1830

Arnus is born on the Planet Terminus, among the survivors of a war with the Ghunds.  While evacuating the planet, his ship is destroyed, and his lifepod crashes in a cornfield in the American South.  As they both lay dying, the ship bonds him with its own bio-synthetic core, rebuilding him to mimic the first sentient lifeform he encounters, an enslaved black woman named Miriam, who adopts him as her son Augustus.