Last trace of humans

By: Eleanor Tay Juey Ee

School: Raffles Girls School (RGS)

Prologue

A world with inequality, conflicts, hunger, poverty, discrimination and many other problems. This is the world we riks live in right now but believe me when I say that we are changing for the better, thanks to the humans.

Chapter 1: The first recording

Hi guys! This is my first recording on this voice recorder thingy. It was passed down from my great great great great… grandparents. Anyway, since this is my first recording, I am going to introduce myself. I am 1234 from earth 2000. Don’t you like my name, I think its really cool that I can be born with such a nice number. In earth 2000, everyone’s name is decided by the how many people there are. I am the 1234th person to arrive on earth 2000. I am 10 years old this year and I have 2 friends, 1256 and 1229. Maybe I will ask them to join me for the next recording.

Oh, and my planet. Earth 2000 is the best planet you can be from. We humans have searched for millions of years to find this planet. Earth 2000, the most habitable planet in the universe. Covered in plants and animals, has fresh water and what’s best, it has a low population density. As of now, earth 2000 has exactly 4000 people, the perfect amount to keep everyone fed and healthy. I love earth 2000. Ok, I think that all for today, good night.

Chapter 2: Back to earth

Top secret. If you are listening to this recording please stop listening right now unless you understand this code. 23815. This is top secret information…

Good afternoon fellow scientist and governments. I am Thomas Willson. We all know that earth is about to collapse. We have only 5 years left, and we have not gotten anywhere with our research. We need to do something about this. My team of scientist and I have come up with a method to fix this problem although many of you may object, but if you do not have a better idea, I hope you listen closely.

Our solution is time travel. It’s the only way to do this. We have discovered a way to travel into the future but still not the past. We have sufficient evidence to believe that humans are still alive in the future, however not on this planet. Our plan is to use time travel to enter other planets that the future humans are on to harness their resources and in the worst-case scenario take over their planets.

I thank you all for your time and hope for your approval to our project.

Chapter 3

I am back! Today, I went out with my friends and brought them over. 1256, 1229 come here. I want to show you something cool I found in my chamber. Its really cool. You can record your voice in it. Wow! Hey, let’s record what our world I like now for people in the future. I always wanted to know what the previous 1999 earths looked like, but my parents will never tell me. That’s a great idea, I want to do that too! Ok, let’s start with our lives.

On earth 2000, we live in round chambers connects to a main building. Everyone lives in their own chamber and all 4000 chambers link to the lobby that is also linked to other facilities. The facilities include farming, playing with animals, swimming with fish, cooking, cleaning and the playroom where the young children are. Oh, and every day, there is a roster, so everyone can help with everything.

After we finish our work for the day, we are free to do whatever we like! I enjoy going out of the building and visiting the other creatures living on earth 2000. There are pheniods from planet phleelatopia, togotinks from planet tolax and kalodophins from planet caxil. They are all very friendly and fun to play with, even though we are not very close.

1234, my mother is calling me I need to go. Bye! I guess my friends need to leave soon bye.

*Blue is 1256, purple is 1229

Chapter 4

Top secret. If you are listening to this recording please stop listening right now unless you understand this code. 23815. This is top secret information…

Good afternoon fellow scientist and governments. I want to thank you for giving me permission to test out the time machine and for sharing your opinions and thoughts on this trip. In summary, many of you think that this will upset the balance of this world and some of you think that since we know that humans will be alive in the future, we do not need to do anything about it. In reference to the first point, I agree that we may upset the balance, however, if we don’t do anything, it may be even worse, it could cause mass extinction among humans. I know that’s how evolution works but are we really going to leave it be and wait until earth gets destroyed? Now for the second point, we still have no idea how time travel works. If we do not time travel, we might be changing the future and resulting in the extinction of humans. We are still not sure of the consequences of our actions. Thank you to those who have agreed to our proposal, and I hope that the others will also change their minds.

