“I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief because there will be so much to look forward to.” -Donnie Darko, Main Character, Donnie Darko
We are all being piled in these massive rockets that were scattered across the majority of countries. We were all moving to Mars. There is a massive planetoid object that the incredibly secret, high-level governmental organizations knew about on its way towards Earth. We were told that they are sorry they hid this from us but it was originally discovered 4 years ago and it was kept completely off the record but the largest governments of the World have been working together to get humans off the planet. The main organizations(countries) working towards this were NASA(United States), ROSCOSMOS(Russia), ESA(European Coalition), CNSA(China), ISRO(India) and JAXA(Japan). These countries did the physical work but almost all of the countries around the world offered whatever help they could reasonably provide.
They calculate a 99.999999993452% chance that the object will smash into the Earth causing a total massive extinction event at best, and actually destroy the physical Earth at worst. Either of these is the worst outcomes of any impact, but with the second, the entire Earth might no longer exist after this event. They apparently ran simulations and did all kinds of maths to try and figure out if they could possibly be wrong. However, the final decision after months of trying to disprove it was that it will affect the Earth 100% in at least some manner. The best that we could possibly hope for is it flying between the Earth and the moon burning some of it up in the atmosphere which would scatter molten metal and gigantic rock chunks through the atmosphere causing mass destruction, but luckily not extinction.
When the news about this all broke it was a bit of panic. There was news about people in poorer, non-space faring nations freaking out, rioting and dealing with the complete disorder. It took a while and representatives from the other states to convince the majority of those people that they will not be left behind and we will all make our way. No one will be left behind.
“We will take all people, men, women, children, our old, poor, the criminals and every other person with us.” I remember hearing the President say assuredly, “When we learned of this we had months of deliberation about how we will handle this transition and expedition. However, without question, I swore that we will sacrifice whatever needed to be sacrificed to make sure that every person of every land, language, religion, and color would make their way safely.” It sounded like an impossible situation. When they told us He wrapped it up with something that no one believed, “We learned of this 4 years ago and we have made significant preparations under the guise of other goals and targets to keep it a quiet as possible. When we move people to the launch sites, everyone will travel for free, trains, planes and all public transport will be provided without question to everyone. Unfortunately, I hate to share this so late but the transfer window between Earth and Mars opens every 26 months and we are prepared to make our safe journey but we are about to hit the window and all the rockets will be in Space by Sunday evening, November 27th, in a week.” When I heard that I had no idea how to react, in one week we would be off the Earth and would be moving to a new planet, somehow they had organized this and made the preparations to launch and somehow they thought giving us only one week would be reasonable.
The announcement wasn’t without resistance, people swore they wouldn’t leave. They swore that they would stay and survive because nothing will happen. There were your conspiracy theorists worrying about the New World Order and how it was all a scheme to kick all the undesirables off the Earth and leave the planet to just the elite and rich. I can’t possibly believe this is the case. There are missile silos open in the middle of fields as well as every launch pad on Cape Canaveral, Vandenburg, and all military bases with an SLS/SpaceX ITS/Virgin Galactic or Origin Blue rocket sitting on top of them. It is uncountable and apparently, there are more that are prepared to be loaded at large enough airports to launch from them as well. I don’t know how many will stay, it doesn’t seem like many. There will probably be groups of people in big cities that get together but I can’t imagine that it will be able to do it because it’s certain death.
The last thing I remember hearing the President say was: “The planetoid object is not going to arrive for another 4 months but this will be our last Mars transfer window. We need everyone to work together and we can get to Mars safe and together.”
However, the time is now, well it’s almost now. We are making our way to the rocket, we lived in southeast California so we were ferried to Vandenburg AFB and that’s where I am launching from. I am nervous, I’ve always been good at flying in planes and driving boats but I have never moved out of California, much less the planet. I have been thinking about older people, the government says the older or sicker you are, the less likely you are to survive the launch and the trip but that has not seemed to put off many people as the governments have sworn that an older person who decides to not get on a rocket will not free a space for one of their loved ones or even just anyone younger. My grandparents, at least the surviving ones will attempt to make the trip as well and that makes me believe it will be a common enough situation that we don’t see Earth be a planet ruled by the elderly.
As we make our way to the lift, you can see how incredibly massive the engines are, I have never stood next to a rocket but I never imagined it being so large. It is kind of off-putting as well as reassuring because these feel like something that could blast us to a new planet. I can read the Earth-Mars Migration text next to the logo taking up the majority of their pressure suits. They look sleeker than I imagined they would be. The suits were hand-delivered to every home and apartment, which explains why we had an unusually thorough census only a few months back.
Finally, the moment was here, I thought about how it would feel but I don’t think I was ready for it and I’m still not. My last step on Earth. It was my left foot that last touched the Earth’s surface as I boarded the elevator. I turned around for my last look before the doors closed and I couldn’t focus on anything except for the large countdown clock facing the Launch Pad. It was finally below 2 hours and it simply read: EMM 00:01:53:27 as the doors finally cut off my view.
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