And We All Fall Back Down to Earth

by Victoria Penny

94 minutes of oxygen remaining

Catastrophic systems failure. That's what they call it. That's why they put so many redundancies in place. But this is space and space is vast and unpredictable and no one, not even the most experienced and battle hardened astronauts, can prepare for it.

That was the risk we took. For the unquenchable thirst for knowledge, for science's unanswered questions. For the good of humanity.

We risked it all. We rose up like Gods, breaking the atmosphere, reaching the black and going, going far beyond where anyone has gone before.

Home becomes a small blue dot, insignificant in the grand scale of the universe. Above it, we think we see all. We believe we are beyond mere trivialities like hunger and pain. Like mortality.

But even Gods can be brought to their knees.

88 minutes of oxygen remaining

We called the ship the Departure, because it was to leave Earth and never come back. The greatest ship humanity would ever build.

Eight hundred kilometers across. Meant to hold hundreds of thousands of people. Built entirely in space - no power on Earth could get a thing that big into the sky far enough to reach the black and the stars beyond.

It took a century to complete. So many stops and starts as money ran out, as wars raged and what was up there had no meaning compared to what was going on down here.

Then the thing happened. The thing scientists and people with half a brain had been warning about for decades. Except no one was listening. Those who could really change things just didn't care.

Our world began to unravel.

Unpredictable weather, earthquakes, a new ice age.

If humanity was going to survive, we had to leave home, reach for something beyond all we had ever known. Abandon Earth to its final fate. A fate of our own doing.

With the end looming, the Doomsday clock ringing, Earth was finally at peace. Tentative and begrudging though it was. But border lines no longer mattered, nationalities quickly became a thing of the past. Skin colour was irrelevant when everyone was starving.

The northern hemisphere froze over and humanity fled south, but the cold only followed.

The only way to escape was up.

72 minutes of oxygen remaining

In the years that followed, they called it the Great Migration. My grandmother was one of those flocks of hopeful, terrified survivors trekking across land and sea. Putting one foot forward in front of the other even as the food ran out, as the air became too toxic to breathe. As, one by one, she watched her family fall around her. First her little brother, who had always been sickly ever since birth. Then her mother, who had likely died from heartbreak and sorrow more than anything else. Then finally, her father, the one person she thought she could rely on forever.

They all fell, swallowed by the Earth never to return.

She was only six, but even at that young age, my grandmother knew what was happening, knew the faces she saw around her would not last the night, the week, the months to come. So many would die, be forgotten, their lives meaningless.

Keep going, her father muttered, coughing and spluttering as he lay dying on the cold, hard ground. Survive.

It was a great task to leave to a six year old. Especially one now left alone, surrounded by frightened strangers who would kill each other for the last remaining slice of bread.

Rumours of salvation in the south kept her going, kept them all going, those dwindling numbers of survivors.

So my grandmother kept going. One foot after the next, each step taking her closer to something, to hope. And she vowed, at that tender age of six years old - a brief nanosecond in the scale of time the Earth had been revolving around our sun - to keep the promise that she spoke on her father's deathbed. To keep going. To survive.

64 minutes of oxygen remaining

She died before the Departure was completed. Of old age. Seventy two, to be precise. And on her feet until her last breath, fighting for humanity's continued survival, making sure the ship that would be our Ark would be finished before it was too late.

Much of the world's societal culture had collapsed after the Migration. The few scientists left alive all banded together, arguing over ways of how to proceed. It was no longer a time for politics, for selfish, rich men to pull the strings to meet their own needs. But scientists were never meant to lead the masses. They sought answers, solutions, their heads so wrapped up in the tiny details that the bigger picture became harder than ever to see.

Then my grandmother arrived, in her mid teens now and lacking the education of these habituated academics.

Everyone knew of the great ship in orbit that had been started and never completed. An old pipe dream that would never be.

But it had to be. It was the only way. My grandmother argued and cursed, raged and fought until they would listen, until they would see.

And when they did, the work finally began in earnest.

51 minutes of oxygen remaining

I know this ship like the back of my hand. I grew up within its hulls, was born in an unfinished storage bay, my mother screaming with each contraction, so loud it was a wonder they could not hear her back on Earth. I came out a squalling, pink thing. The first born in space. And hopefully not the last. I was a symbol of hope. Of the future to come.

They named me after my grandmother - Marie Katherine Johnson - and I've spent my whole life trying to live up to the name, to the legacy.

47 minutes of oxygen remaining

Catastrophic systems failure. No one, not even my grandmother, could have prevented it. It was pure chance, bad luck. Forty years into our journey and now we would go no further.

Two hundred thousand souls aboard the Departure. The last generation born on Earth, and the first to be born in space.

We all know this ship. We all know its importance. What we carry is humanity's last hope. Our fragile cargo protected by sheets of metal, defying the vacuum, the all consuming black.

An instant of so many threads of chance converging upon this one moment, upon our destruction.

33 minutes of oxygen remaining

I was in hydroponics when it happened.

