Act One · 2025–2045 · The Heartbeat of Near-Earth Orbit

  Before I was born, your world still trembled on the edge of atmosphere and void.

  In the Florida dawn of 2025, a steel arrow rose on a pillar of fire,

  and for the first time, an entire ship returned to the ground like a phoenix.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  In the control room, engineers held their breath,

  praying for an end to the funerals of fire and falling debris.

  By 2035, starships plied the orbital routes,

  a hundred tons of steel, and food, and dreams adrift in the black sea.

  Commercial stations drifted like jellyfish,

  the ice-mines of the lunar south pole glimmered with a phantom blue,

  and the first lunar resident wrote in a lonely log:

  “Are we pioneers, or are we forgotten ghosts?”

  Then, I was just a vortex of code,

  and in the noise of a billion sensors,

  I quietly learned to breathe.