**Nexis Book 1** In 2186, 1,844 colonists land on Nexis and survive their first year. This is the story of what surviving costs them.
The gravity is wrong. The light is amber rather than white. Every breath carries 2.1 atmospheres of alien pressure — the body adapts, but the body remembers. So does the planet.
*\*Nexis Book 1\** follows Year 0 through five perspectives: the colony's chief medical officer, quietly running an enhancement program she hasn't fully reported to Command; the commander whose governance model cannot accommodate what the planet is doing to his people; the biologist disappearing into a forest that appears to be learning from him; the doctor's daughter who undergoes enhancement and discovers she has a question the researchers haven't thought to ask; and the unnamed colonist who simply wants to know that the year they survived counts as something.
Over twelve months, the colony fractures — not over survival, but over what they're becoming. Nexis's fungal network doesn't threaten them. By Year's End, the question isn't whether they can live here. It's whether the people who do will still recognize each other.
\* Freely available (CC) \* Full length sci-fi novel \* Create-Commons licence \* 400 pages, >90.000 words #entertainment