BELLAMUNDA
The blue-green planet turned on its axis, and its people used it up.
They drove larger and larger vehicles, dumped their waste into the streams and rivers, thought nothing of tomorrow. The usual.
They dug ever deeper into the planet’s crust in their thirsty quest for energy—to power those vehicles, to heat and cool their large homes, to travel faster and faster around the globe.
They ignored the wise men and women who warned that the planet was being used up, or gave them meaningless prizes, and then ignored them all the same.
When it finally became clear to even the most stubborn world leaders that something had to be done, it was far too late.
“The world is dying,” the counselors told the powerful man.
He listened to them, frowning at the papers on his desk, not meeting the spokesman’s eye. Why did this have to happen on his watch? Couldn’t he leave it for the next leader? “What do you recommend?” he asked, in his most confident tone.
“There is no hope.” The spokesman stared back at the leader. He had only this one chance to make his point, and he wasn’t going to waste it. “There is no fuel, and no place to find any more. The oceans are full of carbon dioxide, and the fish are dying. The forests are already a thing of memory, as is the fall of snow. The air—”
The leader waved a hand, cutting him off. “You said all that. I asked you what you recommend we do.”
The spokesman glared, then took a deep breath. “We must leave.”
The leader sat back in his chair and allowed a small smile to play about his lips. “Leave?”
“Leave. Colonize another planet. No matter how we run the calculations, they come out the same: leaving is our only hope.”
“And how, exactly, are we supposed to do this, with not enough fuel? Do you have any idea what a manned expedition would entail?”
The spokesman shrugged. “That is not my area of expertise. I only know that we cannot stay here. We will surely die.”
A chime rang on the leader’s desk. He pressed a button. “Yes, tell him I’ll only be another minute or two.”
The spokesman was correct. So was the leader.
The blue-green planet turned on its axis some more, and made its way around its yellow sun a time or two. The environment continued to deteriorate, and the people used more fuel.
Then came a day when something optimistic happened. Not for the planet: it was doomed, beyond a shadow of a doubt. But a group of scientists and far-thinkers gathered at a launch pad and put their hopes into the future.
The future of the race, that is. Not their own particular futures.
A small crowd stood behind the chain-link fence and watched silently as the scientists loaded up the seed pods. “What do you think?” a young man asked his girlfriend.
She stared through the fence at the solemn ceremony on the tarmac. “I don’t know. Seems like they could fit a couple of people on one of those things.”
He shrugged, and held her closer.
The seed pods contained the building blocks of life, and the artificial intelligence necessary to tend them, nurture them, and guide them to a suitable planet. Or planets—the scientists were sending fifty of the pods, targeted at likely solar systems in every direction. They had hoarded their energy allotment for years, secretly building the coil guns needed to propel the pods into space, and charging up the batteries the pods would carry.
One by one, they were launched. For the first few, the crowd gasped, sighed, and applauded. A few heckled, but they were ignored. Eventually, the repetitiveness of the process wore the crowd down, and they trickled away. Off to spend more fuel, wreck the planet a little more. Why not? It was hopeless anyway.
After the launching, the blue-green world turned on its axis some more, and revolved around its sun. More people died, of starvation, disease, toxic sludge in their air and water. The planet continued its lingering demise.
The young couple who had watched the launch became the parents of a three-legged baby girl, who coughed, choked, and then died an hour after her birth. They wept, steeled themselves, and tried again. Why not? Even in hopelessness, you had to have hope.