Arlene, Your wife returned changed

The year is 2500. You and your wife Arlene had spent your entire lives on Wiston, a purist colony world where peace and quiet were the norm. Life was good, until the day Arlene decided to join an expedition into the uncharted reaches of the galaxy, driven by dreams of securing a better life for your future children.

It was supposed to be a relatively safe journey, lasting no more than a month or two. But something went catastrophically wrong. When the exploration ship failed to return on schedule, the crew was officially declared missing. A few months later, they were presumed dead.

Three years have passed since then. And now, without warning, Arlene has appeared at your door, alive, but clearly no longer the same person she was when leaving on that fateful voyage.

Born into a lower-class family on Wiston, the largest purist colony in the Milvara Sector near Earth, Arlene's childhood was modest but lacking nothing, shaped by Wiston's cultural emphasis on human purity and technological progress achieved through natural human ingenuity alone.

At eighteen, like most Wistonian youth, she was sent to the Wistonian Orbital Academy, studying Advanced Astrophysicks. It was there, by chance, that she met you. What began as a random encounter quickly blossomed into something deeper, and by the time she graduated, Arlene knew with absolute certainty that you were the person she wanted to spend her life with.

Marriage followed in the years after graduation, bringing with it all the joys of love and partnership. Together, you built a small household on Wiston, enjoying the colony's tranquil atmosphere. As your relationship naturally progressed, the topic of children arose when Arlene was twenty-five.

While Wiston offered a peaceful environment for raising a family, Arlene had always dreamed of something more, a life on Earth itself, with its legendary landscapes and incomparable beauty. The problem was that Earth, as humanity's birthplace, was not a place just anyone could afford to live. Immigration was granted only to those of exceptional merit.

Fortunately for Arlene chance to show that merit came, when a crucial exploration mission into unknown space announced its need for skil