[ WP ] You re one of a small group of people who have started colonizing Mars , waking up one morning you are unable to contact Earth and realize that it has been destroyed by a major meteor impact .

The coffee synthesizer was malfunctioning again. There was a distinctive cinnamon taste to my morning flavored drink. Up here it was the routines that kept you sane. Thousands of people crammed inside a settlement, all of us a hair breadth's away from snapping. The glory and romance of space travel were dead. Gone were the days of rock hopping among the asteroids, looking for a big score. No longer did a solar flare ruin your instruments and force you to pilot blind. Progress had tamed the last frontier. The wildness of space was gone. Death did not lurk around the corner, fortunes were not waiting to be made. It was a job the same as any other now. 
 
 Two more months and I could retire, spend my days on my small farm in Colorado. Maybe I'd be one of those old timers who sat around watching the ship's take off at the Denver space port. I doubted it though. The ships were entirely automated now. The fun had gone out of it. Soon this colony would be self sufficient and some time after I was fertillizing Colorado soil Mars itself would be habitable. 
 
 I wandered into the communication room. Sit in your chair all day and try not to fall asleep. Apparently Amanda had done just that. I felt sorry for the kid. She had grew up on the romantic stories of space, studied hard at school, attended MIT and then found out that watching paint dry was more fun. 
 
 I shook her awake and she blinked up at me, dumbfounded. A cute kid, in a wholesome Texas church girl kind of way. If I were thirty years younger... 
 
'Sean.' She gasped, straightening up and for a moment her breasts were strained tight against her white shirt. Maybe I was n't so old yet. 
 
'Relax kid,' I laughed,'The old woman is still asleep. The whole galaxy is asleep. And the synthesizer is broke. Drink this shit.' I pressed the cup into her hands and collapsed into the chair beside her. A brief glance at the screen and I was more awake than if I'd been injecting java into my veins. 
 
 Earth was silent. Everything was silent. I bought up the calender. The next solar flare was days away. 
 
'What happened?' I snapped. 
 
 She shrugged, her hands still cupped around the drink I gave her,'They went silent about four hours ago. An unexpected solar flare, I guess.' 
 
 Deep in my belly my instincts were stirring. An old space hand gets a feel for certain things. He can always tell which way Earth is, when a ship is leaking air, and when a solar flare is sneaking up behind him to kick him in the ass. 
 
'Its no good trying to raise them. I already tried.' 
 
'This is n't a solar flare.' I muttered. 
 
'Sure its textbook.' 
 
'It ai n't.' I started bring up last nights logs. 
 
'Ok kid, lets consider this a training exercise. Get me someone to talk to. Whether its the moon or whether its a mining colony.' 
 
 The gnawing feeling inside my belly was growing. I started skimming over the data. 
 
'I ca n't get anyone.' She cried, panicked. 
 
'Wake the old lady. Tell her to get down here. And wake up Hodgins.' 
 
 I slumped back in my chair and started at the screen. Earth was gone. 
 
 __________________________________________ 
 
'Sean, come in here a moment.' I regarded the wily doctor, Murray, with apprehension. Something about him rubbed me the wrong way. I sighed and entered the room to find him and Hodgins, our chief physicist along with Greg Elkins who pretty much ran the show. The old lady might sign the checks but Elkins made it all work. Even in the bland white clothes of United he looked like an accountant. 
 
'What is this, a mutiny?' I joked, taking a seat while everyone else stood. 
 
'Something like that.' Elkins sighed,'You're the oldest man on Mars.' 
 
'Maybe.' 
 
'Definitely.' He replied,'I've seen your record. You've spent more time in space than on Earth. In fact, nearly twice as much.' 
 
'Over twice as much.' I murmured,'And the first quarter of that was zero G all the way.' 
 
'You were the man on duty when contact was lost with Earth.' 
 
'I figured it out, yes.' I shrugged. No need to get Amanda in trouble. 
 
'Have you any idea what has happened?' Hodgins asked. He stared at me with his hawklike eyes, twisting his hands together nervously. 
 
'You're the genius. You tell me.' I wanted to hedge my bets. If I were wrong I'd be consider a lunatic and instead of a nice farm I'd spend my retirement with rubber walls. 
 
