Mankinds search for an inhabitable planet within reach, or at least within a single lifetimes reach, had not been realized.
The two international space stations, the Eclipser and Star 9, had over the last decade turned their research toward their own existence. The Eclipser was named for its size, and Star 9 named for its continual orbit nine hundred miles beyond the outer reaches of the Earths atmosphere. Both stations were self-sustaining and no longer required the existence of Earth. Each had its own ecosystem and produced its own biomass fuels.
The Eclipser housed 4,300 crew members along with 3,000 cryogenically stored living embryos; Star 9 housed 2,100 crew members with 1,900 living embryos onboard. These living embryos were to be born through extrauterine fetal incubation as needed to replace aging or ailing crew members.Each station had made many great discoveries in medicine and science, but these discoveries had done little to help the nine billion inhabitants of earth. This had in part caused them to turn their research exclusively to themselves.
Over the last decade the Eclipser and Star 9 had observed a dark cloud beginning to form on the surface of the earth.
This is not the story of the space station Eclipser or Star 9. This is the story of the ones who remained on earth, of the ones who lived and of the ones who died, beneath this darkening cloud called Hunger.
