Description: The colony world Reis had been a Mecca of art and culture, its thriving city attracting the foremost artists, philosophers, and scholars. But a plague forced the city into quarantine, and the only hope for a cure lies with RICE, the artificial intelligence that runs the colony. As RICE slowly churns through the numbers of dead and dying looking for answers, the artists of the city turn their attention to a new medium, the art of death. In their own way they are trying to give death a meaning, knowing but not believing that they could be writing their own epitaphs.