Back to Earth, The Last Colony

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The Last Colony

The lights of the ship barely reflected on the surface of the hydrocarbon lake overflying, the dense mist towards almost impossible to see through the cabin glass. Erik switched to the infrared mode in order to have a better perspective of where to descend, just a few hours ago it had rained and the frozen ground was so slippery that a small slope could cause the skates of the ship to slide causing some discomfort to their crew.

The entrance to the building complex did not look as if it had been abandoned almost fifteen thousand years ago. Saul approached the gigantic gate, through which huge rock-laden transports would have constantly entered and exited before, to extract fuels that would satisfy the colony's requirements.

After connecting an emergency battery and using decoding software to activate the emergency opening panel, the engines came back to life, emitting a loud screech and lifting the heavy door, to finally fail and leave it suspended halfway through.

-I guess that's as much as we can expect of them, it's practically a miracle that they've worked for at least ten seconds, -said Saul, for the communicator. -The octopod must pass down here, -he said, raising his arms under the door, elevated about three meters above the ground.

Inside the building, after going through a dark tunnel about thirty metres long, they entered a huge enclosed space where they were still parked, forming two neat rows on both sides of the road, ten of the mine transports. Beyond them, on the other side of the place, there was a new tunnel, this time narrower, just enough for the octopod to pass, it was the access to the housing area.

What once must have been a bustling, overcrowded colony was immersed in complete darkness and silence. The octhopod's reflectors could hardly break the absolute lack of light of the gigantic central area of the building, a sort of large square, around which were the more than two hundred housing units once filled with families.

As this building of housings there were other thirty, only in this nucleus of the colony. In its last moments, Titan was able to house about seven hundred thousand people, in a space planned for a little less than half of that number of settlers.

After reactivating the electricity, thanks to a generator based on an antimatter battery, the explorers were able to have a better perspective of the desolate panorama of that colony.

There was no trace of human life in it, with the exception of the buildings and some scarce machinery, everything that could be recycled as fuel or to obtain raw material for the construction of the ark ship, was reused. The rooms were completely empty, as well as all the offices and premises in the commercial area.

After fifteen days reviewing the seven housing nuclei, farms, factories and other facilities of the colony, the result was the same, all furniture, personal item, electronic device or machinery, had disappeared, only empty buildings remained.

The only trace of the old settlers that remained was in the central nucleus, where was the main node of the control network, which monitored all aspects of the operation of the buildings, it found several hundred holographic storage devices, with logs of daily operations.

From these records it could be discovered that an epidemic of a particularly aggressive type of influenza caused the death of almost seventy-five percent of the population and the potential unsustainability of the colony, which was the main incentive to abandon it, and undertake a deranged journey after a planet, which was presumed habitable, in the neighboring Proxima Centauri system.

The last one hundred and thirty thousand humans who inhabited the solar system undertook a journey with no future, to an unknown planet, hoping to find a place to live, less hostile than the one in which they had been doing so for almost two thousand years. To only find death in their journey, without knowing that, in Proxima Centauri, what awaited them was a barren planet, without atmosphere and periodically devastated by the flashes of its star.

Original text of @amart29 Barcelona, Venezuela, June 2019

Other stories from the series Back to Earth

• Viaje a la costa/Trip to the coast
• The Last Colony
• Regreso a Marte/Return to Mars
• El Ojo / The Eye
• Las Ruinas de Polis / The Ruins of Polis
• La persecución/The chasing
• El valle de Aurora/The Aurora´s valley
• El desierto/The desert
• El Rescate/The Rescue
• Goa/Goa
• El Linaje de los Lagos/The Lineage of the Lakes
• La Bóveda/The vault
• Belerofonte/Bellerophon
• Los Goeis/The Goeis
• Rebelión/Rebellion
• EL Lago Salado/Salt Lake
• Prisioneros / Prisoners
• El día Antes del Ataque / The Day Before the Attack
• La Noche del Ataque

Story originally published in my blog of Weku.

I hope you have been to your liking, I am attentive to your comments and comments.