To The Stars

I sat on my windowsill staring out at the stars. The darkness of the night was minimized by the city lights illuminating the hazy could of smog that floated above the buildings. Even though it was hard to forget that our planet had become too toxic to live on that the air outside was unbreathable from centuries of careless polluting the twinkling glow of the stars shining in the distance reminded me that there was still hope. That there was a goal, something tangible that I could, even just as one lonely girl on a big dying planet to make a difference, to save the world.

My fingers traced absentmindedly over the engraving on my necklace. I still remembered the day my father gave me the heart-shaped locket etched with stars. The memory was crystal clear like a perfectly preserved real of film that I could play in my mind over and over again on a loop. It was also the first day I had gone outside. As the quality of life on the surface, specifically the practically poisonous air, had gotten worse after years of companies' mass-producing techniques prioritizing profit over quality of life, cities began to build more and more pedways. The more the population had grown and coastal communities evacuated inland the larger the cities grew. Skyscrapers towered up into the clouds almost high enough to see over the permanent cloud of smog that floated above the skyline. Houses were eradicated for massive apartment buildings as the infrastructure seemed to grow higher and higher towards the stars. Meanwhile, tunnels were being dug deeper and deeper underground. The city had become as vertical as possible, taking up as little space as possible on the highest usable land to avoid the ever-rising sea levels. Above and below ground pedways were the only way I had ever left our apartment building until my father insisted we go outside.

I can still remember my mother pleading with him not to take us. She spluttered about diseases and smoke inhalation from the fires that always seemed to be raging just outside the city. My father bundled my brother and sister and I up thick jackets and oxygen masks. He told my mother we’d be back soon, that this was something important that he had to do. We rode the elevator down to the lobby of our building out the airlock front doors. Going outside was usually reserved for construction workers and building maintenance staff. It was done only by necessity and exposure time was kept as short as possible. My parents had told me stories of how people walked around leisurely and freely when they were younger before the air became unbreathable. Now outside was a ghost town. My father carried my little sister and held my brother’s hand while I trailed slightly behind. I tried to imagine the world my parents had described in stories of their childhood. They talked about towering green trees lining the streets and how there had been fields of lush grass to run around in. Now children played in indoor parks and trees were kept in secure greenhouses with the rest of the plants used to provide oxygen to the city through the vent system. Fields had been replaced with more apartments and the streets were nothing but pavements paths for work vehicles to drive between buildings.

My father led us through quickly through a maze of streets and buildings, when I looked up the skyscrapers truly did look as though they simply disappeared into the clouds. Looking at the sky from the ground for the first time I remember noticing that there was actually a hint of the blue sky my parents had told me about, what was once a bright dreamy cerulean backdrop to their childhoods was still visible in very small quantities above the grey smoke and slightly orange haze of the sky I had become accustomed to. Eventually, we reached the edge of the city. We left the neighborhoods of towering apartments and office buildings and entered into the communities of slightly flooded crumbling houses. Years ago this would have been a typical inner-city neighbourhood, then beachfront properties on the outskirts before becoming the inhabitable wreckage of better times that they were today. Even though on old maps our city was fairly inland, years of continuously rising sea levels had made us into the port city we were now. My father guided us carefully over the graveyard of abandoned homes until the four of us stood on the roof of a house that was otherwise underwater. We looked out at the ocean which I had only seen before a handful of times from the windows on the upper floors of the buildings on the far edge of the city. Fires were raging on the other side of the city where factories continued to mass-produce products we needed, too late now to start to clean up their act so they continued to freely pollute what little neighbouring environment we had left. The ocean itself was probably filled with run-off from the factories and the city but that day as the sun shone through a cloud of smog and faint reflections of beams of light danced on the water, I had hope. Not for us, no I had grown up knowing that our days on this planet were numbered but maybe for the first time I realized that the planet would find a way to be okay without us. The earth had survived for millions of years without humans and maybe millions of years from now it could recover from our impact, it could change and evolve until it was like we were never here. My father had always told us that and I didn’t believe it until he gave his usual speech about the resilience of nature while I got to witness it first hand. The ocean was taking over, taking back what we had stolen and destroyed.

