You made the cut and are safely on Mars in your domicile, week 1, staring at the red landscape. On Earth, the certainty of Doomsday made you feel lucky to make the draw, yet Earth is still there. You can’t return home. What's ahead of you? Fiction or non-fiction, poetry or Prose.

d1ss0c14te

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Renovations

It’s been twenty-four months since the lottery. It’s been twenty-four months since the destruction of Tokyo. And it’s been twenty-four months since I last saw you.

You were left behind. I made the cut. You didn’t.

We all saw it coming. The threat of nuclear fallout had been looming over us for decades. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. We all know how that story goes. Nuclear weapons were suddenly in the public eye, and military groups scrambled to perfect them.

After creating the world’s most powerful nuclear bomb, years before we were born, a group known as the Renovators announced their intentions: to eradicate the world’s largest cities. Soon, they would rebuild the world how it was intended to be.

Filtered. Uncontaminated. Pure.

Those who just wanted to save their hides fled to designated regions of the world, where the Renovators put them to work. For people with a conscience, there was nowhere to go.

They started with Beijing. The city was dying anyway- overpopulation had taken a toll. Plague, famine, pollution. It was only a matter of time. The bomb put them out of their misery, really.

Delhi was a shame. Full of millionaires and billionaires, their legacies obliterated in the blink of an eye. Not to mention the immense casualties.

Cairo shook everyone. It was before we were born, but my grandfather told me about the day he heard the news. They say there used to be pyramids, built thousands of years ago. Some thought they were built by aliens, but I know better. There are no aliens in space. There’s nothing but a hollow emptiness that sucks your soul out in its gaping maw.

Mumbai was destroyed the year we were born. Would that be thirty years ago already? I’ve lost track of time. It seems to pass differently up here, suspended among the stars and dust and broken dreams.

I remember the destruction of São Paulo. They broadcast it live on the screens, straight into our homes. It was exhilarating in a horrifying sort of way until they showed the bodies. Strewn about, twisted, charred; they were no longer recognizable as human. I’d spent the better half of the evening losing my dinner over the bathroom toilet.

Shanghai was destroyed the following summer. Bombings were getting closer and closer together, the stakes were growing higher, but the news no longer surprised us. Another city reduced to rubble, another memorial to the millions of people murdered. They burned down the memorials anyway.

Mexico City came and went in the blink of an eye. Hardly got any news coverage. Partially because the Dictator couldn’t give less of a shit about them, but partially because of how close it was- they didn’t want to risk panic. The nukes were approaching, and it would only be a moment before they came to the United States.

Then New York City. We’d all expected it, but it didn’t make it any less terrifying. Dropped the bombs straight on Times Square. It was a beautiful place, full of lights and life and buildings that scraped against the sky itself. But it doesn’t look like that anymore. I remember hunkering down in the basement with you as we listened to the transistor radio- a relic, really. It was the first time I’d felt the panic. They were so close, and there was nothing we could do about it.

Tokyo was the last to fall. Or so we thought. Slowly, but surely, the Renovators’ presence faded into the background. We knew we didn’t have long before they returned with a stronger plan. For those of us who refused to pledge our allegiance, Earth wasn’t safe anymore.

So as the Renovators schemed, we turned our sights to the stars.

It was meant to be a secret, but word got out before long. Rumblings and mutterings of a trip to space spread, rumors of a lottery that would save us all. So, naturally, when the project was announced, I entered my name.

I didn’t expect to win. Out of the billions of people that remained, why should my name be chosen? But it was.

And yours wasn’t.

I tried to reason with them. Tried to barter to bring you along. But they said no, and you said no. Live, you said. And keep on living. For me.

Twenty-four months ago, they came to our house. I pulled you close and breathed your floral scent. Tears wet my shirt and your shirt and for but a moment, there were no boundaries between us, nothing holding us back, just two bodies intertwined for what would be the last time.

And then I left you.

Twenty-one months ago, after three months of grueling training, I boarded one of the seven ships that would carry us into space. It was to be a staggered takeoff, with one week in between each launch, and I was on the first ship to leave. There were enough provisions for five people on each ship. Five people in seven ships, one on each of seven continents. Thirty-five people to survive.

Billions to die.

They called it a lottery, but it wasn’t. They’d picked us for a reason. We were the healthy ones, the mentally sound ones, the young ones, the spry ones, the clever ones. Left behind were the weak ones, the elderly ones, the disabled ones, the ill ones, the injured ones, the children, the parents, and the rest of the world.

And we were going to create a new life. A new generation. A new world. Mars awaited us, ready to be shaped by human touch.

I was ready.

The crew was interesting, to say the least. We’d grown close over the two-year journey; as close as you could grow when you spoke different languages. But they never could have replaced you.

My first crewmate Harin was from Greenland, and they’d left their life as a pharmaceutical tech behind. They’d lived alone, with only their dog for company. They thought they were inconspicuous, but I often caught them with tears in their eyes whenever they mentioned that dog. I never worked up the courage to ask what had become of it.

Alejandra had lived in Mexico City as a child, but her parents had smuggled her into the United States before their home was destroyed. Her mother had escaped with her, but her father had stayed behind in the city. He died along with it. She’d had to say goodbye to her mother before leaving on the trip.

Yaniel was from Cuba, a country not unfamiliar with nuclear weapons. Born into poverty, he and his younger brother had lived on the streets. He often wondered aloud how his brother was doing without him.

Last but not least, Maddox was Canadian, and she’d been one of the engineers who worked on both the biosphere and the ships. The scientists had sent one up with each of us. She was a truly brilliant mind, and the only one keeping us sane.

God, it was a horrid trip. Pissing in bags and then drinking it, eating nothing but dehydrated dust that they called food, cramped in tight quarters in a giant metal bullet that split through the sky. Spending twenty-one months with four other people in a room the size of a broom closet is the definition of hell.

But we were the strong ones. We could survive anything.

Right?

Hours turned into days turned into weeks turned into months turned into nearly two years before we’d entered Mars’s atmosphere.

And now it’s been one week since we landed on Mars. It’s been one week since I stepped foot into the biodome. It’s been one week since they threw me into this room.

There are no windows. Only a solid titanium door, locked from the outside. Me. My suit. The chair. The sounds of my breath. The screen. The clock.

And the button.

It’s mounted to the wall in front of where I’m strapped into the chair. Small, blue, inconspicuous.

They’ve explained to me over and over what the button will do.

My companions’ screams tear through the insulated walls. That means they haven’t given in either. Yet.

But it’s over.

Because while the Renovators were silent, they’d been devising a plan.

A plan to go to Mars.

A plan to cultivate the best specimens from Earth, to test them, to grow and repopulate, and eventually take us back when the weaklings on Earth were gone.

And we had fallen for it.

Maddox comes into my room sometimes. She shows me your battered face upon the screen. Sometimes you say my name in your fevered sleep. It leaves a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. Or maybe that’s just the blood.

They’re killing you.

She says I have a choice. If I push the button, they’ll spare you. They’ll bring you here.

If I push the button, the bombs go off.

The bombs will go off anyway, she says. Points at the clock on the wall. It’s steadily ticking down. Now, it reads 00:34:02. Thirty-four minutes until the bombs detonate. Thirty-four minutes until the entirety of Earth is destroyed.