Earth II

 

 

As the ominous alarm blared, flashing red lights illuminated the dimly lit room and panic ensued among the crowd. Quiet muttering turned into blood curdling screams of fear and unintelligible shouts of anxiety. Adrenaline pumped through my legs as I grabbed my father by his hand, struggling to push through the crowd in search of the ship. We were inside the hall closest to the loading dock, but getting ahead of several thousand  people rushing to board appeared insurmountable.

 

We hurried towards a man with bright orange light sticks who was guiding the crowd in the direction of the ship's boarding gates. With each step, my heart beat faster and hope grew deeper in my mind. Maybe we'd survive after all.

 

Past the hallway, the ship was visibly overcrowded, with people trying to climb the barricades erected in front of the loading gates. This vessel was supposed to contain the last 98 million people left on Earth before the meteor strikes. We had been waiting to be boarded for several weeks, struggling to survive like anxious termites at the hands of an exterminator.

 

Only a few hundred feet away from the ship, there was a beautiful crystalline flower, supposedly made of rare elements from Titan's shards. Over the past year, meteor showers had become more common as the gigantic comet neared Earth, with large crystals landing on different sites all over the world. It was a common pastime for my friends and I to hunt for these crystals around our city before the government declared them as extremely dangerous, being composed of volatile minerals from unidentifiable sources.

 

The beautiful flower opened its buds and a blinding light flashed throughout the entire bay, causing me to fall to the cold floor. Little did we know that the meteor itself was only a distraction from the true weapon of the apocalypse. We had been worrying about the impact of Earth's collision with the gargantuan rock while overlooking the enigma behind the beauty of the crystalline flowers. Too out of reach of our human understanding, God's blinding light wiped the entire planet of all its beautiful creatures that have existed for millions of years. 

 

With only a few hundred feet to go, the ship began to lift off as soon as the light flashed. But it was too late; gut wrenching sounds of creaking metal boomed across the dock while wild hopeless screams emanated from people falling out of the ship. Bodies were hurled across the hall by a mysterious overpowering force, lifting us off the ground. I felt my body being torn apart as my father desperately called my name off in the distance. He sounded so far away. 

 

I had been hoping to reunite with my friends once my father and I boarded the ship; they were the reason I was able to get through my junior year of university. At the brink of dropping out due to lack of funds and the death of my mother, these people grew closer to me and supported me while I struggled to convince myself that graduating would make my late mother proud. A circle of friends had become my safe haven and now we were forever separated.

 

The dead bodies falling down reminded me of rain and screaming thunder, from which Noah tried to save Earth's creatures. However, this time, our ark was struck down by God's condemnation, like the Tower of Babel. Its wings burned up in flames, the same ones that punish man's pride within the circles of hell.

 

The sky was especially clear that night, with beautiful swirls of the Milky Way galaxy and countless stars decorating the heavens on what would be my last night in this world. I surrendered, prayed and accepted my death. "In the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit..." Life left my body as the world slowly faded into darkness.

 

There was peace in that silence.  

 

I awoke as a spirit traveling along a road in an eerily familiar alien world. The sun shone brightly, highlighting large structures being built in the distance. The warm ambience reminded me of the early days of my childhood  and comforted my anxious wondering of where on Earth I could be. 

 

A soft voice from above told me, "This is the new Earth, rebuilt for the purpose of nature to propagate the lands once again." It was as if the seemingly omnipresent voice was giving me a tour of my new home. The road was empty, but I continued to walk without any physical means of transportation. As I "floated" by, a scaffolding surrounding colossal buildings was visible in the middle of a tremendous forest. A rhinoceros-like creature stepped out from the vegetation, its size bigger than a house.

            This new Earth seemed like a paradise, a comfortable home for all creatures without humans playing God and destroying the harmonious coexistence to feed their greed. Nature and what seemed like human creations came together in this distant world that felt so close to home. The only difference was--there were no humans here.