Chapter 3
"It will destroy my world."
This can't be happening.
Calee sat on her Rock. Not the Rock. No, not the one that was hurling towards them at thousands of miles an hour. This was her Thinking Rock. Large enough for a picnic blanket, it was relatively flat and protruded into a quiet stream. Green surrounded her everywhere. It was her special place, where she could study, read, or just think. Never, never before had she cried at her Rock.
It wasn't even crying, not in the usual sense. People shot with the kind of grief she was experiencing cried with sobs that wracked their body. People shook when they cried. Calee knew this because she remembered people crying. She remembered her father staring at her and then crying. She remembered her mother's death. No, Calee cried and didn't move. Tears slipped down her cheeks and she didn't move to wipe them off. She simply stared at all of the life surrounding her and knew that it would be gone in a week.
So many other people will die. Billions of lives, and they're all be gone ... Trillions of animals, dolphins and hamsters and bumble bees and kangaroos, they'll all be ... What right did she have to survive? Humanity, in its last, knee-jerk reaction to survive, had thrown together the Mayflower Project. Calee understood most of the technology behind the Project, and she knew how farfetched the odds were that the Mayflower would land on a livable planet.
And only 80 denizens of Earth would survive. Why should she be one of them? She wasn't anyone important or special. Her father had just happened to find the right information, and then she had a berth. But her father didn't. She was going to lose another parent. And Earth, her own planet!
"Not if I can help it," she whispered to herself. She looked down at the two packets of seeds she held in her hand. Anything larger wouldn't be allowed on the ship, she knew. But a packet of apple seeds and one of forget-me-nots, snuggled in her back pockets--no one would find them. But seeds was not the only thing she could take with her.
Around her neck, she wore a set of small data chips on a black string. Taking one of the chips out, she placed it into the recording device on her link. After staring at it a long moment, she took a deep breath and pressed RECORD. "This is a story of Earth," she started. "While I will never be able to get down the entire majesty of Earth, I will tell as much as I can. This is so, if everyone dies, whoever finds us will know of our planet. I'll describe everything I remember, everything I've learned, everything I've heard of. I'll tell you of humanity's history. But know this--I will barely scrape the surface of this planet. The Rock is coming, and it will destroy ..." she trailed off, her voice choking off. "It will destroy my world." Then, after a pause, she began.
