3ºESO: The ones left behind

After all, the men who said that the Earth was for them where the ones who made it unlivable.

So they left it.

First, it was the rich: CEOs, politicians, celebrities, anyone who could buy salvation. Then went the intelligent: doctors, professors, everyone who could pay for their lives with knowledge. Last, they took the skilled: farmers, technicians, the ones ready to sell their work for a chance to survive.

We saw them with metallic smiles plastered on their faces, taking off into space in their shiny ships. We had begged to go with them, but they were oh so sorry, they just couldn’t take us. They told us we had their thoughts and prayers and waved us goodbye. I don’t think they looked back. The view wouldn’t have been the nicest.

And who were the ones left behind? Those who weren’t good enough to be saved. The disabled and the poor, the addicts and the criminals. At least, the ones that had survived. We were the outcasts, with no other option but to stay in a planet that had endured too much and would take no more.

The thing is, though, that we had always had to fend for ourselves.

So when the chosen ones left, we went to work. People who they believed would be at each others throats came together, not by a sense of camaraderie and brotherhood, but by a primitive survival instinct. We finally had the tools to fix a system that had been broken all along. Without the hindrance of a wealth gap and motivated by sheer spite, we were able to rise above what they had told us was our place.

Years came and went. We took whatever scraps we could find, the blueprints and technology they had left behind, and built a new world over the ruins we had been supposed to die on. It wasn’t pretty, but it was the best we had ever known.

And then, they dared to come back.

The statue stood proudly under the sunshine, its surface carved to show the face of all the people who had first stepped out to lead the reform. Its message was the keystone upon which everything we had worked for was set: a caution against the power-hungry, an inspiration to those who sought change, a promise that no one would ever be left behind again. So far, we had kept that promise fairly well.

The captain inspected the monument with a contemptuous expression before turning to me. «You’re telling me that these… these pariahs made the Earth inhabitable again with nothing but what we had left here?» He seemed to be struggling to hold back a smirk. His uniform was spotless, his face unnaturally done up to cover up any possible flaws. His elitism was so apparent it was almost ridiculous.

I did my best to keep my face neutral, even though I could feel my blood boiling. «Not at all,» I retorted. “We survived with nothing but a group of the most absolutely enraged people this universe has ever seen.”

The amusement in his eyes disappeared. I knew I wasn’t particularly intimidating, except maybe for the fact that I was the last thing he would have expected to find down here, but he had finally started to see me —to see us— as more than the underdogs they had abandoned so long ago. My glare hardened.

“And if you try to take that from us, we will show how ruthless we can be.”