What Could Have Been

It is winter. I honestly don’t remember what year it is. Crazy-- how time seems to stand still, moving through you, while you stay halted in one spot. It has been one hell of a decade, nearly all of the world's population made their way to Mars and cut off complete contact with Earth. There is one town left here that the rest migrated to, maybe a thousand people. Everyone is trying to survive. No capitalism, no money, no instruction, just the remains of what was left. I would call it a cultural reset.

Unfortunately, my family went to Mars, I think of them often. However, I genuinely did not want to leave Earth. Something about leaving the planet I was born on had scared me so much that I was willing to let go of my family. Nonetheless, my mother left me a heart-shaped locket that has stayed around my neck and I will wear until the day I die.

Technology had simply followed its way to Mars. After the former Yellow-Stone super-volcano erupted, everything was shot up into the sky and flown into oblivion. My family flew out just in time. However, I was lucky and stayed in an underground den. I still remember my mother’s voice; pleading, begging, and crying for me to come with them: that I wouldn’t see them again in my life and I would not be able to survive the eruption. It all seemed as if it was a dream, it happened so fast--sudden. Everyone in the world always talked about going to Mars someday; I never expected it to be so soon.

I wonder what they are doing up there. I wonder if they can see any sunsets, or if they look into their ultra-advanced telescopes and check on Earth. I write in my journal for anyone to see someday in the future. Who knows, maybe my handwriting could be some sort of historical artifact. Earth began the process of purging. Water, moss, and growing trees entangled the remains of abandoned buildings.. Earth is very much alive, and it had no intention of letting an explosion stop it from evolving. You see, it is so beyond me that one event has changed everything. That time, everything humans had worked for, skyscrapers and big corporations had obliterated into the sky, dust to dust. On the contrary, it seemed like Earth needed this as a whole. Nature took its course and humans were demanded to abide by its laws.

I get lonely a lot, I never really expected things to turn out like this. I pinch myself, holding the locket in my hands and telling myself this is a nightmare. That one night after I fall asleep around the community fire, I will wake up in the one-bedroom apartment next to the love of my life, in a small town of Wisconsin. (He left too). No matter what, though, I wake up with the sunshine in my eyes, no idea where in the world I am, alone. At the same time, I can sleep at night knowing that they are somewhere safe in this universe. Maybe posting Facebook statuses about Mars, or Instagram posts of the dry, desert-like mountains. Like I said though, watching Earth return to its natural equilibrium was breathtaking. There weren't any humans trying to play God, killing the lungs of the Earth for corporations, taking water supply, and adding garbage that piled into bluffs covering the horizon. The sky cleared after what seemed like 4 years.

In a sense, I felt like the explosion had sent me back into time. That rather moving forward, Earth had decided to start over, to have another chance at becoming the beautiful planet it is. Full of color, animals, landscapes, pure bliss. All of the money didn’t matter, all of the famous people were forgotten. No one cared. In the little town we had, it was all about giving. If you need some food, you can come to my garden and pick some berries. If you need some clothes, you can have my sweater. It was extraordinary watching humans, including myself, fall back into human nature- Humanity. There was no competition, no war, no fighting.. And you think without any sort of leader or structure that we would crumble. Surprising though, we were all just existing. Every individual had their own story, we would sit and listen, we would let them know we care.. Barely anyone had family left on Earth.

One quiet night, I wake up to my locket making a mysterious, rhythmic beeping noise. Confused, I attempted to open it up, but the key was nowhere to be found. Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I light my lantern and decide to journey into the forest.. Where the locket was pulling me to.

The locket had never done this before, I did not know if it was a sign from my mother, or if there was something in the vast wilderness calling me, waiting for me. I thought I would be scared of leaving the town, but with a compass also in hand, I knew I would be able to find my way back.

The sun started to rise, it must have been hours of venturing into the darkness before I saw the slightest bit of daylight. Curiosity filled me, so many questions I had that needed to be answered. Birds sang me good morning, and animals rustled in bushes. I stopped and felt the lush green grass, the warmth of the dew, the fresh air that I had waited so long to breathe in.

The noise continued to get louder, almost to the point of it being unbearable. My head started to ache, my ears were ringing and eventually I was dizzy from the pain. I lay my head down on a patch of grass, covering my head and closing my eyes.

I woke up to the smell of sulfur, extremely disturbed.. Given the fact Earth's atmosphere did not smell like this.. Horrified, I am in a camp. I am on a bed, more-so of a cot, my clothes are covered in dust and the locket that was beeping was really my alarm clock.. Reality sinks in. I was having another dream; a dream of what could have been. A reality where maybe my family made it out of the explosion and was safe, that they weren’t dust floating in the infinite space. My heart sank, my soul shattered every single time I awoke from a deep sleep.

My family, nor the love of my life, did not leave Earth. They did not have enough time, they did not survive. My mother had given me the locket a year before the eruption.. Now, it was all I had left. Mars was nothing special, it was dry, lonely, and ruled by a dictatorship. The people with the most money didn’t need to work, or try to farm on a desert-like planet. They got to sit back and relax; while people who didn’t have money were building skyscrapers and green houses..

“If only”, I think to myself. “If only that dream had been reality, that the locket had brought me back to my mother, that the wet grass was real, the berries and sunshine, the water and animals.”

The locket was my little piece of Earth.