Five years passed in the blink of an eye.
Throughout those five years, Dawn Star's Environmental Modification Project had continued quietly, without interruption.
Compared with the beginning, Dawn Star now bore some resemblance to Earth.
But only some.
It would still be a long time before humanity could truly leave its enclosed cities and begin living beneath blue skies and white clouds.
Meanwhile, the Human Enhancement Project continued to advance.
With everyone in the Academy of Sciences and Parliament leading by example, the Human Enhancement Project progressed much faster.
Some stubborn holdouts still distrusted the so-called genetic modification technology, but they watched as their friends and relatives, and even complete strangers on the streets, shed their Exoskeleton Armor one after another, switched off the home Medical Pods they had needed to run every night, and breathed freely...
Unable to suppress their growing desire, these holdouts joined the Human Enhancement Project as well.
Everything seemed to be flourishing.
But over those five years, one problem had become increasingly severe.
"According to the latest calculations, the Human Federation's overall fertility rate curve will intersect with its overall mortality rate curve in three hundred years."
Zero's voice echoed through the office.
The Holographic Projection displayed a graph of winding curves.
The steadily declining curve at the top represented Human Civilization's overall fertility rate.
The slowly rising curve below it represented Human Civilization's overall mortality rate.
Compared with the calculations from a few years earlier, the time until the two curves intersected had shortened by nearly another two hundred years.
Seated in his office chair, Lü Yongchang watched the two curves in the Holographic Projection extend until they finally crossed, and sighed softly.
It was just as the graph showed.
As time passed, the older generations from Earth, and even those from Proxima