Kázmér Kaposvári
In the not-so-distant future in 2100, there is a young man named Joe. He has had a very difficult life so far, but he is used to it, and now he just fears that it will become much worse.
Our world has become more industrialised, as people could not reverse global warming; in the past fifty years we tried to escape to higher grounds and to regions far away from coastal cities. Because of the great pollution and the extreme heat, people moved underground and established new cities there, and this made life possible. There were some expeditions to Mars; some people claimed that this planet was colonisable, but we ran out of time and had no way to complete this idea. We knew how great the problem was, as scientists had already predicted this decades ago. Due to the amount of rubbish people were generating every day, as well as the demand for improved technology, more and more factories were built. We had already used all of the earth’s natural resources, like gas and oil, so we tried to build solar panels, but we were already late for that act too, as our atmosphere didn’t let enough light through, so this idea was also dismissed. During the last decade our lives became miserable as two major societies separated from each other: the wealthy ones and the poor. The poor had to mine in the underground cities for a living and lived in the most disgusting places with scant hope of seeing even a little sunlight in their lives ever again. The wealthy layer had normal flats and most of the things they needed to stay alive in this situation. Yet they were fearful too, as the end of humanity was nearing. They also knew that the earth had nothing like its former ecosystem, as 80% of the animals had gone extinct. This is a crisis which cannot be reversed; now we have to solve this problem on our own, as the blue earth that our parents once knew has died and abandoned us forever. These are the greatest consequences that have already happened, and now people worry about how they will even survive the next day; will they have enough water, food, medicine, or even breathable air?
Joe is living in a nice flat, but his everyday life is getting more and more difficult, and the news from the radio is not promising. Lots of people are suffering from stress. Joe often prays to God and wants to reverse lots of things; most of these are things people did in the past that got us here now. “We are here because of the greed and laziness of the seven billion people on the planet. They could see that it was already turning bad, as they had small signs from Mother Nature, but nowadays I fear that only 2-3 billion people can survive these natural disasters. Now I just hope that in a distant galaxy where people are struggling with this greed and laziness from the beginning, they will be able to see this as the greatest threat of all. This is like when the dinosaurs went extinct, with just a little difference. Now the decision lies in our hands. From this distant dead planet I am sending this message to all in the galaxy, so that you might learn from our mistakes.”