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En Route To Mars, 2045

It has been five months since we left for Mars and we’ve received no transmission from Earth for the past two.

At first glance, space is, as you imagine it, an extended nothingness but when you have been looking out the window as much as some of us have on the Sirius U8, you realize that the universe is made of tiny things. A mass accumulation of rocks, flesh, gaseous forms and metals. You think about how these very microscopic elements fused together to create the planet we’ve called home for million years. Sitting in a spaceship, t-minus 1 month from Mars, you’re bound to question the significance of everything. Yourself included.

The problem here is not about being stuck in space. The inhabitants of Sirius U8 are rather glad to be here. What, although, dispirits most of us is how we had spent our last days on Earth: in mechanical chaos and distrust. We’d sit in trust circles and talk about our experiences on Earth during the first few weeks on the Sirius. As if we were tourists there. As if we hadn’t lived there our entire lives. As if 20 or 30 or 40 years could be summed up in two to three-minute monologues.

The first time most of the world had boarded a spaceship was when Virgin Galactic commercialized space travel, making it so cheap that middle-class families could travel to one of the Kepler’s planets for their annual vacation. It had become leisure for a good while but we didn’t know that it wouldn’t stay that way for too long. As most bad news come, this one also came late; but more on that later.

Five months into our journey, one of the head scientists identified a faulty joint in the right rocket booster of the spacecraft which would’ve allowed hot gases to escape and sear through an adjacent tank of explosive hydrogen. We couldn’t exert more pressure on the engines than we already were by being suspended mid-vacuum. They had to blacksmith metal o-rings in the steam room to replace the faulty joint.

Nobody on the spacecraft knew about this almost-fatal event but it feels appropriate to say that, as a journalist, sniffing the trail of bad news down to the steam room was a skill you had to develop. We’d lost a month of travel but that was a small price to pay for survival.

Everything is truly a small price to pay for survival. Death included. The dinosaurs, the dunkleosteus, the Helicoprion, the Arthropleura. They all had to die so humanity could exist. Perhaps, a better way to say it is that: everything is truly a small price to pay for the survival of humans. Mankind, at its core, is the worst apex predator the universe has seen. Or maybe this was something we’d wanted to believe. That we were entitled to survival.

The Sirius U8 was said to be the largest spaceship to have been built within the span of 36

months. Of course, it was. It had to house 110 people for seven months, along with a thousand different species of plants that would breed the first-ever generation of space crop, climate-controlled methanogens, machinery and a litter of: people from every major nationality to preserve whatever is left of the subspecies of archaic humans and those in the useful practices of medicine, geology and architecture.

We landed on Mars about a year ago, built our settlements out of bio-engineered plastic and have plans to begin fracking the Martian surface soon. We’ve had only ten casualties since arrival and that too, limited by expert medical services. We do have a lot of experts on board the U8.

Before we left, the astronauts had mapped out all the asteroids and comets heading for Mars. A planet killer, one-third the size of Mars is set out for us in 2060 and we were briefed only to establish temporary conditions on Mars. For 15 years, precisely. In theory, it sounds like a long time but it’s a tight constraint. We’d have to figure out how to reach (and then colonize) another habitable planet in 15 years. We’re not sure we can do it but we bought ourselves some time.

The work we’re doing here is extremely isolating. Trying not to think about how we are all that’s left of mankind, is isolating.

We’ve left behind our parents, our families, our friends for a greater good that we don’t know exists. The human race is going to be wiped out in a very lonely manner if we don’t do the undoable in fifteen years.

At least, down on Earth, we could’ve spent our final days with the people we loved. Instead, we were boarding the Sirius and preparing for take-off while smiling down at the people destined for annihilation way sooner than we were.

Apophis was a pre-calculated extinction-level event. NASA and the space research agencies around the world had deployed all their asteroid aversion techniques to try and break down the rock into smaller, containable parts or divert its trajectory altogether but a day later, Apophis was still headed for Earth, at a faster rate than what was computed. Almost as if it were vengeful.

We were the backup plan. Mars was the backup plan and it was with a heavy, distant heart that the President even signed off on it. He’s here, by the way. In a world without politics, in the mission to colonize Mars, in the strive for survival, I wonder what role he plays.

True to our brand, we destroy everything we touch but the ruination of Earth wasn’t our doing. We’d even gotten climate change under control for the fear that our home would be too far gone to save but Apophis still came and all that we cared about, cared for, is gone.

And here we are, starting all over again.