Élan

The Elan Project was established to identify humanity's most mentally capable individuals and migrate them to a new planet built around intellectual excellence. Candidates assemble in the research city Alpha for evaluation and training. The protagonist is among the strongest candidates in the selection pool. The training period becomes something more than assessment: the candidates interact with each other, and those conversations carry an emotional dimension the project's administrators may not have planned for. Responses can be calibrated — Happy, Normal, Sad, or Angry — and those choices shape what develops.