A school teacher lifts her hand to the sky, and watches her fingers dissolve. It tingles, like a foot falling asleep, or standing up too fast. The crimson sun shines through her fingers. It is time to go to the regeneration facility, she thinks to herself, in an alien language, and she begins the short walk. She shudders at the thought of placing her hand under one of the re-gen lights—they burn—but what else is she to do? She cannot teach without fingers.
On a television some miles away, the news is showing people running, screaming, pulling at their dissolving fingers. An outbreak, they call it, and recommend going to the regeneration facility. A day later, the government collapses because the ‘outbreak’ is actually a sign of the world beginning to destroy itself.
“We have destroyed this world with our bombs and experiments. We will choose those who will escape to V3, and send them there in an escape shuttle, but the rest of us will have to play for our actions,” her voice is melodic, speaking in the same alien language. The world is falling apart, its inhabitants running ramped through the streets and screaming of the end.
The school teacher has been chosen, along with seven hundred others, to board the escape shuttle to V3. V3 is green and blue, unlike their own red planet, but it is apparently safe for their life forms. They come aboard the shuttle soon after waking, and it takes off not an hour later. Forty three of the chosen were left behind, two of which were too dissolved to walk. So, six hundred fifty seven people were strapped to seats with speeding hearts and anxiety bleeding through them like ink on white cloth.
The passengers were placed in suspended animation as they soared through space to V3, and did not wake until they had been on the planet for two weeks. The teacher rose, holding her head in her hands. She was in pain from her dissolved toes to her frizzy hair. When they excited the shuttle, they were shocked to find the previously green destination dark and burnt like their own. They rewound the security tapes, and watched their home planet explode. Fragments of their beautiful home fell upon V3, scorching it. The security tapes showed the strange animals of this planet running for their lives—dying.
“Our new home may be partially destroyed, but we will find a way. What shall we call this planet? V3 is not appropriate for a home.” A male of their species says in their language. The rest nod in agreement. They have no time to mourn for their home planet, they are too busy finding food and water. The teacher looks up at the sky. It is pale, pale blue, and she cannot look at the sun as she had on her home planet. She hopes for a better future. But what will they call this planet? They discuss it after the sun has set and they sit together in their shuttle, chilled. This beautiful planet deserves a beautiful name, and they mix parts of their language together to come up with a suitable one.
They called it Earth.
Thank you for reading my fiction! (: