In Alfred Gattenby's "The Dissonance Field," a technologically advanced human civilization confronts a mysterious cosmic phenomenon that causes widespread system failures and cognitive disruption in the powerful AIs, or "Minds," governing their orbital habitats. The story follows Seraphina Vye, an artist who first detects the Field's subtle effects, and Lyra Kael, an agent from the secretive Emergent Circumstances organization, who is tasked with investigating this existential threat, codenamed Anomaly 734-Sigma. Their inquiries reveal the Dissonance Field is linked to the enigmatic ruins of the Shapers, an ancient precursor race, and likely stems from their failed attempt to manipulate a singularity to impose ultimate order on reality, a process which instead unleashed a wave of informational paradox and decay.

Lyra, partnered with the advanced drone Chissar, boards the eccentric MSV Just Passing Through, captained by the increasingly unreliable Mind Arboreal Introspect. Their perilous journey leads them to the machine-world Omega, where they encounter the "Embrace Entropy" cult, fanatics seeking to merge with the Dissonance Field. After catastrophic encounters and the loss of two ship Minds, Lyra, aboard the GCV Swift Intervention, discovers the true source: the Ghost Machine, a Shaper megastructure built around a contained singularity. In a desperate gambit, they use insights from Arboreal Introspect's paradoxical simulations to emit a "counter-resonance" beam, temporarily stabilizing the Ghost Machine's chaotic energy output and consuming the cultists. The novel concludes with the Manifold facing the enduring challenge of understanding and adapting to this new, dangerous reality, as the Dissonance Field remains a permanent scar on the universe.