Dawn Star's synchronous orbit.
An enormous artificial structure floated silently in space.
The structure was shaped like a giant disk.
It was the colossal space city humanity had recently built.
Bathed in the light of Gliese 555, the enormous disk slowly rotated around its center.
It operated on the same principle as a Gravity Chamber.
This rotation provided the space inside the disk with gravity equivalent to Earth's.
Not far from it stood another colossal space city, identical in shape and structure, but only half built.
These space cities were not intended for docking or building starships.
Their primary purpose was to raise human newborns.
Dawn Star's surface gravity was too strong to be particularly hospitable to children who had yet to fully develop.
For newborn infants whose bones had yet to develop, even standing and walking would become an enormous challenge under such gravity.
They could hardly put newborn babies in Exoskeleton Armor, could they?
To ensure humanity could reproduce normally, the Academy of Sciences had begun preparations years earlier-building several colossal space cities in Dawn Star's synchronous orbit to serve as Child-Rearing Centers.
Once a pregnancy began, both parents could move to a colossal space city and enjoy twenty years of parental leave.
That seemed like a long time.
But with human lifespans now routinely reaching eight or nine hundred years, or even a thousand, that amount of time was hardly significant.
Once their child reached adulthood, the parents and child could return to Dawn Star and resume normal life.
Although the measure seemed very accommodating, the twenty-year commitment and countless hidden costs still put many people off.
As a result, since the colossal space cities had been established, very few people had chosen to have children, leaving the enormous cities largely empty.
Farther out from Dawn Star