1
“I’m scared,” she whispered, her voice trembling.
“We've seen the Sun on TV. It will be just like that,” I told her consolingly.
“Just like what?” she countered. “Is a snake on TV like seeing a real snake?”
2
“Despite it all, they all want to live their own life and there's nothing wrong with that,” my father said.
Back then we were baffled when we watched films and read stories from the Pre-Solar Age. We just could not understand why people should invest so much emotion into matters that had nothing to do with survival. Watching a protagonist despair or cry over love was strange beyond words to us. In those days, the imminent threat of death and the desire to escape alive overwhelmed all else. The daily updates on the condition of the Sun and position of the Earth all but devoured our attention and ruled our emotions. This all-consuming focus gradually changed the essence of human psychology and spirituality. Love and all its foibles became mere distractions, just like a quick swig of a drink was for a gambler who cannot take his eyes off the spinning wheel.
It brought to mind an ethical question in the olden days; it had gone, 'You are in a flood and you can only save one person. Do you rescue your father or your son?' In the eyes of our age, that question made absolutely no sense.
It shook every one of us to our core. The anti-matter shells continued to bombard the asteroid. Over and over again, the brilliant, destructive flashes seared the black heavens as if a crazed horde of titanic paparazzi surrounded the Earth and was snapping away with abandon.
3
I could not help but feel that they were being treated too leniently. How could one death be enough? How could one death redress their crimes? How could they pay for the crime of perpetrating an insane hoax that destroyed both the Earth and human culture? They should die a thousand times over!
Five billion years of majestic life now were no more than a passing dream.
4
Every time I hear that song, warmth flows through my stiff, aging body and my dry, old eyes moisten once more. Before my mind's eye the three suns of Alpha Centauri rise in procession, bathing life in their warm light. The solid atmosphere has melted, once again rising as blue sky. Two-thousand-year-old seeds are reborn from the thawed soil, covering the Earth in green. I see my great-grandchildren, a hundred generations removed, laugh and play in these green fields. Clear streams cross the grassland, giving home to small silver fishes… I see Kayoko, running towards me across the green Earth; she is young and beautiful, like an angel…
Oh, Earth, my wandering Earth…