'Some Memories Will Be Erased' by Lindsay Bamfield

 

When Planet Earth reaches a population of fifteen billion, the chosen ones – the Utile People – will board the astrojets and head through the endless galaxies for Planet Kainos. The astronauts, coders, scientists, engineers, agriculturists and constructors will have gone first with the guard forces to build the massive infrastructure. They will be followed by the medical and social scientists and once everything is ready, the remaining Utile Persons will follow. Those who don’t qualify will be left behind on the melting Earth where plants wither and die, where waters swamp land and the rest burns.

The Kainos teachers will never tell their pupils about those forgotten souls but some distant memories will be passed down in strictest secrecy to children whose parents want them to have knowledge of mankind’s brutal actions. One girl will wonder whether she has relations still surviving in some pocket of safety. She will wonder if it will ever be possible or legal to communicate with them. She will picture families with children who have brothers and sisters and cousins. She will imagine animals that her forbears have whispered about down the generations.

She will reach old age and eventually die ignorant of those who will thrive on a planet that survives when those that destroyed it had themselves been destroyed. Planet Kainos will lose the whispered stories when thought coders erase people’s illegal memories. Those thriving on Earth will never forget their stories from centuries back as they tend their land and carefully nurture it.