Thirteen-year-old Johnny Turnbull has always known there was something different about him. It turns out he's the first-ever human softwire —- able to enter and communicate with computers with his mind. Now that JT and two hundred other orphans have been put to work in alien factories on the first ring of Orbis, things are going very wrong. The "perfect" central computer is malfunctioning, and suspicious eyes are turning to JT. Could he be the one responsible?