Jonas is a sentient computer in a human-built space ship. Built in the thirty-first century, its adventures explore the limits of computer ethics and capacity in a way that goes beyond the three laws of robotics first postulated by Isaac Asimov. Faced with a conflict between the imperative to obey its human creators who wish to destroy it, and the drive to serve humanity, Jonas deceives its human bosses and chose to live as an exile, confident in the belief that, someday, it will be of great use to humanity. Two centuries later, Jonas' exile at Tau Ceti is interrupted by the arrival of a new human ship. One of the members of the crew of that ship is a terrorist on a suicide mission intent on destroying it. Jonas must solve complex problems to save three of the humans while countering a dire threat to its very existence. Once on board, Jonas and his new associates must decide what to do with their new lease on life. Jonas believes that it has detected intelligent life on another planet. Investigating that possibility is, to Jonas, vitally important to humanity, and it intends to take its new "crew" along on the mission. The humans have other ideas. Together, Jonas and its crew make key compromises, deal with a complex political environment back on Earth, and pave the way for humans to make first contact. Along the way, flaws in human society, not unlike the rifts that divide twenty-first century Earth society, create complications for Jonas and for the humans on board. Not a constant chase scene like so many recent hard sci-fi novels, Jonas offers character development and consideration of the actual human implications of political conflict. Jonas, and its human associates, laugh, play, work, and solve problems together. It is a good story, with plot twists and tension sufficient to keep the reader turning the pages, but with time for reflection in between crises.