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Description
***Not with a bang, but with a whimper***

Many thought Humanity would conquer space in an explosive series of daring interstellar leaps, launching huge generation ships full of tens of thousands of colonists to distant stars. Unfortunately, the realities of interstellar travel make these schemes extremely expensive and conducive to failure. Accelerating anything massive to significant fractions of the speed of light is devilishly difficult and keeping machinery in working order over centuries and millenia with no spare parts is possibly even harder. People tried to leap to the stars, but most often they tripped and fell. Lightsail probes visited other stars, but it seemed for humans, the stars were mostly out of reach.

However, interstellar space, while profoundly empty, is not that empty at all. For every star, an estimated 100000 rogue bodies over 400 km in radius lurk in interstellar space. As the inner system filled up, and the good worlds were taken, people settled for less good ones, and looked outward. Slowly, humanity pushed outward like a slime mold, taking the slow path of least resistance to the stars.

***What's old is new again***

One percent of the speed of light is about as fast as most people travel anymore, and only when in a hurry. Some top of the line trade ships can do 0.05 C but the fuel costs are astronomical and only economical over shorter trips. The void between stars is criss-crossed with human settlements on dark bodies, lit only by artificial lights and the flickering fusion drives of migrants and traders. Information, goods, and genes diffuse slowly throughout the network, making trade routes important for the first time in human history since the information age. Speed of light delays and poor infrastructure means news travels slowly, and must be relayed and bargained for, as in the old times. People changed, both in their customs and in their biology, as humanity adapted itself to the sunless abyss. You might know a guy who knows a guy whose cousin met someone from the Inner System, but that's about as close as the contact gets, and most colonies are self sufficient, trading with nearby worlds to get what they cannot make themselves.

***Plugged in***

11,800 years from now, in the year of Barnard's Star's closest approach (not visible in this slice) the Centauri Highway is well-developed. It could be traversed in a lifetime, and few make that pilgrimage their mission, gaining passage on merchant and migrant ships as they island hop their way to the stars. Most, however, rarely leave home. Only a millennium ago, the expansion wave, spreading in a spherical pattern at the pace of population pressure rather than that of the fastest ship, reached Alpha Centauri, and found it already inhabited, if sparsely, with people who left on daring voyages from the Inner System or from other parts unknown thousands of years before. Contact was a shock to both sides, but the connection of the Highway did a lot to develop the struggling colonies of the Alpha Centauri system. Now, Alpha Centauri, formerly an isolated island, only connected by periodic information transmissions and probes, is plugged into the heart of human civilization. Time will tell what changes this brings.

Description
***Not with a bang, but with a whimper***

Many thought Humanity would conquer space in an explosive series of daring interstellar leaps, launching huge generation ships full of tens of thousands of colonists to distant stars. Unfortunately, the realities of interstellar travel make these schemes extremely expensive and conducive to failure. Accelerating anything massive to significant fractions of the speed of light is devilishly difficult and keeping machinery in working order over centuries and millenia with no spare parts is possibly even harder. People tried to leap to the stars, but most often they tripped and fell. Lightsail probes visited other stars, but it seemed for humans, the stars were mostly out of reach.

However, interstellar space, while profoundly empty, is not that empty at all. For every star, an estimated 100000 rogue bodies over 400 km in radius lurk in interstellar space. As the inner system filled up, and the good worlds were taken, people settled for less good ones, and looked outward. Slowly, humanity pushed outward like a slime mold, taking the slow path of least resistance to the stars.

***What's old is new again***

One percent of the speed of light is about as fast as most people travel anymore, and only when in a hurry. Some top of the line trade ships can do 0.05 C but the fuel costs are astronomical and only economical over shorter trips. The void between stars is criss-crossed with human settlements on dark bodies, lit only by artificial lights and the flickering fusion drives of migrants and traders. Information, goods, and genes diffuse slowly throughout the network, making trade routes important for the first time in human history since the information age. Speed of light delays and poor infrastructure means news travels slowly, and must be relayed and bargained for, as in the old times. People changed, both in their customs and in their biology, as humanity adapted itself to the sunless abyss. You might know a guy who knows a guy whose cousin met someone from the Inner System, but that's about as close as the contact gets, and most colonies are self sufficient, trading with nearby worlds to get what they cannot make themselves.

***Plugged in***

11,800 years from now, in the year of Barnard's Star's closest approach (not visible in this slice) the Centauri Highway is well-developed. It could be traversed in a lifetime, and few make that pilgrimage their mission, gaining passage on merchant and migrant ships as they island hop their way to the stars. Most, however, rarely leave home. Only a millennium ago, the expansion wave, spreading in a spherical pattern at the pace of population pressure rather than that of the fastest ship, reached Alpha Centauri, and found it already inhabited, if sparsely, with people who left on daring voyages from the Inner System or from other parts unknown thousands of years before. Contact was a shock to both sides, but the connection of the Highway did a lot to develop the struggling colonies of the Alpha Centauri system. Now, Alpha Centauri, formerly an isolated island, only connected by periodic information transmissions and probes, is plugged into the heart of human civilization. Time will tell what changes this brings.