Trial #5002

Amazonian giants standing tall and proud, barks stretching meters into the sky, spreading their arms of lush green among the forest floors below; guardians of the natural world. Or so they once were.

The cacophony of voices that had engulfed them before carried it with it the splashing of pockets of waterfalls, a million different bird calls, a monkey’s shriek and sometimes a puma’s growl. Now, silence.

Once in a while you would hear the cry of a solemn bird among the thick smog of blue and yellow gas, flapping its wings desperately among the toxic sky, but flying lower and lower until it plunges several feet into the dead remains of earth. Gasping its last breath among carcasses of rotten brown.

A pale white hovercraft stands still, its passengers looking out onto the foreign land from behind a clear panel. Some passengers carried expressions of horror on their faces and others disbelief.

The expectation of the ruin caused by the prior generations was far removed from the sight they were faced with. There were old videos shown in history lessons of lively green forests, serene beaches and awe-inspiring architecture.

They bore no resemblance to the deluge of dead foliage below, which were releasing visible whisps of violet gas that snaked their way into the clouds above. Thousands of stories and accounts of older generations were passed down among the travellers in the space arc, that Earth was once a thriving planet and into the 2100’s it inhabited 20 billion people. The travellers from the arc that had embarked on the Earth expedition craft were greeted with something entirely foreign, alien even.

The blades of the hovercraft purred softly as it awoke, ready to propel onwards into the horizon. The aircraft continued on among the heavy toxic fog. The flying white craft was now approaching remnants of a barren metropolitan city. It was adorned with collapsed skyscrapers and mountains of rubble, littered with industrial rods of metal, glass shards, torn cables and concrete.

Millions of feet above, nestled among the black abyss of space and the planet Mars lies the International Earth Resurrection Station, a white sparkling marble among a black sea full of them.

The only thing distinguishing it from the rest were its several protruding towers and its name of course, emanating from a lit-up projection at the top of the building.

A room within the station buzzes with chatter as people gather in a huddle, all eyes fixated on the wide screen projection of a live broadcast feed, showcasing the tour of the dead planet Earth.

In the far corner of the glaring white room, a dishevelled young woman sits at her desk, carrying her head in her hands. She slowly sits up and glances her wrist watch, tapping her feet impatiently against the floor while her fingernails strummed the table in repeated succession. She decided she couldn’t wait any longer for her colleague, stood up and left the noisy room, the vacuumed door wheezing behind her as she left.

As she walked along the glossy white corridor, each step she took lit up green on the panelled floor. A slight chill ran down her spine, evident of the cold air being pumped into the corridor from silver gills in the ceiling. Her white lab coat of sorts flapped around her legs like a cape.

Before she could walk any further, a young man ran up to her, shaking her shoulders with his hands; “All is not lost after all! Trial 5001 has finally proved successful!”

“Impossible! I thought it had no scope.” she retorted.

“No, Mimsy, you need to come and see for yourself!”

He takes her hand and leads her further down the corridor and after a few turns, they reach a sealed white vault.

They each take a suit from the hangers outside the vault and change into them, finally placing glass helmets on their heads.

“Are you sure we’re actually onto something here Maximillian?” the young woman turns to her colleague before rotating the wheel on the door of the vault.

“We don’t need to ready up to start trial 5002. It’s outlived every other seed we’ve trialled before by ten weeks. There’s a real chance it could survive down there.”

The heavy vault door swings back slowly, revealing the rows of shelves from floor to ceiling, stitching a mile from one side of the room to the other, with sealed translucent orbs, each labelled with a number, a grotesque and mangled brown plant residing within among garish neon fog.

The pair continue walking until they find the row of interest and the orb labelled ‘#5001’.

The young woman, Mimsy, peered into the foggy orb, alive with whisps of lilac gas inside. She stared long and hard into the orb and as her eyes danced back and forth until they finally fixated on the object of interest.

Surely enough, behind the thick purple fog, tucked behind the mangled brown heap of wilted blossoms that were once white, a bright green fruit speckled with freckles of beige and brown, no smaller than her thumb, lay inside.

This sight inside was a glimmer of hope that may just change the course of history for the 23rd century.

A pear had grown inside the orb against the toughest conditions that had been mimicked to replicate the current climate on Earth. This was the salvation they were looking for, as they planned for an eventual return to their home. If not for them, then for their future generations.