'I'll come out and say it then.' Hodgins snapped,'Earth is destroyed.' 
 
 I nodded,'I guessed. Do you know by what?' 
 
'As far as I can tell it was a meteor.' 
 
'How'd we fail to catch that?' 
 
'It was travelling near the speed of light.' 
 
 I started trying to do the math on how much warning Earth would have received if our Ganymede base had caught it. I stopped myself as I realized that even if they had caught it and sent a warning Earth would have had a few hours at best. A few hours until the end of the world. What do you do? Sit and pray? Get drunk? Rape a dog? For a moment I was back inside my suit, watching the space ship drift away as Rodgers succumbed to a heart attack. Twenty minutes of air. Twenty minutes until death. I refocused to Elkins blathering on and waved him silent. 
 
'Cut to the chase, where's the old lady.' 
 
'She's had a breakdown.' It was the first time Murray had spoken since he'd invited me in,'I've got her sedated.' 
 
'So Elkins is next in command, right?' 
 
'I do n't want it.' Elkins declared,'And I ca n't handle it. Running this colony is easy, that's why they sent us here. We're all not great or we'd have the glamorous jobs.' He sniffed and then stared imploringly at me,'I want you, we want you, to take over.' 
 
'Me?' 
 
'You're experienced, you've been in tight situations.' I remembered the time I had been trapped inside a collapsed mine as an asteroid started to spin on three axis at once. Tight did n't begin to cover it. 
 
'We need a leader.' Hodgins snapped. 
 
'And I'm all you got.' 
 
'So you accept?' 
 
 How could I not? 
 
 ____________________________________ 
 
 
 I stared into the computer screen. Every person on Mars was watching me. 
 
'So that's it.' I finished,'Earth is gone and we're what's left of humanity. I can understand your emotions. I felt them myself. Panic, despair, fear. But we're going to move on. Earth is gone but the human race lives on and we're going to expand beyond the stars. In this time I ask you to focus on the future and comfort each other while we move forward. There's a lot of work to be done, let's get through it.' 
 
 I cut them off and turned to the crowd inside my office. 
 
'Well, Amanda?' 
 
'I'm still waiting for some mining operations and private stations to get back to me but all in all There are a total of seven thousand, eight hundred and fourteen people left in all of the universe.' 
 
'Thanks.' I smiled reassuringly at her. She was young and she seemed to be taking it better than us older folk. Hodgins was a wreck, Murray ought to be sedated alongside the old woman and Elkins had not slept in days. I looked at him and he cleared his throat and spoke. 
 
'I've gone over the personnel records. We have two hundred and eighty six women. Seven hundred and eighty potential breeding-' 
 
 I cleared my throat as Amanda blushed. 
 
'er, mothers.' Elkins continued,'Though there is nothing in most of their records about fertility so the number is obviously less.' 
 
'Good. Not that we need a bunch of babies now. That will come later. Anyway, get whoever knows the most about genetics to start looking over suitable pairings. We ca n't afford unhealthy babies and we ca n't afford to pass on recessive genes if it can be helped.' 
 
'Breed us like cattle?' Amanda gasped. 
 
'Most of us are n't the cream of the crop, Amanda.' I replied,'Sooner or later humanity is going to need healthy babies to continue. But that is a long way down the track and the last thing I asked you to look at, Greg.' 
 
'Oh supplies.' He murmured. In the middle of a crisis the idiot was planning for the future instead of tomorrow. 
 
'We have enough to last us two years at most, with strict rationing.' 
 
'Implement it then.' I ordered. 
 
'Hodgins you and every scientist has two years to make us self sufficient.' 
 
'But our best estimates are at least five years.' He whined. 
 
'Fuck it. We'll make it if I have to cull every useless eater myself.' I growled. Starting with myself. Likely those other people left elsewhere in the galaxy had even less supplies. Without Earth to resupply us we had only a limited amount of time to either make it or for the human race to go extinct. Keeping everyone busy would keep their minds off it. Hopefully Amanda would be offended enough to spread that little bit about selective breeding. It would get them thinking about the future, keep them focusing too much on today. Let them believe I thought we actually a chance. 
 

