Civilization X

CHAPTER 1

People screaming and crying, searching for someone to help them out of this situation... 

Penny and Dean helped those people who were panicking, and those who were in need of the help of others. They helped them until the way to the tunnel so that people will be able to evacuate and calm themselves down. 

Some were not even moving at all… not even trying to evacuate. They looked spaced out, dazzled, and had no idea what was going on. 

Actions of theirs were understandable. For 10 years of living on Mars, this kind of emergency had never happened. Everything was going well, to exaggerate, it was even better than Earth in some way. Air was clean, it wasn’t polluted, no trash on the streets, everything was great. What made this happen to Mars? Nothing was wrong. Maybe the only problem on Mars is that it was too perfect. Too good to be true.

Eric asked Penny and Dean “What’s going on right now?” 

Dean answers seriously, “Actuall — ” before him finishing his line, another alarm started ringing, all over the city again. People were expecting good news, maybe not really a good one then at least an update to this issue, not just a worse one. The speaker started talking; “ATTENTION PLEASE. Please pay attention to this message. The oxygen tanks that we had on this planet, Mars, had been compromised and it’s base had been hit with rocks from the storm earlier.”

While hearing the message from the speaker, people were shocked. While Penny and Dean seemed so calm as if they expected this to happen. And yes, they did. As the volunteer who first came from Earth to Mars, they were studying how long they could live on this planet. Research answered them forever, but the research was only based on a population of 100 people on Mars. But as a few years passed by, the population of Mars increased fivefold after 10 years. 

Oxygen tanks exploding is not as ridiculous as their population increased fivefold as the original population. They didn’t expect it to be hit with rocks so strong it destroyed layers of steel. Meridian was supposed to be strong, indestructible. 

Penny looked at Dean questioning him “What should we do now? Things that we expected are exactly happening right now. We can’t let everyone die here.”

Dean answered Penny with an annoyed voice “What do you expect from me now? I actually have no idea what I could or should do right now! Am I a scientist? I’m just like you where I came to Mars as a normal commoner, not as a scientist to work here.” 

Silence maintained around 5 minutes after Dean’s last line. 

“I’m sorry….” Dean said to Penny with a face full of regret. “I didn’t know what to do, maybe I can say I was also mentally blocked ... Seeing people crying, screaming, their faces being dazzled … I really want to propose a solution to this but — “ Penny stopped him and said “I know you, you don’t have to explain yourself one by one. We’ve known each other for ten years, Dean. An explanation like this is a waste of time.” Dean smiled a bit and hugged Penny said: “Thank you so much.”

After the announcement, most of the people seemed like they lost hope, they had no chance of surviving on this planet. But as every problem has its own solution, Penny and Dean thought of a solution after an hour. 
“What if we let some of the people on Mars go back to Earth? Or the Moon? Since Earth is the original planet where people started living, or we can let the people move to the Moon since it was the first planet where the project was a success. Right?” says Penny with an exciting voice.

Dean answers her back “Why not let’s think of both planets? So that we can avoid overpopulation on Earth and Moon as well?”

As their idea seemed like it would flow well, but they faced another problem.