all.