The book is a look into the dystopian future where a small group of scientists escape a failing Earth. Six adults are on the first of three ships and have six children along the way. The 12 of them explore and terraform their new planet, Maarieda, hoping to make it habitable. It starts with the landing after years in space. The space children have changed from the Earth people like their parents. They went through the time dilation from traveling at near light speed and the epigenetic changes brought about by the spaceship environment.

In anticipation they watched the monitor. It had been twenty five human years since the adults left Earth. It was 900 Maariedan years since the first time they landed on Maarieda. The kids were in awe as they looked at the new planet, Maarieda, below them. They had seen pictures of Earth and Maarieda before, but that was just geography class, something not quite real until now. They had never set foot on a planet. The ship was the only home they knew. They were space people. Not earthlings like their parents. And different. They looked different, thought different, and biologically were different. They never experienced the environment of a planet. Epigenetics was beginning to change them. The space children were all exceptional athletes. They were more of an experiment than their parents had imagined. Grass, trees, lakes, and mountains were fairy tales, the stuff of imagination. But now below them it was beginning to look real, as if they might actually run through a meadow or climb a mountain.