[ WP ] In the wake of the destruction of Mars , our original home , humanity 's leadership decide that if we are to survive , those sent to Earth to perpetuate the species can never know what we became .

Vaporizing the cities was the easy part. In the past, you'd see a story on the news about a derecho or giant scorpion killing ten, twenty, maybe a hundred people. The history books were filled with plagues and asteroid collisions that wiped out thousands in the old days. But when the Big One came, it was hundreds of millions. Everyone knew someone, someone close, who was gone. So vaporizing the cities was easy. They were just tombstones now, commemorating a disaster we did n't predict and still could n't understand. Better to leave future generations in the dark than give them the key to their own doom, they had decreed. So make it as if we were never here, they told us. The ones on Earth would think Mars was only ever empty. They would have their genes changed, burying our flaws. 
 
 Burning the art was harder. When you know it's the last time you'll ever hear them, symphonies that in recent years had come to remind you of commercials for perfume or the hottest new riding-beetle would instead make you think of the way your mother danced at her thirtieth anniversary party in her favorite red dress. You'd think of how your father twirled her above his head in the ancient wedding procession. The last time you ever watch your favorite comedy, you cry endlessly, even though you were always bowled over in laughter when Arnax would get one mating spear caught in the cupboard, the other in the refrigerator. 
 
 The part none of us counted on was the garbage. Graffiti, receipts for flavored brine, old spawn-day greeting cards. Things that had been the easiest to toss away during the height of our grandeur became the purest reminders of our lives, primal calls of'We were here! We were here.'' Nobody would ever know how Jorniog bought herself a singing daffodil, the day she was accepted to college or how Rehbuli gave Cylkif his spare anti-gravity orb, so his parents would n't be mad that he had lost his. But we made it all disappear, the code of all our relationships reduced to red dust. 
 
 On the final day, I had one task left. I walked one last time on the banks of the creek ( now dry ) that had run behind my old house. She and I had walked there together on breezy summer nights, the air lit up with glowing pollen. We had held each other and felt the way people like us had felt when they held each other for untold eons. On the last night - the last night I ever saw her before the Big One - we had walked to our favorite boulder and carved our initials on it, circumscribed in a heart. The proof we loved each other. I had saved that boulder for last. For the last hours before the last shuttle. But even then, it was too hard to sand away. I could n't. I had to leave it there, despite all the rules and consequences. I was last, they would never know. The proof that I had loved her and she had loved me would have to remain. A secret, just for us, and the rest of the universe.
