Amino is America's most controversial tech company. Sitting on an abandoned oil rig in the Atlantic Ocean, it builds the usual drones and robots, but also Helpers: an organic lifeform all too close to human. Many people want Amino's Helper Division to end, including some of the employees working there. But what do the Helpers want? When Ethelred and 19 other Helpers return to Amino to have their injuries healed, it starts a chain-reaction of events that threatens not only their future, but the company itself. Ethelred and his fellows fight to define what they are-taking control not only of their own destinies, but Amino's too. And they do it in a way no human could predict. Recalling such classics as Karel Capek's R.U.

R., as well as contemporary dystopias like Ex Machina and Bernard Beckett's Genesis, A Batch of Twenty is a near-future tale in which allies are enemies, humanity's cheap, and you are what you eat-even if it's tasteless.