Searchers

Year 998 P.E. (Post Earth)

A thousand years ago humans destroyed the Earth.

Dead. No life. Gone.

We now live in thirteen Arks orbiting the dead planet, hoping it will someday recover and support life once more. One point three million people are all that is left of the human race, one hundred thousand per Ark. No more, no less, closed loop, until the Searchers find us a new home.

Miya is just like any other teenager on Ark Three – school, weekend job, and spending time with friends until she turns eighteen. Then she, along with thousands of other young women and men of the same age, will face Selection. In the blink of an eye, Oversight will assign her a job for life – and a husband, tasked to produce a child in their first year of marriage, and exactly one more after that.

She knew why she had to do it. Few people liked Selection, but the alternative was far worse.

However, what should have been a standard Selection was anything...