Author: Naomi Eselojor
The Earth was dying. Scientists had predicted this day would come, but they never imagined it would be this soon. Volcanoes all over the world were erupting. There was a lighting storm raging, lighting buildings, and causing a rampaging fire. Massive wedge tornadoes stretched to the sky, compounding as they collided with houses, buildings, and cars. The earth’s core was unstable; it was only a matter of time before the earth was destroyed. Human technology was no match for mother earth herself. They felt her anger towards mankind, anger towards the humans neglected it that didn’t try to preserve and protect it.
Bianca and her boyfriend, Drun were at the hangar of his father’s space agency. Only one escape pod was left. They exchanged apprehensive looks as they stood beside it. The escape pod could only accommodate one individual. Bianca latched onto her boyfriend, her lips trembled, tears filled her eyes. Their chances of survival were as slim as a thread. There was little time to waste, the ground beneath them rumbled, the building shook forming cracks on the floor that spread to the walls and ceilings, thickening with every passing second.
“What do we do?” Bianca asked, nearly choking on her words. Drun smiled at her and tucked a loose strand behind her ear before pulling her in for a kiss. She needed it, especially now, when she had lost her parents, her three siblings, and her childhood friend to the giant cyclone whooshing outside. She needed to be with the man she loved, to savor the last moments with him because there was no way she would leave him behind. They would die together, together forever.
Drun pulled away from her, “I love you so much,” he said.
With the speed of a cheetah, he pushed the hatch open and shoved Bianca into the escape pod. The countdown began immediately. Bianca, flabbergasted at first, had now come back to her senses. She banged against the transparent window until her hands were sore. Drun looked at her with glossy eyes, “I love you,” he mouthed. At the count of one, the pod blasted off deep into the blackness of outer space.
Bianca, agitated, meddled with the controls. There should be a way to change the coordinates and set course for the earth, she told herself. Drun could still be alive, he had to be. She had lost everyone else already, she couldn’t lose him too. Hours of torment passed by and Bianca continued to bang buttons. Drun knew this would happen, he knew there’d be one pod left and so he programmed it to take her as far away as possible, he wanted her to start a new life, at some other galaxy. If only he knew that Bianca couldn’t live without him.
She finally succeeded in overriding the program, she typed in earth’s coordinates and at the speed of light, was transported back home, only, there was no earth anymore. She was too late, what used to be a green and blue planet, was now a cluster of debris. Her Drun was gone, her planet, gone, it had torn itself apart.
Tears couldn’t leave her eyes, the heaviness she felt within couldn’t amount to tears but the pain would become a part of her, a part of her that she would carry around all the days of her life. With Drun gone, there was no one else to live for. She altered the coordinates a second time. Last stop, the sun.