Life On Earth...

She was old enough that she had watched the last ships leave. 

Her father had taken her to the top of an office building; close enough to see the lift off, far enough away to not get caught in the crowds trying to push their way onto the last shuttles. 

He knew a few things for sure, one was that they were never going to let people like them on the shuttles. Another was that the people who were protecting the shuttle goers from the ever growing crowds were going to be left behind. And when the crowds realized that the last shuttle was gone, and that they had been left to die, they would take their anger out on those guards. 

He had wanted her to see what happened. To fully understand what they were now dealing with. It might have seemed harsh, or inappropriate for a child, but she was still alive and many of her friends weren't. 

"Those men thought that they were in control. They thought that they had power. But once those ships left the power went with them."

They had packed up their things and gone to their house in the mountains and she had thought about those men and that crowd a lot. Why hadn't they realized what her father had? That the people on the ground outnumbered them and would turn on them. Fear wouldn't work anymore to control them because they believed they were already dead. There was nothing left to fear. 

The people who had poisoned the planet had left the rest of them to die with it. 

It was ugly for a very long time. Not just the air and the water. Not just the drowning cities. But the people. Desperate people who believed they were already dead so nothing they did mattered. 

But eventually the people who were left realized they weren't dead. That life had gone on. And not only that but other things were changing as well. 

Once the last ships left, once the violence played itself out, once the world settled down again, well, the world settled down again. Reshaped, for sure, but settled. Towns grew up in new places. Spaces where the land was still healthy. Where things still grew. Where the water could be purified and used. Trading zones opened between towns. I have beans, you have cotton. I have tomatoes, you have the ability to rewire my solar panel. Everything was done by trade. She remembered when money was used for more than decoration or toilet paper (depending on the house) but now goods and services were all that mattered. Money was a difficult thing to explain to those that had been born after the last ships left.

She had lived with her father in the mountains until he had passed, then she had lived there on her own. She visited the towns to trade goods and to talk to people when the craving for company got too great to ignore, but she mainly stayed on her own. 

There had been times early on that they had had to protect their home from the roving bands of the already dead. And then a few more times from those that had decided to live. But now people mostly left her alone. And when they didn't, they soon learned that they should have. 

She sat on her porch eating an apple from her orchard. The sweet juice making her think she would make a pie later. And she wondered about the people on the shuttles. The ones who had poisoned them and then left them to die. The ones who had hired guards to make sure nobody could leave but them. How did they fare? 

When they landed on Saturn's moon. When they got to the newly built colony and it was just them, those that had spent every one of their days before they left Earth depending on others to take care of them. To cook their meals. To water their lawns. To clean their houses. To shoot anyone who dared to try and escape a dying planet. What happened to them? 

She imagined it had been ugly.