When the World Died.

I wrote this today, just off the cuff, had an idea and I ran with it. It's kinda choppy, but that's what I wanted. Let me know what you think!

I was there when the world died. We knew it was coming. We had years to prepare, to ready our defenses, to offer gifts of peace. And we did. Oh, did we ever. They took their time, and our factories went into overdrive. Fighter jets, ICBMs, detection satellites, research and development, they all moved to the top of everyone’s budget. The job shortage and economic recession of my homeland disappeared almost overnight. Special teams of diplomats and politicians were put together and dispatched on journeys that would take months, offering the hand of peace to those from beyond the sky. Those who could afford it bought or built shelters that offered no protection in the end.  After they completed their spacegate, they began strip mining every planet in the system. We watched for a year as Pluto shrank into nothing. Next went Neptune. They didn’t seem to have much use for Saturn or Jupiter, but they made sure to catch all the moons on their march toward our Sun. My father was a scientist of some importance, and he managed to secure Board for our family on one of the lifeboats. A joint effort between Northrop Grumman and LeTourneau Industries, they were enormous steel Arks, constructed in high orbit above the Earth. Twelve were completed by the time they reached Earth. Our envoys of peace failed. We don’t know how, we don’t know why. Only that they did. I worked as a welder on the third Ark from the time I was fourteen. We called it Moses, in hopes that it would carry us to a new home, far from these implacable, faceless foes. Aeronautics and Space Travel were not the only industries to take flight, as it were, however. We managed to shoot down and capture a number of their survey craft, and we adapted their knowledge into our own as quickly as we unraveled it. We created AI, adapted mining tools to create energy based weapons and shield technology; but it was for nothing. We could not save our home. They were simply too many. I remember the Mass Driver Riots- thousands gathered at the bases of the mass drivers, giant cannons used to propel materials into space for the Arks. They had not managed to win a berth through the Lottery, and were attempting to force their way onto the Arks. My country managed to quell the Riots with minimal force, but the networks were quick to broadcast images of other nation’s soldiers firing into the crowds, silencing all. We took what and who we could, but in the end, there was no way to save everyone or everything. Moses was still within range to get the signals when the first ships landed, we saw the footage of the resistance, but in the end, everything went silent. Noah and Midgard, two of the other Arks, were destroyed because they waited too long- What once was hope became a coffin. It has been thirty-nine years since we left the edge of our solar system, since I last saw the light of Sol. We have been flying through space, living our lives, and every member of this crew dreams of the day we will find a new planet to colonize. Some lives have ended, and some have begun. This is the legacy of the human race- We Survive.