2008 Commonwealth Essay

“Now, when I was your age,” I smiled, hoisting my grandson onto my lap, “we had a planet to call home”. “We had?” my grandson asked, exited about the new piece of news I had just blurted. “Yes, and a wonderful one at that,” I added. “What happened, grandpa?” I paused, my mind wandered on. The vivid memories of past days began to flood before my eyes, every detail crisp.

I was transported back to the events of April 17th 2030, commonly referred to as the day of reckoning, the end of Earth itself. The efforts of environmentalists like Al Gore were all in vain. No one could stop the inevitable. On that fateful day, I woke up to a rattling TV set, the president’s face shone bright. His message rang loud and clear. At that very instant, I jumped out of bed, woke my family up, gathered as much of my precious belongings as I could carry and ran down to my hovercraft. As we jumped in, a huge gorge dug itself beside us, molten lava spewing out. I kicked on the gas and put the peddle to the floor, speeding towards the nearest evacuation centre. My baby was wailing in the back seat of the hovercraft.

A mass of people greeted us. A deafening roar overhead turned our attention towards it. A 100 mega tonne body of metal bursts into the gapping void above. We would soon board one ourselves and take the journey into a new life.

Seated in the belly of the metal behemoth, looking out the window, I saw an army of ants scurrying around down below. When it came time for launch, I clenched onto my wife’s arm as our seats shook violently, as we were hurled up at a booming velocity. I now knew what being cooped up in a sardine tin felt like. As we exited the atmosphere, I looked out once again at the ball of blue mass we once called home. But it wasn’t a blue ball, it was now a flaming red planet shrouded in a thick cloud of grey smoke. An out roar of people crying filled the entire craft as we now headed to our new home, a cluster of space stations laid on the outskirts of the solar system.

I suddenly felt a tucking at my sleeve and was teleported back into reality. My grandson’s face now showed his angry side – he had a short fuse. “What Happened?!” I looked down at him and sighed, “We did”.