THE VOYAGE OUT OF EARTH

I clung on to my seat as the rocket zoomed into the outer space. As it steadied in outer space, I couldn’t but turn and look down at what we’d left. It was an orange ball of fire.

The last twenty-two years there had given me such memories that I couldn’t blink away the tears that were clouding my eyes.

I remembered the first time I had sat in a climate change strike, as a seven year old. We had been taken from school, and lot of other students from schools around the city had come too. Many of the senior kids held the mike and gave speeches. Some of the teachers did too. But for the rest of us, it had seemed more like a picnic.

Both my parents worked at Veesta X, so we were from a very young age accustomed to the thought of aliens (extraterrestrial beings) and life on a different planet. But the school and the society around us also cautioned us about the perils out there if the blue-green planet that had been human home for billions of years was lost.

Growing up the heat had intensified, making weather unpredictable and temperatures often scorching. At other times, it rained torrentially and the rivers swelled, drowning homes and offices and people.

Most houses were amphibian, they stood on land and could take on a buoyant boat structure if the water levels rose above a certain limit. Yet the danger of drowning or dying from starvation and dehydration was real, especially if things didn’t work out as expected.

Our house turning into a boat was no fascinating experience after the first few times. It happened so often that it had become a disturbance.

But what happened on 30 July 2090, nobody knows exactly. Some say an asteroid as huge as Mercury fell on Earth sparking the fire. Other theories suggest collision with a rogue planet. While many conclude that the temperature in the Saharan desserts rose so high that it sparked the fire that spread like an eating machine across continents.

People were charred immediately. Places of escape were gutted even before they could be contemplated and explored.

Scientists hadn’t been prepared for a fire as massive as this. Veesta X, though still testing for outer space places conducive to life, believed this an opportunity and rolled out tickets to anyone who had the money and the risk appetite.

It was a one way ticket. There was planet X in a different solar system that Veesta believed could support life. While robotic space expeditions there had given proof to this theory, no human had set foot there. The only person who had landed there and lived there successfully currently was Bella – the Android robot.

Yet as the crisis on Earth scaled, few with the money came forward to take the offer. And the first three flights carried away 27 homo sapiens into the outer space, on their way to planet X. But till date, 4 September 2090, no news about whether they’d landed safely was received.

The one that I’m on is the last flight from Earth. Rest everything is lost. By now, the rocket pad would have been charred too. On the same flight as this one is Veesta X CEO. My parents who got a ticket because of the work they did for Veesta X couldn’t board because of fatal cardiac attack, leaving a ticket for me. The last rocket with 17 on board was mostly Veesta X employees or their relatives, whoever wanted to be out of the planet. That would make us a total of 44 homo sapiens on Planet X if we manage to reach there safely. 44 out of a population of 3.8 billion that had been alive just over a month ago.

The rocket continued to move ahead in empty space, leaving behind a fiery orange planet with its ghosts, and a broken me, who was excited and apprehensive of (possible) new life.