When the sky fell

I sat at the edge of Acropolis, Venus’ first floating city, my feet dangling far above the fiery maelstrom of the planet’s atmosphere. I often wondered what it would be like to fall, how it would feel to be simultaneously crushed and fried by Venus’ heavy sulfuric clouds. High above me a dull gray rock hovered listlessly in the sky, surrounded by blackness. A long time ago it was called Earth, but after the disaster is had been renamed to Sol-3.

An old man slowly seated himself on a park bench close to me. He hailed me on a public channel and, without even introducing himself, started rattling off these ridiculous stories about growing up on Sol-3, about how primitive life in the 21st century was, and how mankind was almost killed off completely by the disaster that destroyed the planet.

“Oh yes, I was there!” Cried the old man, waving an arm in the air. I could hear the faint mechanical whir of his suit’s actuators over the faint background static of the radio. “2052 was the year, and what a year, too – we’d just elected our first female president, and then we went and blew up the planet. Poor woman, that’s a hell of a legacy to have - ‘first female president destroys Earth’. How d’you come back from that, you ask? You don’t, that’s how! Yessir, I remember it like it was yesterday – you kids have your fancy cars that fly themselves. Ours went on the ground like dogs, and we had to steer them ourselves! You know what it’s like to put your head out the window while you’re screaming down the highway at 200 kilometers an hour boy? It’s like getting slapped in the face by God!

“Boy I tell you, those were good days! Cheap food, cheap fuel, cheap entertainment – you could walk down to the local Walmart and get yourself a quart of good old pasteurized cow’s milk for 30 American dollars. None of this pressurized pill crap that costs a day’s worth of credits. Why, we ate watermelon, bananas, apples – the actual fruit, mind you! Food didn’t come in pill form back in those days, no sir.

“Yeah, they were good days alright. Up until this whole ‘solar flare’ thing. Didn’t take it seriously at first: solar flares are a common thing, you see. Happen all the time. Usually they just blow right past us.” He exhaled sharply and gestured with his hand, as if blowing it into the sky. “But this one was different. Yessir, this was a big ‘un. They said it wouldn’t leave much behind if it was a direct hit. Scientists started getting nervous, and then the big-wigs got nervous. And when the big-wigs get nervous…well, let’s just say lotsa folks started getting unhinged.

“We had some time, though. Which was good, since NASA was in a sorry state those days. They’d send a probe out every now and then, just to keep the money flowin’, but nothing like a hundred years ago. But once this solar flare thing came out, boy did they start movin’. First it was the spaceports, then cities like Acropolis, then the great transport ships: the ‘Movers’, we called ’em. I remember it like it was yesterday - me, my sister, and the few belongin’s we had between us, boarding the Verne with thousands and thousands of other people. I begged her to take the window seat, but she wasn’t havin’ it. Boy, what I saw that day as we took off from Earth for the last time."

I heard a hollow thud as he went to wipe his eyes.

“There ain’t nothin’ more terrible than leaving your home for the last time. Not your house or your country, mind you, but your home planet. The only world where you know you got all you need, the only place in the universe where you can find a good meal, clean water, and a place to rest your head. We didn’t worry about no space suits or pressurization or muscular atrophy or none of that. ‘Round here you can’t open the windows and let in the fresh spring air, or wander into a herd of cows grazing in a field, or lay in the grass and bask in the warmth of the afternoon sun. No playing fetch in the yard with your dog, no fishing after a long day a work, none of it. Not anymore.

“Those gorgeous blues and whites you see in the history books? Gone, peeled back like a sheet of plastic wrap. Left this pale, disgusting looking shade of brown and green, like the planet had died right then and there. And for all intents it did – ain’t nothin’ on Earth still movin’ these days. That’s right, Earth, damn it, not ‘Sol-3’.” He sighed deeply. “But I s’pose that’s God’s way, ain’t it? You never know what’ll happen ’till one day it does, and come to find out there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it. You’re just too small. Best you can do is turn away from the past, look ahead, and hope for the best. Yessir, one can only hope…”

I looked back up at the drab gray rock in the sky. I don’t know how long I spent staring at that barren surface, tracing the ancient ocean valleys and mountain ranges, outlining the giant continents and twirling rivers and great lakes, wondering just how many lives were lost in the catastrophe that spread our species across the solar system and killed so many others. I turned back towards the old man, but only found an empty park bench.