In the year 2147, Earth no longer spun for humanity alone. The planet had become a carefully tended garden orbiting a sun that burned a little dimmer each decade, its atmosphere scrubbed clean by orbital mirrors and carbon-capture spires that rose like silver needles into the stratosphere. Lagos, once a chaotic megacity of twenty million, now gleamed as the Equatorial Arcology—a floating lattice of emerald towers and hydroponic rings suspended above the reclaimed Atlantic mangroves.
