Virtue of Being

Published: 7th April, 2026

Cerban Press

A FIRST HOME DIES.

A SECOND HOME LIVES.

BUT WHO PAYS THE RENT ON FOREVER?

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When the environment turned against us, we did not adapt.

We engineered.

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We built leviathan pipes to drain the rising seas.  We erected barriers of heavy light to hold back the tides.  We built ships to outrun our own limits. We cracked open the fabric of spacetime to feed our boundless consumption and wove consciousness into living fields of energy.

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From the chaotic shores of a near-future Lagos to the gilded decay of a drowned London; from the industrial scar of Banaba Island to the eternal shadows on the Moon; from the stratified decks of a starship to the silent, icy wastes of a tidally-locked planet, Virtue of Being spans eons and oceans to chart the trajectory of the human race.

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This is a story of five eras, linked by a single thread: The desperate, unyielding need to survive, regardless of the cost.  It is a chronicle of those who build the walls, those who scale them, and those who are crushed beneath their weight.

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It is a mosaic of a future bought on credit, of lives bound by a single, brutal equation: The future is coming, but can we afford it?

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For when the laws of physics are bent for profit and time itself is folded for growth, the only thing left to discover is the one truth we tried so hard to leave behind:

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There is no escaping our own nature.