As I look up at the night sky I see home – Earth.
I miss home.
I remember earth, all of the bugs, the cockroaches, the fly’s, but due to high housing costs and lack of property’s for rent, many were driven out to find new planet’s like Mars.
Humans landed on Mars and started work on terraforming it, but there were many challenges like internet.
Light speed was thought to be the end all be all, but one guy—and I still don’t understand how—found a way to move faster than the speed of light through some quantum physics I still don’t understand.
I mean, I never really understood physics fully, but anyways, people have conquered space and I am living on Mars.
I look at a pale blue dot I call home, then go inside for the night.
I hop on my computer and look start reading some forum posts about the past on a website called Internet Archive.
It has music, movies, books, and even old websites.
Recently they have been collecting old hard drives looking for old and lost media, and recently a mysterious photo was posted to the forums by a user called ChronoExplorer_X.
“Hey Guys, I found this photo while looking through someone’s old hard drive dumps.
It seems to be a group of people hanging out at Washington Park long, long ago.
The photo is dated 2024, so it’s almost 40 years old, and I am interested in finding the individual’s in the photo to understand how their life’s turned out and where they are today?”
No one could identify the individual’s in the photo, but I looked at it and I saw myself.
I was flabbergasted and was wondering who the others were, so I commented on the post saying, “That’s Me In The Back,” and I attached a photo of me now.
The poster was very happy to find someone from the image, so he offered to book me a trip back to Earth to come meet him in person.
I accepted graciously; it had been 10 years since I last set foot on the blue marble.
So, a few Mars days later, I packed my stuff and boarded the rocket to Earth.
It took an Earth day, but when I got off I got all emotional and said, “It’s been forever since I have been Home.”
I decided to get a taxi and go to the old park where the photo was taken to see if I could remember who those people were.
When I got off the taxi and walked over to the park, to my horror, it was burnt to the ground not even a sapling left.
I slowly walked around, then I decided to look at the photo again on my watch.
And then suddenly I started feeling tired and saw an old charred bench that somehow survived whatever happened here.
I lay down and fell asleep, and then when I woke up, I was at the park before it burnt down and I was hanging out with those people from the photo.
We were having a great time, but eventually the cracks started to form.
I got a notification on my phone and it said, “Time to take your NeuraHealth (a supplement from Elon),” so I took my pill and everything got turned on its head.
I started running and my friend chased after me asking what was wrong, and eventually I crossed a bridge and lit it on fire, burning the bridge to the ground.
Then I get a call from the friends after the NeuraHealth wore off.
I picked up and they told me we could never be friends again—not even if I gave it 100 years.
My heart began to sink.
Right then I woke up on the bench to the sound of the CO2 meter on my watch going off, but I was thinking about that dream and took some ash up from off the ground and watched as it fell through my fingers.
And then it all came flashing back.
I had taken a new supplement by Elon called NeuraHealth, and it made me feel really good for the first few months.
Then I started feeling really sick and irritable.
I also remember after our day at the park everything started to go downhill.
I had started acting like a zombie, sucking the brains out of their skulls until they had enough of it.
After I realized what the NeuraHealth was doing to me, I stopped taking it, but it was too late.
I tried to sort stuff out, but they refused, and I even asked if they needed time, and they said time would not do anything and that I could wait 100 years and they still would never want to speak to me again.
So I just said my final goodbye and walked away.
I wondered for a second if they were still alive, if they even would remember who I, but then I realized that they probably have moved on and so have I.
So I contacted ChronoExplorer_X and told him to call off the search as the people in the photo are probably not even in our solar system anymore, and I don’t want them to open long healed wounds.
I take one last look around the park before I set off back to Mars.