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"Do you ever wonder how this all came to be?"

"I can't say I've thought about it that much to be honest with you, why?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think about all those people who inhabited Earth, how they slowly drained its life source until there was nothing left." James breathed a heavy sigh as he gazed into the surrounding darkness, broken up by the twinkling lights of the stars. Some were so close he could reach out and touch them if he dared, others were so far away he could only dream of seeing them up close. "I wonder if they would have treated the Earth better if they knew that this would be the outcome."

"It's not that bad James, it could be a lot worse," Regulus reached out to clasp James' hand with his own. "Our ancestors could have been obliterated by an asteroid, they could have suffered a long and pretty nasty death. Instead they fled and here we are. Realistically, when you think about it, living amongst the stars is a whole deal better than living on a decimated planet."

"I'm not saying I hate it or anything. I love being surrounded by the galaxy. I just wonder if things would have been different if our ancestors had known what the future held for them."

The pair silently stared out into the continuous darkness. Both of them had grown up on Apollo 77, a small space station that monitored the temperamental oxygen reservoir on Mars. It comfortably held 50 families within its confines, and the surrounding outposts held a few more. It was the smallest of the stations that had become inhabited when Earth died and the population fled into the stars (or those who were rich enough at least).

James had always lived in the main station, growing up inside the flagship building where his parents ran the medical centre and ensured the constant survival of every inhabitant. Regulus, on the other hand, had been born and raised in the furthest outpost. It was the promise of learning from James' parents that prompted him to make the move to the main station, some time after his sixteenth birthday. Ever since his brother passed away when they were younger, he had dedicated his life to healing others.

They rarely thought about what their lives could have been if they were born before Earth's death. Living on Mars, surrounded by space, pockets of stars and the orbiting planets they could only dream of visiting; it was all they had ever known. Regulus was right, it wasn't a hard life to live. On rare occasions, the thoughts creeped into their minds, niggling away at their conscience; how many people had died for them to live the lives they did? How many planets had been depleted of their life force, so that the human race could continue existing?

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