Chapter 5

We are back! Today something really cool happened you would never believe it. We all saw it with our own eyes. There was this bright flash and out of nowhere there was a human who popped out and 1 second later, there was another bright flash, and the person was gone. That was so cool, I wonder how the person did that. I want to try doing that too! I wonder where he went after that though. I have never seen him on earth 2000 before. I am pretty sure he is not from around here. That’s weird how would he appear here then.

Well, we decided to share some secret information we have discovered about earth 2000. Yesterday, while we were out playing hide and seek with our togotink friends, we found something fascinating. We were trying to find a perfect hiding spot when we decided to go further out and venture past our usual hiding spots. That when we found a clunky heavy silver like scrap. If you are wondering what it is, we are no sure either. We got found before we could find out more about it. Let’s check it out again tomorrow. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. I guess we will fill you in next time. Bye.

Chapter 6

Top secret. If you are listening to this recording please stop listening right now unless you understand this code. 23815. This is top secret information…

Good afternoon fellow scientist and governments. Thank you to all governments and scientist who have given my team and I permission to do a trail run. We have decided to do a trail run 5 million years into the future where we will be bringing over minimal amounts of natural resources to see its effects. I have time traveled to several time periods in the future and looked at the conditions of the planet inhibited by humans. The planet that humans inhabit 5 million years from now has the perfect conditions that one can desire for. There is ample unused natural resources there. I thank you all for your support once again and I will report back timely on any new discoveries.

Chapter 7

Hi! You know we went back to the place where we last saw the chunk of silver scrap and guess what. It was not there anymore. I know right, how such a big piece of scrap can just disappear like that. I wonder where it went. Maybe it disappeared like the person we saw the last time.

Guys, I forgot to tell you, but I saw the person again. This time, he was with a bunch of other people that I also do not recognize. This time, he did not just disappear. I saw him and the other people walking around, and they looked very suspicious. It seemed like they were taking in the surroundings, but if they are from around here, why would they do that? Maybe they are not from around here. That’s true, but where else would they be from and how would they manage to come here? This is a mystery for us to solve.

Chapter 8

Top secret. If you are listening to this recording please stop listening right now unless you understand this code. 23815. This is top secret information…

Good afternoon fellow scientist and governments. My team and I have traveled 5 million years into the future. We managed to get rid of all witnesses before chopping down a tree and taken a few screenshots of the environment. Upon arrival back in this time period, we have tested the tree and concluded that the trees 5 million years later are able to produce 2 times more wood and 5 times more oxygen than the trees in our time period. I am sure that there are more natural resources available there that we can use that are of much better quality than those we have here. If we can just use the trees from that time period to bring it back here, we may be able to get rid of the carbon dioxide that takes up 60% of the environment and replenish the oxygen that we need to survive. I implore all scientists and governments to lend me their trust and let me lead this operation to discuss with the humans living 5 million years from now and let them give up some of their natural resources for us. Thank you.

Chapter 9

Hey again. We are the triple 1200. Do you like our team’s new name? Anyway, we have been looking for clues all around earth 2000 and we can across something quite interesting. You mean creepy. Basically, we were investigating all over earth 2000 to find where the disappearing people (that’s what we decided to call them) could have gone. Then, when walking through the forest, we saw a random stump in the middle of the woods. Most importantly, the stump did not look like something make by an animal. It was too straight as if it was chopped down. But there’s a rule of thumb here that no one is allowed to disturb the nature. So, my guess is that it must have been those disappearing people. How dare they harm the environment like that. We should tell our parents about it. No way, they will just kill us for investigating this and not telling them earlier. I guess we will have to find out more about it, see you soon.

Chapter 10

Top secret. If you are listening to this recording please stop listening right now unless you understand this code. 23815. This is top secret information…

Good afternoon fellow scientist and governments. Thank you for taking time to read my proposal and for agreeing to my plan. Tomorrow, we shall enter the planet 5 million years from now and start our discussions. We will bring over our finest technology as gifts to aid in our discussions, including mobile gadgets for the children, transportation devices for the adults and our newest lie detector for the leader. We will travel in 2 groups, the first group will be me, Jackson, Harry and Hilary, we will lead in the discussions. The second group will be 1 platoon from the military to support us in case a fight breaks out. We will keep in contact with the base through a microchip that will allow you to see and hear everything that is going on should more backup be needed. We will depart sharply at 7am. Thank you.