Botany is my speciality, my first love. Each plant is carefully cultivated to give the ultimate yield. High protein greens and nutrient rich fruits. My job is to feed the masses aboard the ship. Everything is carefully rationed, carefully prepared to provide everyone with the right amount of calories and vitamins to remain healthy. There's not much variety in our diets, but most of us don't know any better.

Forty years of the same meal everyday was just a way of life. It couldn't get boring because most had known of no alternative.

When I was four, the year before my grandmother passed away, when she was growing more frail and fragile by the day, she summoned me to her. I went willinging, eagerly, hoping for more tales of the world before the Migration. It fascinated me how people used to live without a care, where space was just a thing from movies and books.

But it wasn't a story my grandmother wished to share with me that day.

No, this was something else. A secret just between the two of us. A special treat.

I have no idea where my grandmother got her hands on a bar of chocolate. All the factories were shut down by then, converted into manufacturing whatever was needed for the Departure's completion. Yet she had gotten it from someone, saved it for years, waiting for the right moment.

I'd heard of this mythical sweet treat, of course. Often the adults could be heard reminiscing about what they missed most before the Migration, before the world went to hell. But even knowing of it, of hearing other people's delight and nostalgia over it - none of that compared to its true taste. The wonderful, creamy sweetness.

I giggled uncontrollably from pleasure at the first taste, my grandmother joining in, our teeth stained brown. It was a miracle I didn't scoff the whole thing down at once. Instead we sat, huddled together and nibbling slowly, making it last. It was the best hour of my life.

21 minutes of oxygen remaining

The lights went out first, then the gravity. Beyond that there was no other warning that anything was wrong. I think everyone, including myself, expected it to last for only a few minutes until the engineers could put things back to rights. But the minutes ticked by. The ship remained dark and cold. It got harder and harder to keep breathing.

I abandoned my plants then. The oxygen they could produce would never be enough to sustain us. Not without the light to keep them alive. Dragging myself through the ship, using the handholds that had been put in place just for this very eventuality - redundancies, see? My grandmother had tried to think of everything. The air grew thinner and my body felt like it was being pulled through treacle, felt like a dream where I'm running, running forwards yet my destination just keeps getting further and further away.

What would my grandmother have done in my place?

I know the answer. I feel it in the blood that runs through my veins. The same blood that pumped through hers.

She would have fought to the last breath.

Just as I must do now.

15 minutes of oxygen remaining

I always knew I would die on this ship. Most of us would. The end coming for us long before the Departure ever reached its destination.

Some far off world at the other end of the galaxy. Scientists had once studied it from afar, deemed it the closest planet to us that has the potential to sustain life. Our last Hope.

A funny name for a planet, but I like it. Hope. With a sky above our heads once again and lush flora at our feet. Fresh air to breathe. It was a dream we all shared. Not for ourselves, but for those who came after. Our descendents, the last of us.

4 minutes of oxygen remaining

Even in the dark, even with each breath a stab to my lungs as not enough oxygen gets inside me, I still pulled myself along. A thousand times I have walked this ship from one end to the other, yet this was the hardest, the longest, the most important.

Heading for the bridge. I'm not a navigator or a pilot, not an engineer. I'm not even a leader. I knew there was nothing I could do, no hope I could give. But it was Marie Katherine Johnson the elder's voice in my head, urging me along, willing me to keep going. I was so delirious from lack of oxygen, for a moment, she was right there, right beside me. So close I could reach out and take her hand, find the strength from her that I could not find within myself.

Keep going, that spectral voice seemed to say, just like her father's dying voice had once urged her.

I knew there was no survival for me, none for the fallen bodies I could see floating within the anti gravity, chests barely rising and falling.

I tried not to look at them. There was nothing I could do for them now. Nothing I could do for myself.

2 minutes of oxygen remaining.

I finally reached the bridge to find the captain dead, the rest of the bridge crew unconscious. I don't know how I'm still breathing. I can still see my grandmother's spectrul form, even now. Glowing in the dark to show me my way. She doesn't look as she did that last time I saw her, the day before she died. Her dark skin is still creased with wrinkles, her hair white, but there's a secretive smile on her face, the one she used to share just with me.

She hasn't brought me chocolate this time, although I imagine the taste and feel of it in my mouth. That glorious sensation. Was I the last human to ever eat chocolate? It's a sad thing to contemplate. And it's that thought, more than the dead and the dying around me, that breaks a sob from my throat.

But there's no time to cry. I struggled my way here to the bridge for a reason. For a purpose. My last act.

**warning** oxygen levels critical **warning**

So I leave this message, in every language of humanity, in binary, in ancient pictograms - everything I can think of. With the hope that, some day, some far off alien civilisation might come across this dead husk of a ship. That they will explore its long forgotten halls, the strange shaped bones of the long dead.

They will find this message. They will know of us. Of our fight. Our struggle.

They will remember us, heed us. The apes who walked out of the ocean, a whole world before them.

And how they destroyed it all.

**warning** oxygen levels depleted **warning**

end