A POSSIBLE FUTURE

J’onney jumped up and down in his seat in excitement. “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

“Not yet, son, but soon.” His father said with a chuckle from the front seat of their spaceship.

“Why can’t we go faster?” He whined. “I want to go there now!”

“J’onney, for the tenth time, we are good, law-abiding Dom-Oan citizens.” his mother said patiently. “We are not going to break the Space Speeding Limit, and even if we did, we would only get pulled over and fined, which would take even longer. You wouldn’t want that, would you now?”

J’onney lapsed into a sulk, but his face soon brightened. “There! Look!”

Appearing before them was a planet. It was a harsh, rocky planet, with clouds of dust and debris surrounding it. “Lar-Oa!”

Descending through the clouds, the ship gently touched down on one of the landing pads. There were many others in the vast parking lot, large, upholstered ones belonging to tourists and smaller, cheaper, more weathered ones used by the daily workers. Belonging to the former category, J’onney and his family descended and headed in the direction indicated by a holographic sign card, titled Museum and Zoo.

The boy skipped and hummed merrily, invigorated by the planet’s irradiated atmosphere. His mother called after him worriedly, but he took no notice and ran up to the ticket counter. After buying tickets, the family was approached by one of the robotic tour guides, who began guiding them through the exhibits.

“Lar-Oa, known to its natives as ‘Earth’, is the closest planet to our own, and was once a world populated by diverse, highly advanced lifeforms. They developed primitive technology, and were even able to send scout ships to Dom-Oa, which they know as ‘Mars’.” The robot indicated a hologram of a steel cylinder with plates jutting out, floating in space. “Needless to say, no evidence of life was found by them, and they were brought down by internal conflict.”

“Internal conflict? What is that?” J’onney wondered.

“The Lar-Oans behaved cruelly towards each other for food.” It led them towards another hologram display, this one containing audiovisuals clicked by microscopic Dom-Oan scout ships. They showed bipedal Lar-Oans killing four-legged, winged and water-dwelling Lar- Oans and consuming their flesh. J’onney was surprised by how different they looked. On his planet, everyone looked similar with thick green skin and large red eyes. Here, people had different numbers of legs, different sizes, physical features and living conditions. He had never seen anything like it before.

“Furthermore, the natives began to consume the planet’s natural resources at a shocking pace, and eventually used up most of them. They declared all-out war on each other for the remaining resources.” The next exhibits contained audiovisuals of mushroom clouds rising over the land as explosions destroyed everything in sight. “They used primitive bombs that irradiated the planet, wiping out almost all life. The only surviving Lar-Oans reside... here.”

They walked onto a large balcony overlooking a small colony of buildings like those seen in the exhibits, surrounded by an energy shield. Bipedal Lar-Oans milled the streets. A large holographic sign declared: Lar-Oans in their Native Habitat – Endangered Species.

As the young boy watched with fascination at them, one of them looked up. They all had yellow-brown skin and strange growths on their heads and faces. The one looking up shook his fist and shouted something.

“What did it say?” He asked excitedly.

“It was not something suitable for a child to hear.”

“They don’t look very friendly...” his mother said nervously.

“Be rest assured, they cannot break through the energy shield. Even if they could, it is the only thing keeping them alive. The amount of radiation in the planet’s atmosphere at the moment would kill them instantly. This is the only place with oxygen and untainted water on this planet. Without it, they cannot survive.”

The family spent the rest of the day touring, visiting the immense underground factories where the radiation that the Dom-Oans consumed for nutrition was harvested. They ate packets of Radium Solid that they had brought with them, and drank from a spring of naturally irradiated water. The child was quite attached to the Lar-Oans and kept returning to the zoo. When they had to leave, he begged his father to allow him to take one as a pet. He had to be reminded, patiently, that they were an endangered species and would be unable to survive on Dom-Oa even if they managed to get one. When they finally turned to go, the morose boy took one last look at creature and then ran after his parents