THE FIRST INTERSTELLAR EXODUS

Forty thousand people left Earth aboard the Anabasis, beginning the first interstellar exodus in human history. Their destination was Novara, a habitable planet forty light-years away. After five hundred years of travel, the descendants of the original passengers believed they were finally ready to build a new civilization. They were wrong. The crops failed. The foundations shifted. The climate models became useless. Every attempt to control Novara created another problem, and the systems designed to protect the colony only made it more dependent on the ship that had brought them there. Humanity had crossed the stars prepared to transform another world. Instead, Novara transformed humanity. Four hundred years later, its cities no longer grow against the land. They grow with it. Their structures respond to storms, humidity and the migrations of local species. The people born there can survive on native life and coexist with microorganisms that would have harmed their ancestors. Earth still survives in their archives, schools and languages. But it is no longer their home. Then a signal arrives from the Solar System. Earth is still alive. It has survived many of its old crises and built new ships capable of crossing the stars. Now it wants to come to Novara. The transmission speaks of reunion, of two branches of humanity finally becoming one again. But the people of Novara do not feel that anything is returning to them.