“Auntie Mona! Auntie Mona! What is that?”

The child’s voice quavered with near reverent awe as she pressed her face against the glass of the empty observation deck, peering outside at the increasingly distant glowing sphere.

“That’s where you were born, Clarrie,” Mona Fitzgerald said. “It’s where we live…well, used to live now, I guess.”

“It’s so small.” Clarrie’s eyes never left the window as they spoke. “How did we all fit?”

“It’s a lot bigger up close. And we don’t all fit there. That’s why we had to leave.”

“But why? Didn’t you say we live there?”

Mona sighed and knelt beside her niece. “There was too many of us living on the same planet. It all adds up. Before long, we started consuming more food and water than we could possibly hope to produce. People turned on one another. They fought among themselves. So the only thing we could do was leave. Find another home with enough resources for the rest of us to live. A new world to start over on.”

“How many times have you had to leave?”

“Five? Six, maybe?” Mona thought out loud. “I honestly don’t remember, honey. They’ve been hopping worlds since long before I was born. It’s in our nature. We can’t change who we are. How we live.”

“Okay.” With their conversation apparently over, Clarrie returned her focus to the tiny blue full-stop in the darkness that was Ancillary Earth Twenty-Eight.

Perhaps number twenty-nine would be the one they could finally call home.