RUN THE TITLES: VOLUME TWO

Jun 21, 2024

“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do…” - Barbara Ward

GREEN DAY

It was the LAST NIGHT ON EARTH.

There were just three of us left, packing up whatever was still salvageable, while we were WAITING to be evacuated in the morning.

The others, a few hundred, maybe less, were already 2000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY by now, DREAMING about rebuilding what we'd lost on some distant world, where our leaders had assured us things would be different.

We had the KNOWLEDGE this time, and we wouldn't make the same mistakes again.

Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

But either way, while we were STILL BREATHING, we had to try.

The hours passed quickly, as we gathered together our meagre cargo, the pitiful remnants of a whole civilisation, and all too soon the WARNING came that our Transport Ship had arrived.

After ALISON and OLIVIA had gone up the ramp, for a brief moment, I became the only human whose feet were still in contact with this planet. ALL BY MYSELF.

As I took a final look at our former home, I couldn't help wondering what it must have been like before these TROUBLED TIMES. I had really only seen it in simulations, but I'd seen enough to know it was full of beauty and endless possibilities. Now it was just ROTTING rubble and ruins. And SCATTERED dust.

"WELCOME TO PARADISE", they must surely have said back then.

And it was ours.

But we'd squandered it all...