Beneath a false landscape in a wild bare desert, the impossible is happening. Robots are trying to make souls.

So far Jasperodus is the only robot with one. But his came from a different source and he is sworn to secrecy - for such knowledge would be dangerous to man.

However progress is relentless. Gargan, a robot of frightening intellect, has deduced what he lacks and begun a ruthless, methodical search for it. Soon the very future of mankind is threatened, and Jasperodus must choose where his priorities lie: should he stop Gargan's search, and condemn his fellow robots to eternal non-existence, or must man be crushed by his own creation - metal constructs now turned completely, frighteningly alive ?