Dead Earth
The guard keeping people in line is bored, chewing from his last pack of gum, knowing each transport is that many more saved from the agony he has consigned himself to by staying behind. He knows the transport isn’t your standard shuttles, with the amount of people this site and the 125 others throughout the Earth are moving and at the rate they were doing so it’d take over a hundred years to get the shuttles built. We didn’t have that time.
No, the people are being transported to a planet near the Alpha Centauri star. It’s been vetted as safe, unlike this permanently gray skyed husk. Mankind hadn’t been kind to the Earth at all. Carving it up for the rocks and pockets of gasses never caring for the damage done, nor the damage done in the processing to the protective layers of ozone. Adding into that the increased use of wasteful consumer products. It was a long time coming.
A child is holding the line up a little, crying and clearly lost. The guard puts out the cigarette that he was smoking, regulations have gotten lax the last few days during this push and the people on the platform seemed to understand the personnel are stuck here. Someone has to operate everything after all.
Scooting low, the guard mutters a few calming words, letting the child know their loved one will be waiting at the colony and everything will be alright. They’ll see the light of a sun again, a different light. One that has not turned vengeful and unfiltered.
The child braved up, stepping to the outer edge of the current group on the pad, and the guard heard that familiar cracking sound. They were gone, to the safety of a new planet, where our collective existential dread had been replaced by the boundless hope of humanity.
Amazingly there’s less and less people with each group. Soon a supervisor for the security team comes by and passes out blue ribbons. These, the guard is informed, are passes for security personnel as they are not all staying behind. The names are supposedly being drawn at random. The guard sighs when they pass him, and he goes back to watching the line. Enough so that he doesn’t hear the second supervisor calling his name.
“Johnson! Johnson! You’re going to the colony.”
The guard, Johnson, gives a start. He hadn’t anticipated this, for weeks they’ve been transporting the people using what can only be described as Star Trek style transporters. Though instead of blue light phasing you out it’s just like a loud bang of a popper made of paper followed by the smell of displaced humanity.
“I’m going? I’ll get to see my family?”
With a nod the supervisor hands him the pass. Johnson joins the queue, eager to hear that crack one more time. Practicing in his head every little thing he’ll say to his wife and daughter, who he had said goodbye to last week knowing he’d be working to allow others like them to go to the colony too. His eyes welled with tears, that queer hope only humans exhibit building into him. He’s next up, and he gets into the throng of people on the pad. It’s not as squished as before, but is far from comfortable.
CRACK
A disorienting blur, if it seemed instantaneous off the platform it was far from it on. For what felt like minutes his body felt as if it was tearing itself apart and it was, breaking the matter apart into pure atoms and recompiling using the blueprint mapped on the platform.
Finally his body coming back together, Johnson feels the disorientation slowing and he feels as if he’s come to himself. And immediately immolates, his body touching the surface of Earth’s sun and vaporizing nearly immediately, with only a millisecond for Johnson’s brain to comprehend what has happened and how many he helped bring to this horrendous end.
