I would’ve laughed at the absurdity of the situation I found myself in were it not for the sobering realization that I had officially killed the last hope of humanity. Let me backtrack a little here.
The year was 2079 when humanity, led by leaders of mediocre caliber, shady morals, and questionable credentials, declared war upon itself and started a nuclear holocaust. As expected, nobody won and Earth as a planet and humanity as a species, alongside countless innocent ones, were all but destroyed. Since each nation had prepared for and even anticipated this act of collective lunacy, the best scientific minds survived hidden in redoubts built specifically for the purpose of surviving a nuclear holocaust. It took five years for Earth’s finest to put aside their ideological and historical differences, and cobble together the resources to send a mission to space.
Mission Hope as we named it had one simple objective – find a new home for humanity. And so it was, 15 years later, as the commander of humanity’s last desperate attempt at survival,I found myself staring at Samsara, a planet that had everything to offer and promised an end to humanity’s self-imposed woes. For a brief period of time, it seemed that things would be fine after all.
Samsara played host to a rather more active variant of trees than we were used to. These trees, or ent-folk as christened by an enterprising Tolkien fan, moved around, communicated, and had engineered a highly developed civilization.
Everything went exceedingly well for the first few weeks as introductions were made, gifts were exchanged, and diplomatic relations were established. The ent-folk were a highly gracious people. They were thrilled to talk to a species from Earth, which they considered to be the homeworld of their ancestors. We showed them pictures and videos of long gone Amazon forests as we lied through our teeth about the warm state of human-tree relations.
They grieved with us when we shared a slightly modified version of the tragedy that had befallen Earth. They didn’t even hesitate when we requested for asylum and immediately kicked-off the process of approving refuge for all that remained of humanity.
It all went incredibly smooth until the final day when the signing ceremony was held. The entire press corps of Entland was present. Excitement levels went to new highs when I whipped out a copy of the final agreement for signatures between our peoples.
“What is that, Mr. Human?” asked a young reporter from Times of Entland.
“Oh this?” I replied as I picked up the document and showed it to them. “It’s a print out of our final agreement with your esteemed folks. We have a tradition on Earth to etch all our agreements on paper to record these events for all eternity.”
“Aah,” it said as it shook its leaves in understanding. ”What is paper?” the reporter asked in continued fascination.
“Unlike Ent-folk, humans have a weak memory. Paper is the material we store our information upon. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said our entire civilisation was built upon paper. In the heydays of our civilisation, we made millions of tonnes of this every year. It is made by grinding wood to a pulp…” I realised the gravity of my error even as I spoke it.
The entire press corps of Entland uttered a collective gasp. A deafening silence descended upon the event. And just like that, we were back to where we started – nomads, hunting for a new home in a starship with dwindling food, water, air, and fuel reserves.
The absurdity of the situation hit me hard as I jotted down the closing paragraphs of our failure report to Earth, on paper.