AT 1.3

I sat in silence, staring at the note in my book, taped just across from the inside cover, where Pooh Bear and Christopher Robin walked off into the infinite, the unknown. Like me, no?

The rest of the transfer passes rather uneventfully. There are a few outbursts from the other passengers, mostly crying as they realize, finally, the enormity of what they are undertaking. Many, in their fits of despair, rush back to the window to get a last glimpse of our Mother Earth. I am not one of them.

AT 1.2

I have been selected. The correspondence from the closest transfer point arrived exactly one month ago. We opened it around the bonfire. I should have been nervous, I think. Or excited. But all I could think, sitting with the people who have influenced my life the most, people whose existence in my life from here on out, diverged in two directions depending on the contents of the letter, was “Bloody Nora, it’s cold.”

AT 1.1

An Open Letter to the People of Earth from the Commune of Citadel

At long last, it has been done. We have pushed and stretched and shredded our planet to ruin. And unlike in the past, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We did this. We built and built without regard, then sat back and idly watched as everyone—EVERYONE—with even some semblance of sense prophesized, warned us, pleaded with us to stop. Now the day they spoke of is here. We must abandon our Mother Earth, our beautiful Gaia.