"The Marie Curie"

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In an hour, Gus will die—or at least, that’s what suspended animation feels like. As his transport climbs the final stretch of the space elevator to a station in geosynchronous orbit, the reality of leaving Earth forever weighs heavily on him. He’s one of two hundred colonists selected for the Esperanto Expedition, chosen to travel 237 years through the void to an alien world. They’ve all sacrificed everything to be here, and now they’re hours away from being frozen and loaded onto the Marie Curie—humanity’s third manned ship to leave the solar system. But as Gus stares out at the Milky Way and contemplates the risks ahead—equipment failures, the untested deceleration system, the very real possibility of never waking up—he struggles to share his crewmates’ optimism. In a world ravaged by climate disasters, antibiotic-resistant diseases, and economic collapse, this one-way ticket represents both humanity’s greatest hope and most desperate gamble. As the station looms and his turn in the freezing chamber approaches, Gus must confront one final question: Is the promise of a new world worth dying for? This extended first chapter was cut from the final version of Humanity's Hope in favour of a faster-paced opening. It offers readers a deeper look at protagonist Gus’s backstory and the dystopian Earth of 2073—providing context and character depth that complements the published novel.