They knew it was to happen for a very long, long time. But who wants to think of that—-the end of the world. The sun had become sullen and swollen, an ugly crimson giant in the sky. The days for more than a century had only risen in a blood red light. The nights were so cold, the children thought the twinkle of the stars was the shiver of light. The Earth herself—-funny how after so many millennia they still thought of her as their mother—-no longer could nurse her children. All that they had was grown under the domes, everything they drank was purified through metal tubes rather than stone. Only the ceaseless wind and cold dust smoothed her dry body. Some were happy to be leaving, others held their heads low. The lottery had decided who must stay and who should go.

He was one who should go. He was on the ramp standing at the gate. The gate out to the ship outside of the dome. He had never taken a step that far away from home and now he had no choice but to fly out among the stars. He stood. He waited. Nothing anymore seemed to be fair. The lotto had been by chance, none of their data had been fed into the machines, only their names, randomly pulled without any consideration. He was 52. His wife 48. His one child—-that was all they were allowed—-had just entered her 20th year. Her new boyfriend only one year older. He had lived twice as long as either one of them. He would have gladly given her his token. A token of longer life. But it had been etched with his name and DNA code. There was nothing to do—-but go. His wife had already left them. In her dark despair of losing her love, seeing her daughter with no future and the end of the world—-she had opened a hatch and walked out into that inhospitable world. They never found her in the wind and cold. Dust to dust.

He tried to focus his thoughts, to bring them back, here and now. He tried to remember that it was important that any of them survived. Just as he was ready to pull himself through the gate, he turned. His daughter arrived and caught his eye. What else could they say. A thousand times of ‘I love you’ and ‘farewell’ had a heavy gravity of its own. It pulled him down, made it harder to go. But she wasn’t there for that, she let him know right away. She held out a silver cylinder and smiled, “Guard this with your life, understand?”

“What is it?”

“The first dividing cells of your grandchild.”

There was no time to think, no time to thank, no time to say a thing. Not being yet born, it did not count as one of the number allowed on board. There was a last squeeze of their bodies, the hold of love. He let go. It was last call for blast off and he wanted his grandchild to live more than anything in that world , more than anything among those stars and beyond. He cradled that cylinder as they shot away. Boy or girl, he thought of a million names as he left his whole world in search of another.