[ WP ] An invading force as attacked and taken over Earth . In disgrace , the last survivors are allowed to leave the planet in search of life elsewhere . You are one of these survivors . Describe the scene as you leave your home planet .

It had been a good century. Almost atonement for the nigh apocalyptic damage we ’ d wrecked upon the Earth in the three hundred years following the industrial revolution. 
 
 But, once we ’ d found ourselves on the precipice, we changed. We pulled back from our own destruction. Our society learned to use less and use smarter. We took the amazing progress we ’ d made chasing better… toys… and put that knowledge to work fixing the deep wounds we ’ d cut into our world. 
 
 The all-encompassing smog was throttled into submission. The skies cleared and people came out to see the stars for the first time in half a century. 
 
 The forests began to grow, renewed. Not just those ridiculously simplistic tree farms, but real, honest to God forests. 
 
 The lakes and streams were cleansed. No longer were they filled with putrid slime. They were filled with fish and life and water so pure you could drink from any river in the world. 
 
 Even the oceans were coaxed back to life from the stagnant, salty pools they ’ d become. Decades of work by the brightest minds for a generation were poured into those depths, which even now are still blossoming with life. 
 
 I remember the first time I saw wide open grass fields. I was ten and I ’ d never seen anything like it before. The stars had been a wonder, but those green fields had been tangible. Something I could grab with my hands and pull up by the root from that dark, rich, life giving soil. I ’ d known right then that we were truly building an Eden for ourselves, a paradise for all to share. 
 
 I ’ m standing in that same field now. It ’ s as barren and dead as it was in the dark times. 
 One hundred years of our work, one hundred years of the greatest struggle and triumph humanity had ever engaged in, destroyed in five. 
 
 They came without warning. They did not negotiate. They didn ’ t even attempt communication of any kind as far as I ’ m aware. They just fell from the sky, their thousand kilometer forms falling across mountain and valley and city alike. Their great maws opened wide as they began to devour the land, the very mass of the Earth. 
 
 They ’ re called Von Neumann machines and they are unsympathetic, unthinking tools let loose on the galaxy by creators who are equally so. 
 
 As I stand here, on this vast plain, awaiting the launch of our arks, I can ’ t help but feel a great irony. For us to have existed here for so long unmolested, to have behaved exactly as these machines almost to the point of our own destruction, and then to have miraculously changed our nature only to crushed under the ultimate expression of our greatest vice, is just… too cruel to be coincidence. 
 
 With that parting thought, we will leave our murdered world. We will leave with questions etched into our race ’ s soul. And we will leave with the focused intent of having them answered. 

