The return

I listened to the dull roar of the engines as we neared the planet Earth. It had been multiple centuries since the population split into two colonies, one which went on to inhabit the Proxima Centauri system, and one which remained on earth. Our colony was the beginning of an advancement into interplanetary colonisation, sent to begin a colony on Proxima B and await the rest of the race. We waited years, our technology advanced rapidly and light speed travel was quickly developed. Despite how long we waited, they never came, and we grew concerned. Three of us, including me were instructed to return to Earth and investigate why they were unable to come.

The closer I got, the more nervous I became of what was to come. What had happened? Why didn’t they come? But as I peered out of the orbiter as it stabilised in low orbit, I did not see a blue and green planet teeming with life as Earth once was, before me was a vast ocean dotted by large, yellow and brown spots of land. I stared at what remained of Earth in utter disbelief. This planet looked devastated in this state, what had happened to the people? I looked towards the others for some sign of hope, to see if I was hallucinating and this did not exist. They too looked just as bewildered as I was, everyone was speechless, stunned in disbelief.

The ship, following it’s usual procedure, descended further in an attempt to find a landing zone. Nobody tried to stop it nor noticed it, they just kept staring at the empty wasteland underneath them. We descended further, avoiding collision with debris in the mesosphere. Our craft was quite small, meaning we did not experience much difficulties descending. Once we were below the stratosphere, the land became much easier to see. I observed the parched, cracked landscape beneath me, vast deserts with occasional large bodies of water formed near fissures and craters, in which groups of green vegetation took refuge, remnants of nearby towns scattered in piles of rubble and waste half swallowed by the inland bodies of water. Roads and destroyed railways creeped through this mess, weaving through and under the rubble. Beyond us was what appeared to be a large hurricane stirring up the dust which we were luckily well clear of, but nevertheless seemed quite unnerving for the three of us.

I wondered if any intelligent life was left here at all. None of it looked at all habitable, the surface was constantly being bombarded by the sun’s rays with no thick enough atmosphere to protect it, the heat from the land conflicting the ocean during day night cycles created massive storms which continued to devastate the landscape further, and of the water accessible on the surface most of it was probably intoxicated by the junk floating on top of it and the contaminants released by destroyed human factories and nuclear power stations which leaked into the ocean. Of the land without large, destroyed settlements, most of It was a vast desert which resembled a more Martian landscape.

We were much closer to the land now, the shuttle had picked a tall rocky hill with tufts of yellow grass growing in small patches here and there, a still intact but rundown shack was situated on top of the hill overlooking a destroyed town beneath it. I realised how hot it was getting, I checked the environmental sensors on the shuttle which read 45 degrees Celsius, creeping around the 46 mark. Once the ship landed, I went to get a suit so I could explore outside.

“You sure you wanna go out there?” Said Raj, one of the members of our small crew “It doesn’t look safe, I say we head back”

“And spend another 4 years travelling? I don’t even think we have enough fuel for the trip, our plan was to refuel here.” I snapped, I was now curious, I needed to go outside and discover what truly happened.

“Your loss” said Raj. “If you get hurt I won’t be responsible” And in response, I hopped into a spacesuit and out of the shuttle. One of the first things I noticed was how bright the sun seemed, the dark tint of the screen in our shuttle made the sun barely noticeable, but once I was out here it almost seemed blinding. A storm was raging close by and from this vantage point I could see it pouring over a small grove beside a body of water, which had bits of plastic floating around on the surface. The storm, although quite far, seemed as if it was slowly coming my way. I ignored it and went back to exploring the area around me.

I slowly walked to the edge of the hill, beneath me was the town, reduced to rubble, but this wasn’t what caught my attention. The small shack beside me, which was oddly intact, seemed special, as if it didn’t belong in this environment. I slowly walked up to It and opened the door, which let out a hideous screech as it opened. Out of the shack came a musky, humid metallic smell, and as I walked inside there was a table in the far corner of the room and on it, a book. By the look of it, the book still seemed intact, so I went over to it and picked it up. It had a brown leather cover with slightly yellow pages, I brushed the dust off the front and opened it to a random page in the middle of the book. The page had a slightly discoloured picture the planet, but notably much greener and with more visible land, underneath it was captioned Earth as of 2157. That was almost 200 years ago, which meant this book must have been here for a while. On the next page was a similar picture, but it had a planet which resembled the planet now. It was captioned Earth, 2290, around 50 years ago. Underneath was a long paragraph, smudged but still readable.

The ice caps have almost melted, storms are getting worse, there have been reports of acid rain burning down entire forests. the bio dome project failed disastrously blowing up two power stations nearby with it’s collapse. There were plans to relocate to the Proxima colony, but navigating a craft large enough to handle the entire population through the atmosphere nowadays would be impossible considering the amount of space junk orbiting the planet. There were many attempts to fix this mess when it was still preventable, but we have let ourselves down, we are truly doomed here on earth and I don’t think I or my peers would make it another decade here.

I put the book down, I stood there, frozen. Despite the attempts to avert the crisis that is global warming, we failed.

Written explanation

This story is set 300 years in the future and it is about 3 humans returning to earth after a small part of the population split into a separate colony to colonise another planet. The humans of this other civilisation were expecting more of the population to follow and further expand their colony, but they never arrived, so they sent people back to earth to investigate. Upon arrival, they find the planet destroyed and a complete wasteland with no sign of humans anywhere. The narrator quickly becomes less and less hopeful that there are humans left on earth, and by the discovery of the diary like book, it dawned on him that humanity on earth was doomed.

This story describes, although fairly exaggerated, the effects climate change could have on earth in the future, and how no amount of technology could revert the effects of global warming once the carbon dioxide creates a positive feedback loop of continuous heating, which can happen in the near future, almost 12 years from now it will be impossible to avert the upcoming crisis which is climate change. This story also touches on how interplanetary colonisation could possibly save humanity if climate change ever becomes as serious as described here.

I chose to describe the future Earth in detail to help develop the setting and create a gloomy, hopeless feel throughout the narrator’s description of the landscape. I use the book at the end in order to quickly summarise what happened on Earth, and to end the story (as it was reaching the word limit rapidly)

It also took me a while to complete this story because 1) im retarted and 2) it was hard to make this story flow, at times i restarted the entire story because i could not find a way to continue the story without it seeming awkwardly paced and, well, hard to read.

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