Sapiens of the climate-ravaged Earth fight for survival in the first centuries of the new millenium. We abandon the storming equator and retreat toward the poles. We build refugee networks. We work tiered gardens, tidal plants, farms on the sea.
The Counselor, at first just a program, rises to guide us. Together, we send probes to Centauri, grow colonies on Europa and Mars, mine asteroids and moons.
Our first star ark leaves, powered by photon sails and fusion torus. We pass the outer planets, the Kuiper Belt, the Oort comet cloud. Small and alone, we enter the void.
Our journey is long. Many miss home - solid ground, sun and wind on our skin, smell of rain. We sleep more and more in cold chambers. The Counselor leaves us.
We dream of the Earth. We dream of our ancestors, our fiercest of spirit, our deepest of soul. Brilliant rays out of shadow, our ancestors shine:
An ancient poet of the Tang Dynasty witnesses the collapse of the empire by famine, flood, and civil war, captures in verse the great cry of his people.
A Lakota mystic, raised to sky, sees the coming black road of hunger and death, the red road of hope to the flowering tree.
A German painter lives through both world wars, loses grandson and son, etches eternal the pain of the poor.
An imprisoned Sandinista leader gathers his people's long history of resistance, returns to fight in the jungle, defies the forty-year reign of dictators.
We rise from our chambers.