Chapter 11

Woah! You will never guess what happened today. We actually met the disappearing people and talked to them. Also, they are not disappearing people. They are actually time travelers. They say they are from earth, like the very first one, and came from 5 million years ago. They even gave us presents. This rectangular block like thing that they call mobile phones. It’s like a cool version of this voice recording thing. You can turn it on and then a bright light will show on the screen, and you can do many things on it. You can call, take pictures, play games and do voice recordings. It’s quite cool. I can’t believe they had things like this 5 million years ago that we don’t even have now, it’s like they are more advanced than us. I wonder why our parents never today us about this.

Anyway, the disappearing people came and said they wanted to meet our leader, but we don’t have a leader, so they called everyone to have a meeting. Why do you still call them the disappearing people? They don’t disappear. I know right, we should just call them the time travelers. Sorry, it’s become a habit, haha. So back to the story, they came and said that they want to take resources from our land for earth. They say that earth is in a bad state and if we do not share our resources with them, earth will collapse, and all humans will be wiped out. They even gave us these gifts to appease us, but all the adults don’t agree and say that if they are going to harm the environment, they will never give in. I don’t get why though, I mean we are getting free gifts. It’s not like them taking a bit of the natural resources will destroy earth 2000, right? They said that they will be back tomorrow at 7am to see what we have decided on.

Chapter 12

Top secret. If you are listening to this recording please stop listening right now unless you understand this code. 23815. This is top secret information…

Good afternoon fellow scientist and governments. My team and I are sorry to announce that the talks and gifts have failed. It seems like the adults there do not want to repeat our past mistakes and will not allow us to in anyway upset the balance of earth 2000. I think we may have to go with plan B tomorrow. I hope it does not come to that. Today, we managed to successfully plant time machines around their building and hidden bombs and weapons all over earth 2000. It also was brought to our attention that there are other high intelligence creatures on earth 2000. We have placed atomic bombs in their hideouts so that we can hold them hostage if necessary. There will be 1 company at each time machine on earth that will only cross over to earth 2000 when given the signal to. I am sure that we will be able to make full use of the resources on earth 2000. Thank you.

Chapter 13

This may be the last message I can record in here. The time travelers are evil. They want to wipe out everything just for themselves and for the sake of earth. They came into today’s meeting and the first thing they said when we rejected their proposal was that we have no choice. They said that if we do not follow what they say, they will blow up earth 2000 and all the creatures on it. They said that they planted bombs yesterday. We had no choice but to agree with their proposal. They said they will be taking the trees that we have and bringing them over to earth and they will kill the animals we have here as food and dig into the ground for coal. If they do that earth 2000 will be left barren and have nothing left. How will we survive?

The adults also told us that this was what had happened to all the previous earths and that all the previous earths had to be left because of the destructions humans caused, leaving the place uninhabitable. We are going to die, and we don’t even have a choice.

Chapter 14

Top secret. If you are listening to this recording please stop listening right now unless you understand this code. 23815. This is top secret information…

Good afternoon fellow scientist and governments. We have succeeded in blackmailing the people of earth 2000. They do not seem to have any way to fight back. We have been given permission to take their natural resources. Earth shall be saved. From tomorrow onwards, we will be extracting all their natural resources and bringing them over back to earth until we have enough resources. I thank everyone of you who have put your trust in me and worked with me to reach greater heights. Thank you.

Chapter 15

It has been 3 years since the time travelers have stripped earth 2000 of its resources. There are only around 100 of us left. Humans are going extinct. This set of recordings are the last evidence of humans. To all other creatures in this universe, let humans be the last ones to make such mistakes. Take care of your planets and keep them healthy. Goodbye.

Epilogue

And that was the last trace of humans that we riks could find. We thank humans for teaching us the errors in our ways and telling us to change before there is not more hope left for our planet.

Climate change is a problem. Both you and I know that. Let’s stop it before it’s too late. Even riks can learn from our mistake, so why can’t we.

Word count: 2939 words