Between outlaws stealing children for the coldbright mines and otherworldly creatures, frontier life on the plains of the Alta Estranyazie isn't for the faint of heart.

When Bodie Nine, a meandering robot with no directive, is befriended by a family, his missing code gets overwritten: Their only child, Justine, has been kidnapped, and Bodie's new directive is to save her from a life of misery at the bottom of a deep, dark hole in the earth. Obsessed with karma and wielding a twitchy trigger finger, Bodie scours the frontier to find her.

However, Bodie gets more than he bargained for between Blackie Lung's desperados and the mysterious sharpshooter, Klamath Pettibone. When Justine herself transforms into as much of a monster as anything haunting the barren, saguaro-filled wastes, he realizes there's a whole lot more going on than just a bunch of yahoos trying to make a few ill-gotten pesos.

Fortunately, there may be more to Bodie Nine than just circuits and six guns.