Savor

The error of human nature is that we do not act against our calamities until they are standing at our door, knocking to announce their presence. We have known for decades that Earth could not continue to be abused by humankind, and although some tried to remedy our errors, most didn’t respond until it was too late to save the planet that birthed us.

It’s difficult for me to look back upon the history of our stubbornness. Sometimes, I do try to understand why it took so long for my ancestors to open their eyes and realize that the signs were correct, that everything those few scientists had warned against could and did happen. Why did they continue to live in laps of luxury, riding in their fuel-devouring vehicles and cutting down forests that sucked those bad chemicals out of the air?

I have a few theories. None of which reflect positively on us.

I don’t really know where to begin. I didn’t live through most of it; I just got to experience the end of it, or maybe one could say it is the beginning.

You see, the world was a small place even before I was born. Airplanes allowed people to travel from one side of the world to the other in a matter of twenty-four hours, less if you add about ten years to that date. We had cell phones, web cams, holograms, sensomeres, and then chutagrams. It was difficult to feel secluded when a person could jump inside a tube across the country and arrive in a chute closest to your home within the hour.

Diseases spread quickly but died even faster. When everyone in the world becomes immune and there are no longer new people in villages in remote areas to infect, an illness like the Flu disappears in a blink of an eye. Newborns never experience it, except maybe in history slides, because immunizations have become part of their DNA makeup.

Earth was crowded. It was crowded with technology, buildings, but most of all people. Most of the animals lived in zoos or in nature resorts in which the keepers spent every day trying to figure out how to keep a species in existence. The planet had become an Ark, but instead of taking the creatures that roamed it to safety in pairs, it became a cage in which having a pair was a miracle in itself.

Things were bad. We had all the technology that we ever dreamed of, but no one had the freedom that they wished for. All of the sudden, you couldn’t purchase a lot and build a house. If you wanted a horse, you would have to go look at one at a near-by zoo. Dairy, meat, vegetables, and fruit prices rose. With them, so did everything else. Farmers were not men clothed in overalls with acres of land to master; they were lab rats who spend all of their working hours cloning apples or trying to modify the genetic material of a cow so its meat and milk would keep a belly full for a full three days. They kept their living specimens in secured quarters, much like the keepers at the resorts, protecting them from extinction.
With all of this and more happening around us, we didn’t respond. Our lives were too important to us, not to save but to keep unchangeable. Every man and woman was so preoccupied with their own needs, that the catastrophe at hand was ignored or looked upon with rose-colored glasses. It was only a matter of time before all of our mistakes and indulgences caught up with us. If I were a religious person, I would say that God became cross and punished us. I am not religious though, so I will blame the events that had happened solely on their instigators.

Like I said previously, I’m not exactly sure where to begin. I am actually not a hundred percent positive when the first disaster hit because most of them were taken as part of daily life. When a volcano erupted in Europe in the early 2000’s, people were upset about the flight cancellations. A sudden tsunami hit the coast of Japan, well, it’s not like it hadn’t before. All I know is that these disasters started coming at shorter intervals of time, each impact worse than before, wiping out huge land masses and killing millions of people. All of the sudden the world was shrinking even more. Land was being swept into the acidic waters of the ocean and the creatures that inhabited it were lost in the process. The only good thing, for the Earth, was that human numbers grew smaller. It’s as if the planet was finally cleansing itself in a self-destructing manner; it would rather die than stand another several hundred years of abuse.

That’s when the panic set in. All of the sudden, the untouched parts of the world were being flooded with refugees. The already crowded areas became more crowded. The governments requested that citizens open homes to strangers. Muslims would sleep in the same room with Christians and the rich provide for the poor. There were riots. Everyone considered themselves more important and deserving of privacy than those who had lost their home to unthinkable calamities. People killed each other. Hate crimes rose. No one was at peace.

Then, the Inventors rose up. Those scientists who had been scoffed at and ignored had a solution to all of our worries. Despite all of the problems in our small world, the space program (which, I’m not for sure) had continued and they had found a new world, a world not unlike Earth for us to live on. Not only that, they had built five spaceships that could carry us to this new planet in numbers.

The public was thrilled. They were amazed. They were terrified. But most of all, they were saved.

A system was developed. Once every four weeks, the five ships would take five hundred human beings each to the new planet. It took a week to get there, a week to restock, a week to get back, and another one to restock again. All of the remaining people of Earth would be allowed passage, no fee required. The only catch was, as it is always, the rich would be selected first and the poorest would go last.

And so the waiting began. Once each of the ships left Earth, the next batch of citizens would receive their messages telling them that they should pack lightly and prepare to leave in four weeks. Each round was tense and nerve-racking. People fought and attempted to take on identities of others so they could leave faster. The disasters kept happening. There were fewer refugees because practically no one survived, and if they had, no one wished to rescue them. The world kept shrinking. I sometimes lay awake at night imagining the fraction that remained of the great United States shrinking until it was just small enough that I stood on the sliver of land with one foot flat on the surface and the other one hanging above the dark, angry ocean.

It was on one of these dismal evenings that my mother came in and told me that our message had come. We were the next to leave on the ships; we would survive.