Laura watched stars
Anonymous
Laura watched stars, planets and rocks float by the window of the spaceship as she thought of the president’s words in today’s speech. “We will recreate earth somewhere else and not repeat our mistakes!” Sure, she thought, that will go great with you leading us. It’s not as if you were a leader in the system that destroyed our last planet.
“There you are. Hiding in the most remote part of the ship.” She glanced behind her to see a brightly smiling Sam approach. She’d gotten to know him the first year of the journey, but his optimism still surprised her. As he settled next to her, she returned to gazing through the glass.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked in a lower voice.
“Earth.”
He let out a startled laugh. “Really? Why? I thought it was nice to get off that dust ball once and for all.”
She turned towards him. “Do you really feel that way?”
“Why not? You hear the president: ‘Regrow, rebuild, relearn!’. What is there to miss that we can’t recreate somewhere else?”
“Sure, we might find somewhere we can live, but…” She searched for the right words. “There will never be sunflowers tilted towards the sky, there will never be swans tipping their heads beneath the surface of a lake. Wherever we go, we might never again see the sun shine through a canopy of green leaves.”
Sam stared at her with wide eyes, then the corners of his mouth tilted upwards, and he burst out laughing
Laura narrowed her eyes at him.
He tried to catch his breath and waved his hand in the air. “Sorry, sorry. Way too philosophical for me.”
She held up her hands. “Okay, okay. I’m a wuss and you’re not. But… say we can’t grow coffee beans where we finally settle down?”
His face fell. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps there won’t be the right nutrients in the ground. Or the climate to sustain them”.
He raised his eyebrows. “We can travel faster than light but can’t find a way to farm coffee? But fine, I guess I’d have to do without it.”
“Isn’t there anything you’re sad to leave behind?”
He sighed. “Sure there is. But would you have rather stayed on earth?”
“No, no. You’re right. I guess I’m just more sentimental than you.”
She turned her gaze to the stars again.
She turned her gaze to the stars again.
“Maybe”, he said. “Maybe sometime in the future they’ll manage to send us a message, wherever we are.”
“Or maybe they will all die in a new pandemic and leave earth to recover.”
He shrugged. “Or maybe they will continue just as before and make everything even worse, until it’s physically impossible to survive and they die, along with most other life.”
She turned towards him with a bitter smile. “That does seem more likely. Do you think crocodiles will survive? They did when the dinosaurs died.”
He blew out a deep breath. “Thinking of the dinosaurs makes you feel pathetic. They were a lot stupider than us, but ruled earth for far longer than humans will prove to. What do you think will evolve from our ashes?”
“Hopefully something more stupid. Then maybe earth will have a chance to recover”.
They grinned at each other, onboard one of the hundreds of ships in the Human Relocation Fleet, as it moved through unknown space in search of the next earth.