Roma has a steady job, a mortgage, and a surrogate family in Queens. But as she moves through her daily routines, the powerful Empire that rules her world bares its teeth elsewhere--crushing freedom movements across the planet, including the Punjabi farmers' uprising where her younger brother struggles on the frontlines.
Roma's life is upended when her older brother entrusts her with a strange gift: an ordinary-looking plant that manifests a sophisticated bioengineered technology. The 'cell' opens a portal for an extraterrestrial spirit-body bearing news of a liberated future-and the potential to hack AI warfare--propelling Roma and her family into the core of a rising resistance.
As dreams and dialectics converge, Roma meditates on the role of faith--ruminating on mystic poetics and anticolonial legacies while yearning for a bewitching woman whose heart will only ever belong to the revolution.
