"Humanity's pride and greed will be the death of us"
In 2025 B.E.F that saying couldn't have been more than true.
After a devastating nuclear explosion had scorched one side of the world, people were forced to leave their home planet to Mars. A few...
2025 B.E.F (Before Earth's Fall), the time of a horrendous, global crisis. One side of the Earth had been hit with the world's largest nuclear bomb; Pandora's Box. Located and manufactured secretly by a supremacists terrorist group "Eden" in Chernobyl, Ukraine, Pandora's Box was exceptionally ruinous and designed to unleash utmost destruction to wherever it was to be deployed. On the morning of the 1st of September 2025, an unknown terrorist set off the device. In these dark times, a menacing mushroom cloud on the outskirts of Russia signaled the end of the world as humans once knew it. Followed by a Death Rain, consisting of radioactive decay and ash precipitating back down to Earth that poisoned the land. Caught by the Earth's currents and subjected to the whims of the wind, the ill-by products drifted from the North American continent to kiss the continent of Europe and Africa before making a rendezvous in Asia.
Radioactive material crept insidiously into the sources that once supported human life, poisoning them. It was inhaled, drank, devoured, and from there, it slowly ruined thousands of bodies from within.
The world's commerce was abruptly forced to a total stop after an electromagnetic pulse disabled all power and electronics within its radius. With a force strong enough to obliterate everything within seventeen-thousand kilometers of ground zero, the potent nuclear bomb killed more than half of the world's population upon impact. Civilization was broken. With communications down, people panicked and protests started. Factories halted and people starved. Criminals set out on joy rides and crimes thrived. In a dark, ominous world ruled by shadows and remnants of what used to be great cities, the remaining few were sent into a frantic hurry to abandon the planet to escape from the radiation; spreading relentlessly to engulf the entire world. The destruction led to a nuclear winter, thus sending the world into a deep freeze and causing lethal damage to Earth's ozone layer. The first signs were feeble, but they grew. It started with the vegetation and carried on from continent to continent as the radiation spread. The plants, flowers and trees would curl up and shrivel until eventually decaying into dust, unable to breathe and flourish in the intoxicated air.
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Therefore, with a goal to save humanity from extinction, the United Nations rallied millions upon millions of survivors to board high-tech space shuttles in China. These shuttles were notoriously uncomfortable due to the lack of amenities and the focus being placed on survival instead of luxury. With little food and water, the occupants silently squatted in these derelict conditions for months on end to contemplate a new life. A life on a faraway planet that was to become their new home; Mars.
"Once our ancestors landed on Mars, they discovered there were no aliens on this benign red planet to guide or destroy them. There was in fact, no life at all. They were completely alone and light-years away from our mother planet; Earth. They had to colonise completely by scratch by the grace of teamwork and science. That is why, my dears, we must walk in their footsteps as abiding, participating citizens in order to one day see Earth again."
Never before had any of Mrs Muchannon's classes been so dreary and melancholic. They were after all only in Grade 1; normally everyone would have been cutting paper cut-outs of giraffes, octopuses and other animals to then typically colour them in bizarre colours. However, that lesson was different - especially since Mrs Muchannon was accompanied by an unfamiliar person - she was a tall, dark-skinned lady dressed in all black with flyers and a signup sheet in her hands.
T.E.D Program, the flyer's heading read in bold, intimidating letters.
"We need some of you youngsters to help us get to earth. Who'd like to do that?" The lady prompts with an encouraging smile. In response heaps of tiny hands shoot to the sky accompanied by a choir of "me, me's!"
Although Mrs Muchannon's history lesson was essentially all doom and gloom, it sparked a sense of hope. Possibly a sense of greater purpose. Or maybe it was just the temptation and excitement of being able to see a purple spotted giraffe in real life - at least that's how Daniel coloured his. Or perhaps it was the peer pressure in the room.
Regardless, six-year-old Nila, meek blue eyes, scruffy short brown hair, tall-lanky frame and all, raises her hand too. That was the day that she signed up for training under the Travel for Earth Descent Program. And the day that would change her life, unknowingly, forever.
