The Whisper and the Rocket

Yuri had his bags already packed and neatly organized by the door of the house.

After a few seconds of silence, he looked at Akari. His had one hand nervously scratching the back of his head.

"We both new this day would come, you know? We've already known for a while" he said with an attitude that almost sounded like he was going out of his way to make things sound lighthearted.

Akari looked at him and then looked off to the side with one hand going behind her back and holding her other arm.

"I know" she said quietly

Akari continued with his attempts to sound light hearted.

"Even before we were dating, when we were just friends.....I came to the school as apart of the colony program. I came all the way from Moscow just for that purpose."

Akari was directly between him and the door. She shifted her weight a little. They both new that he was going to be late to his pre-launch preparations if they lingered in the hallway dorm for the international students who were apart of the colonization program.

She opened her mouth as if she had so many words to say, that they were bottlenecked......they couldn't quite make it out her mouth.

Then she started again.

"I know that. And I knew what you came here to do is pretty important. I mean......to go into space...as our planet is crumbling apart, so that all of us can have a future.....to be apart of the first group to go to that other planet..Spas....Spasaniya 5 or whatever it's called....your helping give the rest of us a brighter future....

Akari blushed and gave a bit of a humble/humorous smile.

"Yup. I guess you could say I'm kind of a hero. You guys better make a statue in my honor while I'm gone. The trip is gonna take about 3 years, so you guys definitely have time....no excuses" he said as he gave a sarcastic laugh.

Akari loved that about him. He had such a goofy and dry sense of humor. But he wasn't serious. He was actually the most humble guy she knew, and that's what she loved about him.

They first met in the their freshman year of high school.

In the year 3047 the climate on earth had reached a point where it was no longer at a level where it could sustain human life for the long term. Whether this was caused by nature or humans themselves was still a unresolved question for the world's scientists.

About 200 years ago strange natural occurrences began to take place. The clouds began to change color. Instead of being white, they turned brownish-black. It would only happen ever so often, but the rate of this happening began to increase. By the year 3040, the clouds were almost always black. The last time the clouds were white was the first day of freshman year, when Akari and Yurii met for the first time.

He couldn't explain it, but the day he met her, he felt like he forgot about the chaos that was happening in the world around him. Maybe that is why he initially gravitated toward her, he thought to himself. He was bred, essentially since birth, to be a part of the space colonization mission that would that would land first on a planet in a different galaxy that had the perfect conditions to support human life.

Since childhood he was forced to do preparations and exercises that were designed to prepare him for this critical mission. That is why he was so serious, and almost miserable. But she was able to reach a side of him that he didn't know had. The side of him that liked to laugh....that loved comedy and to see the humor in life. By senior year, he was known as a jokester the funny guy of the grade, and all of that was thanks to Akari. Her positive attitude, and her smile. That is also why he liked cracking jokes - because he knew it would give him another glimpse of that smile....

But the clouds weren't the only thing in the world that were changing.

About 100 years after the clouds changed, the animals began to change. The mammals stated to shed their fur. They started to grow scales and they became slimy. They started to grow in size and aggression. They stopped eating plants and started attacking humans.

This led to the eradication many of the previous species of animals and led to the emergences of a new species - Smyertons. And these creatures craved human blood and were very difficult to kill. They came out when the clouds would turn black, and now the clouds were black everyday.

Humans were becoming an extinct species themselves.

There was silence in the room again.

This time Akari was the first to break the silence.

"I......I made you this", she said loudly on account of her nervousness. She then extended her right hand in a fist. The very end of a long chain managed to hang just outside the side of her tightly clenched fist.

The humorous smile on his face disappeared. He slowly walked over to her and opened his left hand under hers. She dropped the object into his hand.

It was a small silver heart-shaped locket.

After struggling to get his fingernails in between the two halves, he was finally able to get it open. It was a picture of Yurii and Akari together in class. The class was titled "Introduction to post civilizations." For the class, they were tasked with choosing an ancient civilization, and then give presentation on a ceremony that young people in that culture were likely to take part in.

