The Fading Past

Long long ago, before the land was full of people, before water became a luxury, before the life taxes, there were apparently colours in the sky. My maternal granf used to tell me stories of how he would sometimes see circles of blue when the sky opened up. The sky opening up was hard enough to believe but I knew the people living on New Phobos had blue skies so I trusted that earth used to be like that too.

My granf also gave me a book that had been passed down our family from generation to generation. Apart from the words, the book had managed to maintain its form and colour despite its age. However, there were some things in there that didn’t make any sense. From the way the book was illustrated, it seemed as though people used to be able to see satellites in the night sky.

There were also giant hamsters, some with really long tails or pointy ears. The last of the hamsters died out yesterday though. I saw it on the news. Herbert, the Last Hamster, after having escaped his cage, was found dead in a freezer. Nobody knows how he got there. But now humans were the only living things on earth.