Nattawat Sanpitaksaree
ณัฏฐวัฒน์ สรรพิทักษ์เสรี

Age: 16
School: Bangkok Christian College
Study Class: M5 (grade 11)
Contact Number: 086-831-6966

Once Upon A Time…

I woke up, to find the morning sun’s gleaming, shining rays splashing all over me through the window. The moist sweat washed over my entire body. I could still feel the stabs of pain striking my head; it felt like someone had just bashed a mace on my skull. I must’ve had a bad nightmare again.

I tried to catch a glimpse of what I dreamt about, racking through my head for fragments of it, but I couldn’t, so I dropped the subject and let the effort drift away. I had no idea, that my ordinary day was about to turn into an extraordinary day.

As the day went on, what seemed at first to be a bright sunny day unexpectedly turned into a day with furious downpour of rain that appeared out of nowhere. I gazed up to the sky as a bolt of lightning struck the ground. It burned my eyes; I blinked a few times and then saw something I shouldn’t have!

The blinding flash of plasma coaxed out the buried memories that lay hidden beneath my thoughts in the subconscious part of my mind. Slowly, the images resurfaced once again. My stomach lurched; chills ran down my spine.

Suddenly, I realized, the nightmare I had was no mere ordinary dream; it was a memory, reminiscent of the past. I closed my eyes and let this tale of recollection recount itself…Once upon a time, I came from a planet called Earth; I am the legacy of mankind.

--- [An unknown length of time earlier | The Solar System] ---

It all began in the year 2012, on the Christian calendar. Conflict raged across the planet. The chaos of world politics and economic crisis had reached a crescendo before it would come crashing down. The tension between each nation mirrored the bloated atmosphere, filled with volatile combustible air, waiting to be ignited.

One hot spark and our downfall would commence. This dilemma was brought about and driven by our desperate fear of starvation. We were depleting resources on our planet. the population had outgrown the supply. As if the crisis itself was not bad enough, every action seemed to intensify the soon-to-be inferno.

Laws meant little or nothing at all when it comes to the mobs; no one dared to challenge their reign of terror as everyone was too busy trying to survive amidst the chaos. Our desperation had pushed us to the limits: conquest for power over the remaining resources began; fear overshadowed reason; panic amassed among the people; you could also easily sum up all of it in one word: madness.

A few additional shifts of power, and it would come to a very literal meaning of “all hell broke loose”. The only things missing from the equation now would be a full-scale war and atomic bombs. Let it be known that once upon a time, the human race nearly joined the dinosaurs in extinction.

Meanwhile, despite the heated arguments of the outside world, a group of covert scientists made an astonishing scientific breakthrough, a staggering discovery that would shake the very foundations of science. The discovery defied the very laws of nature itself.

This particular group of researchers found a way to hibernate the human body by suspending it in a stasis cell, leaving it frozen in time. Yet, the ability to contravene time and nature came at a hefty cost.

While the vital body remained intact, the mind of the subjects to this experiment were not as fortunate; a lifetime collection of emotion, experiences and memories vanished into the void an instant.

In short, they lost their souls. Once they achieved consciousness again, it would be their first memory. A remarkable achievement this was, but only because it serves as the key to fulfill a larger cause. This experiment was part of a project to relocate our species to a new planet that the Voyager 2 accidently stumbled upon.

This new planet was theoretically habitable, but was kept as a secret; the devoted scientists and a group of idealist had a better plan for it. They saw the inevitable eradication of the Earth approaching, and they decided that they would not die in vain.

There is still a solution in the wake of destruction. A new chapter of history shall start; a new era will begin. It’s a new chance to leave all the mayhem behind, to start all over, a new beginning, to find new frontiers on the new horizon. This will be the new mark for the dawn of time.

Outside the sanctuary of the scientific haven, the planetary crisis worsened day by day. The hours grew late; darkness crept over the hearts of all beings, claiming their spirits before their bodies perished. We had plunged ourselves into the unfathomable abyss, unable to recover.

This left the scientists with no other choice; the plan could not be delayed any further.

On December 21, 2012, a spacecraft called New Beginning was launched into space. Aboard the shuttle were bodies of soulless life in stasis cells, waiting to be reawakened. All that the scientists could hope for was that these new pure, cleansed souls could thrive on their own in their new world.

An inscription, an epitaph, for Earth’s inhabitants was carved ornately onto the hull of the ship: “Ye frail mortals, who gaze upon this sight, forget not the fate of mankind, once mighty, now surrendered to the inescapable grasp of destiny”.

One day, if the passengers of this ship were to survive, perhaps they might be able decipher to message. At the final sight of all their years of work, the scientists murmured in unison: “Here be dragons”.

After all the millennia of evolution and civilization, humanity, without realizing, completed the cycles of nature once again. We lived though the eras of prosperity and darkness, time after time. Empires rose and fell; kingdoms stretched its borders endlessly and eventually split up.

It is the principle of the natural world: Nothing lasts forever. We will always be the race that burned a path of annihilation. It trailed behind us ever since the first of our kind stepped into this realm, into existence. Humans are also known to be the master of survival.

When it comes to self-preservation, we are able to be driven to the extreme. Our ability to struggle against all odds and insatiable hunger for knowledge serves us well, and enabled us to avoid fading into the void. And now, yet again, we were able to postpone the inevitable.

Let the pages of history know, that once upon a time, we lived on a planet called Earth.

The Aftermath
--- [50 years later] ---

The New Beginning vessel descended onto the planet’s surface. A harsh, but habitable environment of the world caused the power system of the ship to fail, before crash landing onto the ground below. The stasis cells ceased to operate without power.

Gradually, new lives arose from the splinters of glass and debris, unaware of the burden bestowed upon them. They are the legacy of mankind. They opened their eyes, to find the gleaming, shining rays of light splashing all over them…

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