Yurii liked that course for two reasons. First of all, it was one of the few classes that discussed a topic that wasn't related to space, surviving in space, or planetary colonization. Secondly, in was the only class he shared with Akari. She always made it easy for him to show his funny side, and he was always getting in trouble for making her and the other students laugh. He rarely paid attention to the actual content. He didn't care. He was having fun.

He could only vaguely remember the actual information that he learned (or was supposed to learn) from their joint research project. But from what he could remember, about 1000 years ago, students who from 17-18 would take part in a tight-of-passage ceremony. It would start with a boy asking a girl to accompany him to the ceremony. If she agreed, they would get in their nicest cloths go to their local school in the early evening. There they would dance the traditional dances of the day with each other, and take pictures together.

For the project, Yurii and Akari decided to go all out. With the help of well-preserved video recordings from such a ceremony over 1000 years ago, they were able to recreate the ceremony. It was supposed to be a joke at first, but as time wore on, both of them became very involved with the project. Akira wore a dress worn in ancient Japan, known as a "Kimono" and Yuri wore a garment known as a "suit".

At the end of the ceremony, they both decided to reenact a customary dance. At that point Yuri had gotten serious, and even watched video footage of the movements the boys would follow when dancing with their selected girl. He even went to great lengths, which include dancing in his room at midnight with a sweater used to represent Akira.

It turned out that dancing with a sweater was much more difficult than dancing with a girl in reality. He stepped on Akari's feet on multiple occasions. His attempts to keep of with this ancient music were nothing short of fruitless.

But Akari didn't care. They eventually abandoned their attempts to dance to that ancient music, chose a song that was more slow and temporary. The ceremony would usually take place indoors, but since most facilities were being used to support colonization preparation, they decided everything should take place outside.

It was evening, with few lights. But he felt a strange feeling. He felt that that the clouds were changing back, back to their original color - that maybe in the morning, he would look up, and the clouds would be white, like when he first met Akari. They would be able to see the sun. The Smyerton creatures would all dive into the depths of the sea, and the world would once again be a cradle for human life. The mission to colonize Spasaniya 5 would be cancelled.

They could live on earth. And it would stay like that forever.

But Yuri knew that was all a fantasy. He was going on a mission, to spend years in space, all for the sake of humanity. It was likely that he would never see anyone he knew on earth ever again until he was an old man if he was lucky. At that moment though, he wasn't sad that he wouldn't get to see the rest of his family or friends - he was sad because he knew he wouldn't see her. But that type of thinking was useless and even dangerous to the mission. He suppressed those feelings, and after a few days, he thought he was successful.

Until now. All those feelings came back like a flood.

"We can pretend that we'll see each other again", said Akira with a cracked voice. Unshed tears were collecting in her eyes.

"But we both know that's a lie", she said, shaking her head as the tears fell freely down her face. "If you get on that ship, I'm never going to see you again!" said Akari, shouting loudly and banging on his chest with both her fists. Maybe she thought if there were enough pain in her voice, the mission would be called off. The earth would fix itself, and everything could stay the same forever.

There was a pause. Everything was still. Even her tears stopped flowing.

Isn't there something you want to tell me? , she finally said in a low voice.

Yuri continued to look down, as if some sort of internal struggle were taking place inside him.

He put on the locket and let it hang around his neck. He said nothing, went around her, picked up his bags, and walked out the door.

7 hours later he was at the base of the ship - Kolybel 2. It was 200 meters tall. That metal leviathan was the 2nd cradle and hope for humanity. He was at the door of the ship. He looked up at the sky as if hoping something would fall out of it and destroy the ship - an act of God that would let him stay. But that was too foolish a hope for.

Right as he put his hand on the lever to embark on his first, and likely last space mission, he felt a hand gently tug the back of his shirt.

He stopped in his tracks. He was frozen in place. He knew the feel of the hand to well. Then he heard the words softly whispered:

"Please don't leave.....Please don't do it........."