Anthology of Speculative Scribblings

Snow

Originally hosted on https://illoria.wixsite.com/annamittower/anthology-of-speculative-scribbles

"Papa, why did you name me Snow when there is no snow here?"

I was only six when I asked that of my father, but even now so many decades later I remember his answer.

"Snow is beautiful and so are you. But more importantly, snow is a symbol of hope for our planet. We need to keep that hope near and cherish it."

Being only six, I didn't understand what he meant other than saying I was beautiful. Hope was too vague of a notion for my immature mind to grasp. I never understood why some of my friends disappeared and never came back. Slowly my friend group shrank in size.

Even then the vast emigration of our people had begun, but how was a father to explain that to a young child upset at losing her friends?

In my teen years, I finally began to understand a little. The emigration plan was finally officially put into action by the government and it was all the news talked about. People began to flee our dying planet faster than ever, but still my family remained.

Over the next ten years the population on planet remained nearly the same, however, as short term tourists and thrill seekers replaced the residents who left. The high temperatures turned our world into one of the top tropical resort planets in the galaxy as the temperate zone on our planet took over the entire planet. Now the high temperature records set when I was a child were considered cool weather.

My father left me to run the touring company while he dug deep underground and prepared for the worst. He never explained his actions, but I understood by then. Others might leave, fleeing the death of our once stable world, but our family would never run away. As we had been there in the beginning, one of the founding families, so we would be there till the end.

Many a time I spent my free moments wondering exactly what kind of end that would be. The scientist agreed on one thing only. The heat would increase until life could no longer be sustained on the surface. However, they couldn't agree on what would happen then. Would the planet erupt into volcanic chaos? Would the atmosphere boil away into nothing, asphyxiating us? Death awaited, but no one knew what form. The only topic on which the scientists could agree less was the cause of the planet's death. They had databases full of data from all the years our planet had been colonized, but no cause could they pinpoint. Whatever had happened, it started well before even my father was born.

The death throes began quietly and slowly with a gradual change that turned our planet from half icy wasteland into a warmer climate. The population exploded in this time as people spread to previously unlivable zones and the colony finally paid off its debts as tourism began to pour in.

But, the change never stopped and slowly the first cities in the warmest zones where the colonization began emptied as people moved north and south to cooler climates. My family was one of those that moved in that migration. My grandfather packed up the whole family and moved us to the northernmost plot of land he could buy and created the touring company. The family criticized him for it, but over the years, as more people fled the hottest zones, their complaints faded away.

Their memories of snow and ice also faded away over the years as well, leaving no one in my generation or my father's who had seen snow.

It was also my grandfather who began the task of digging deep into the underground of our land. My father continued on in his footsteps and added yet more levels to the complex. However, he died due to a cave-in before my thirtieth birthday.

And so I took up the mantle of our survival instead.

The money we earned from our touring company all went to the digging or to buying food stores. Not all of my extended family agreed with this. Those that complained joined the emmigration, abandoning their kin to flee for their lives. But no matter, the food would last longer without them.