False Hope?

By Sathvikh Sudhakar

False Hope?

Chapter 1

Grey skies.

Heat strokes.

Barren ground.

Repeat.

This is what I saw every day as I crossed from country to country, in search of a speck of life in our dead home. I had known all along that something was wrong. But it had been 21 years, 1 month, and 24 days since the majority of the human race evacuated Earth. An extremely severe heat stroke due to global warming, struck the planet leading to continous death at various forms of life… I could not have done anything 21 years ago. We had taken some of the farm animals along to go live in a man-made city-like satellite, SatCity, that orbits the Sun in between Mars and the asteroid belt, though not too far away from Earth. We left the poor to rot in the polluted and humid atmosphere on Earth, allowing death to fill the air, just before nature runs wild and restores Earth once more. Wasn’t it our fault that this happened? Well, that was the plan.

Tears escaped my eyes and dripped down my cheeks as I witnessed what has become of our home. Trees perished, water disappeared, soil eroded. What worse can happen? This set of events on Earth has turned out to be the exact opposite of what had been expected. How could we be so selfish and let our mother die? How could we have expected Earth to revive herself again in just 21 years? As an Earth-born, I have seen the way Earth was, when we left. Those 5-year-old eyes of mine scanned my home for the last time and knew the damage we had caused could have been undone. She knew they were making the wrong decision, but who would listen to a tiny child? So here I am sitting in a pool of tears as my space car shoots across the Pacific Ocean, more like the Plastic Ocean, heading towards North America.

Chapter 2

1 week earlier

Training over.

Job started.

Assignment given.

Will I succeed?

Tomorrow is the Earthen alignment - where Earth, SatCity, and the Sun are aligned. And today, I was assigned my very first mission as an Investigator: to travel to Earth and confirm if Earth was habitable for humans once more. Deep down, buried under 21 years' worth of doubt inside my heart, I knew Earth would never be habitable. It’s too late now. “Asia,” they told me, “go to Asia first.”

Chapter 3

Now

My hometown.

My country.

My continent.

All a waste land.

I was excited when they told me I got to go to Asia first. I decided right then that I would go to Vietnam, my home country first. My false assumptions of thick lush forests, dense air, and immense biodiversity led me to have false hope, which shattered into a million pieces when I drove above what used to be where Cúc Phương National Park was located, at the northern end of the region. It was Vietnam's first national park and its largest nature reserve. Now it's a slaughtered piece of land, all brown with cracks. To my surprise, the whole of Asia and Europe was a graveyard with ashes spread out everywhere.

I do not want this false hope just for it to break my heart all over again. I shoot across the sky under the moon’s light towards my next target, the Americas. I expect nothing less than another big part of perished land, and that’s what I get - 50 million square kilometres of dried soil and rock. I try to keep myself intact, but it seems almost impossible to stay sane and conscious in between the destruction of my home, and the assassination of my Mother Earth. But I still hold on to a string of that false hope, which I know that I should not do, and travel towards the Atlantic Ocean.

Chapter 4

Deep blue water.

Crystal clear skies.

Thriving biodiversity.

Then a blast of emotion.

I opened my eyes to see a whole new world - a world of beauty and thriving nature. I rubbed my eyes twice and pitched myself; this was not a dream. Bright-coloured fishes swam at the surface of the water, as dolphins jumped up and down in the water. It was almost as if nothing had ever happened to Earth, but I know that is not the case. As I gained speed and flew across the Atlantic Ocean, I could feel Nature flourishing in this part of the deceased Earth, trying to revive and restore her home. A peck of brown could be seen in the distance, like a grain of sand in the vast world. As it got bigger and bigger, that speck of brown became greener and greener, until a prospering rain forest filled my sight. Here, in a desert that once used to be named as Africa, a humongous rainforest has grown on its own, creating its own biodiversity and different and new types of animals, birds, and insects. For the first time in my whole life I feel alive, and I am happy to be proven wrong. SatCity was a success, and Earth is once again ready to be explored.

Epilogue

1 week later

“Is that her?”

“Definitely not!”

“Could it be… ?”

“Has she found it?”

I walk proudly with my shoulders straight into the city hall. I had broadcasted a message that something new was found on Earth, and rumours spread like wildfire through SatCity. I continued my stride toward the president, and with a flick of my finger, hundreds and thousands of images from my journey to Africa filled each and every corner in the room. Thousands of gasps and sounds of crying echoed across the room, followed by a booming standing ovation from the crowd. In the previous years, every other 19 Investigators had come back without success or did not return from the journey to Earth. But more than receiving all this appreciation and compliments from the crowd, going back to my home made me the happiest person in this entire solar system.

By Sathvikh Sudhakar