“But what about us?” I asked knowing his usual answer but wanting to hear it again. He indulged me and started to talk about his work with a sense of immediacy I hadn’t heard before.

“There might be another planet for us out there, to get another chance. To do better, be kinder, to use gently and not abuse until it destroys us too. That can be your job,” he said turning to look and my siblings and me, “to save the people before the planet saves itself. You’re going to do amazing things and I have to pave the way for that. My mission leaves tomorrow, I’m going to be part of the crew for the first test runs of the rocket that hopefully will one day take you to the space station that you will use to explore our galaxy. To find us a new home.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Just for a little while, I have an opportunity to help. If I did nothing when I could have done something…I could never forgive myself. So I have to go. To the stars.”

“Can I come?”

“Not yet, but one day if you want to. If you work really hard you can help make a difference. To go and find us a new home. Somewhere beautiful where we can all live a better life.”

I thought about the luscious green world my parents described in their stories and decided then and there that I would do anything to get there. To live in a world where my siblings could play outside and people didn’t have to be afraid of air. Where you could breathe freely and trees grew so high they disappeared into white fluffy clouds that filled the bright blue sky. My father taking us home that day is a bit of a blur. He left that evening as my mother begged him to stay. We watched the rocket launch from the top floor window of our apartment building. The rumble of the engines was so strong it seemed to shake the city even though the launch site was miles away on some unlivable rocky land at the base of the mountains. The rocket shot up with such force and power like an unstoppable beast made of metal. Then suddenly the sleek metallic marvel was replaced by flames, an unstoppable force of nature, the red and orange fire swallowed the rocket before it all exploded into millions of tiny sparks and scraps of metal that rained down like confetti from the sky. The ashes of dreams of innovations, a fruitless attempt to escape a dying world rained onto the city along with all that was left of my father. In just one moment my life had gone up in smoke.

I ran to my bedroom where I found a necklace placed on my pillow. My father’s last gift to me. I held it tightly in my fist, like clinging to it could bring him back and I sobbed until I ran out of tears.

I spent my life trying to fill my father’s shoes while slowly processing his death. He was this incredible man, an aerospace engineer who lead their project to get humans to a new habitable planet. After the setback of their deadly failed rocket launch, the project managed to get back on track. They improved designs until they had a thoroughly tested and functional plan. Then they began recruiting their team. Children across the nation, which was only a handful of small yet highly populated cities like others, were tested. The smartest, fastest, strongest, and most capable children were chosen to enter into the program. From there kids were trained and competed again each other until only the best were selected for the mission. To take the new and improved rocket into orbit, connect with the space station, then launch into the abyss in search of some new planet in the galaxy that humans could call home.

My father knew the risks of his mission, he was willing to die if it meant that humans got to one day thrive again. To get another chance to treat a new planet with kindness rather than exploit its resources. To accept that we were merely borrowing the land not stealing it and all its resources. I was doing everything I can to make his dream come true and somewhere along the way I realized it was my dream too. I wanted to save the world, to make a difference, not just because it was what he wanted me to do and believed I would one day follow in his footsteps but because it was the right thing to do. I spent a lot of time after his death feeling hopeless but working towards something to have a positive impact, to continue his legacy helped me feel closer to him and like my life had a purpose again. I had something to fight for and a reason to keep going.

Now, after years of training and intensely competing against the best kids in the country, somehow I had been chosen for the mission. I had worked my whole life for this moment where I got to step onto the rocket and know that I was making him proud. The words engraved on the necklace he’d given me all those years ago were finally coming true. I held the golden heart-shaped locket in my hand. I knew the picture of our family my father put inside it by heart, I’d memorized every detail of our smiling faces. Staring out the window I ran my fingers over the words he’d engraved on the front of the locket. To the stars.

“I’m coming Dad.”