Fiction
The Thinning
-2245-
We had tried to colonize three planets. All three were failures.
Mars was too inhospitable to survive outside of our domes. We eventually learned that humans are not psychologically equipped for living inside of domes. Humans need sky. We need outdoors. More than that, we need to breathe outdoors. We cannot survive long-term in domes. Politics on Earth prevented terraforming from becoming a reality, and killed the dream of a green and blue Mars. Mars was eventually abandoned.
We turned to planets outside of our solar system. Habitable “Goldilocks” planets. Our next attempt, Insulam, had lifeforms that viewed us as pests. We became their insects. Worthless things to be killed because we looked creepy and were annoying. The next planet we ventured to, Spero, didn’t have any lifeforms outside of vegetation. But the vegetation was too toxic to eat. And the soil killed any Earth crops we tried to plant.
Things were getting grim. Earth was dying. We had no other choice but to colonize or perish as a species. We sent out scout ships to hundreds of planets scientists considered life-sustaining possibilities. These were one-way missions. Our task was to evaluate our planet, and determine if it was suitable for colonization. If we survived, we would report back to Earth and humans would follow our lead.
