Written By Yashvi Jalan (Grade 8)
The year 2035 came into being just a minute ago. Instead of crashing midnight parties and wearing glimmering dresses, I was compelled to complete a monotonous astronomic assignment. Being officially transferred to New York’s Amateur Astronomy Association just 4 days ago, this was my perfect chance to mingle with my indifferent colleagues but I lost it.
Momentarily, a concentrated beam of light fell on my wall. It led to the formation of eerie patterns that were constantly glitching. After a few seconds, a holographic image of a lady appeared in front of my awestricken eyes. She had a sculptured figure that was accompanied by a shaggy pixie cut. She wore an uncanny metallic jumpsuit. As soon as she swooped her elongated and cylindrical nails, a transparent keyboard with glowing alphabets appeared out of nowhere. On clicking a few keys at a commendable speed, innumerable data and pictures popped straight up into the air. The unfamiliar texts kept scrolling down at an alarming rate. Finally, it came to a halt. To my stupefaction, I could see my photo. All my personal information such as phone no., addresses, etc. were neatly aligned beside it.
The holographic image addressed me by my name and proclaimed that she came from the future. She said that within 25 years, World War III would begin and that would mark an end to life on Earth. Therefore, 30 promising astronomers from all over the world were chosen by their scientists who would relocate all the inhabitants of Earth to Mars when the right time arrived. Till then all those astronomers were supposed to examine Mars intricately and prepare some efficient transportation. Before I could ask any questions, the holographic image disappeared.
I considered it to be a mere hallucination. Therefore, I decided to forget whatever had happened within the past few minutes. However, I found a peculiar pen-shaped device with a note lying in my study. It read ‘All the Best!’. I began examining it. On pulling it, it got stretched and a screen appeared in front of my eyes. Approximately 30 names were showcased in the form of an index including my own. I recognized the titles of a few people listed there; they were astronomers! On clicking each name, their personal information appeared in front of my eyes. Maybe whatever had happened a minute earlier was true after all! I tried a few phone numbers and inquired the person online by asking them about the holography, and they all replied in the affirmative. All of us could chat through the mysterious device and decided to meet at the Royal Astronomy in Greenwich within a week.
On our first meeting, we stood perplexed not knowing what to do. We hoped to find some more information about the newly gifted device but all our efforts went in vain. That’s when we realized that the ball was in our court now. Years passed by, and we kept researching the natural resources it had, the expectancy of life there, temperature, climate etc, by the PSLV satellite. We constructed aircraft that could safely carry people in bulk to Mars. After a few trials and errors, the aircraft proved to be a great success. Next up, we had to colonize Mars and make it an urbanised habitat. Trustworthy architects were sent off to Mars at regular intervals to accomplish the aforementioned.
It’s 2070, as predicted World War III had broken out a decade ago and all the people alive on Earth were sent off to a well-established planet, Mars to give their life a fresh start. Yet, our new home couldn’t give away the hospitable environment. We longed for the completely destructed Earth. Therefore, our future generation is trying to reconstruct Earth and bring everything back to normal. However, the execution of this seems questionable.
We humans are so insane, we had a perfect life, home and planet. Yet we did not respect it and today we will be spending years trying to get back what we lost because of our own greed. Well, wouldn’t it have been easier if we would have realised our mistake long back? If we would understand that war is not an ultimatum but a choice, lots of lives could have been saved. We don’t know whether we will get the privilege to see Earth back or relive those cherished memories. Therefore, the unending longing of going back to the long-forfeited elixir; Mother Earth continues.
“The Earth does not belong to us. We belong to the Earth.” – Chief Seattle
Featured Image Courtesy – BBC Future
