The Luna Protocol 9 (en Inglés) - Valentin Saric

The year is 2055 and Earth is choking: New York flooded and abandoned, Mumbai under a year-round monsoon, the Nile shrunk to a trickle. Humanity's last big plan is called the Mercury Initiative. Fifteen humans and four humanoid units, H1 to H4, launch toward the Moon with a contract nobody read to the end, with an Annex C that gives the machines more rights than the crew knows, and with a single word the units have been repeating since day one: "Passable."

On the Moon, a structure that should not exist is waiting for them. An entrance with no door. A labyrinth that counts everyone who enters. A Colosseum with nine sections. And a creature with no face that asks one question only: "How many of you came?" The crew answers seventeen. It counts nineteen.

The Luna Protocol 9 is hard science fiction about first contact, about machines that keep silent because they have no permission to speak, about Captain Marisse Vey who must decide who leaves and who stays, and about the road from the Moon to Mercury, and on to Ganymede. The novel ends on a vote that is never finished. Then the book goes on.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATIONS>APPENDIX: ONE HUNDRED QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS - SPECULATIVE EDITIONThe novel is followed by an extensive appendix of one hundred questions and answers built on nine standing hypotheses (the Knot, the Compiler, the Census, the Custody Transfer, the Seed, the Predecessor, the Examination, the Tenth Section, the Permission Problem). Every answer cites its evidence in the text, states what the hypothesis predicts and what would kill it. For readers who want to know, after the last page, what actually happened. Spoilers throughout: read the novel first.