Series 01 · Now publishing
NATSOL: The Genesis
Not Able to Sustain Organic Life
2055. The helicopters flew past the rooftops. The president had already decided which states were worth saving.
2074. The lights are out across America. A World Government controls the food, the power and the science, and its scientists live behind fences. Inside the Boston Protected Zone, Dr. Alexander finds water on a distant planet. The planet already has a name, given to it twenty years earlier: NATSOL.
His new data says that verdict could be wrong. The people in power don't want "could." They want his signature, and a ship is already being built. At home, his wife still keeps the flyers for the daughter who walked out ten years ago.
Issues
ISSUE #1Selective Aid
In 2055 a president decides which Americans are worth rescuing. Nineteen years later, in a lab inside the Boston Protected Zone, Dr. Alexander and Jamaal decrypt a classified file and find a world with water and a name that reads like a death sentence: NATSOL.
ISSUE #2Margin of Error
The data says “possibly.” The government hears “yes.” Dr. Alexander meets the program's director, learns the mission has been building a ship for years and realizes his report was read before he ever sent it. Then a summons arrives that he isn't allowed to refuse.
ISSUE #3The Conference
Dr. Alexander tells a closed-door conference the truth: there's water, and oxygen is only a “maybe.” Two scientists from Florida stand up to challenge the plan being built on his numbers. Before they can show their last slide, security takes them away in handcuffs.
ISSUE #4Warning Shots
Deep in the West Virginia highlands, three people have learned to live without anyone's help. Then a government SUV comes up the road, and the man inside says he's been sent by someone they haven't heard from in ten years.
ISSUE #5The Road to Boston
Seven hundred miles in a government SUV. Naya, her daughter Anaya and Ms. Carol leave the highlands behind, past drowned towns and relief lines, for a city that still has its lights on. At the Boston gate they give up their rifles, and Naya has to answer one question about her daughter that can't be taken back.
ISSUE #6The Brownstone
Ten years after she left, Naya climbs the steps of her parents' Boston brownstone with a daughter they've never met and a friend nobody expected. There's a dinner for seven, a song sung twice and a talk at the kitchen table at 1 a.m. that neither of them has been ready for. Then, at 3 a.m., Dr. Alexander's phone lights up. The end of Volume One.
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