the Lives We Were Given: Three Novellas of Identity, Survival, and Lies That Keep Us Alive

Three impossible situations. Three human systems built to survive them. Three questions no rulebook can answer.On the colony ship Long Meridian, mortuary technician Tessa Rane prepares the body of reactor specialist Elias Varin while another Elias wakes behind glass-alive, healthy, and unaware he has already died eleven times. When the ship's failing reactor demands his expertise again, survival becomes a question of consent.On Tallis, a colony ship dismantled eighteen years ago appears in orbit and requests permission to land. Dock controller Rian Holt hears his own younger voice on the channel. Beside that younger man is the wife Rian buried nine years earlier. Before winter closes in, an entire town must decide what two equally real histories owe each other.On tidally locked Orison, grid technician Dessa Tern finds bare human footprints beyond a boundary where the cold should kill in seconds. The official instruments insist the night is lethal. A mechanical probe says otherwise. Beyond the map lies a hidden human settlement-and beneath the ice, something older, warmer, and still unexplained.The Lives We Were Given collects three standalone science-fiction novellas: The Man We Keep Killing, The Town That Arrived Twice, and Where Night Is Warm.Grounded in engineering, survival, and difficult choices, these stories explore identity, institutional power, and the moral cost of deciding whose life can be spent to keep everyone else alive.