120 Blind Dates... And Other Short Stories

@BeyondSol@WeekendWriteIn: Our Only Hope

Hope Coldwell had been born on Hubble Omega, which is why she didn't mind the cold weather on the planet at all. At only 32, she had built a reputation for herself as the planet leading scientist. On the other hand, she was only 32, so there were some people, and most of them belonged to the male sex, who refused to take her seriously. 

So it did not come as a surprise to her that some people started to patronize her when she first warned them that the fire inside Hubble Omega was slowly dying out due to the fact that it was one of the most polluted planets in the galaxy. People were constantly overheating their homes. They also did not care about the environment so much and dropped their garbage everywhere. 

Therefore, the planet was a mess in the literal sense of the word less than 300 years after its discovery. 

Naturally, this could only go on for a couple more years until the disaster that Hope had predicted began to become a reality. The climate on the planet began to change. It was colder than ever. 

Still, people refused to believe Hope that the fire inside the core of the planet was slowly dying out. They just thought that they were going through a rough time and used up even more of the planet's fire to heat their homes.

Their refusal to believe in the imminent catastrophe also had a lot to do with the fact that Hubble Omega was the warmest planet in the galaxy. It was impossible to live on any of the other planets, so they had nowhere else to go.   

When the first animals started to die, people still claimed that this was a natural process: It had gotten colder. Of course, animals which had been brought here from Earth could not survive on this planet. A few people started to comprehend the gravity of the situation when the cadavers of animals who had not been brought to Hubble Omega were found. Even though these animals had clearly died in their natural environment, the majority of the people on the planet thought that these climate activists, who believed every word Hope Coldwell said, were lying. There were even rumors that the activists had killed the animals themselves, even though those who spread these allegations were unable to come up with a motive that the activists might have had for killing these animals. 

Finally, the weather on the planet became so cold that more people than ever died of the flu. At first, those who died were mostly the old and sick inhabitants of Hubble Omega. Then, more and more younger people began to die. 

The political system on the planet collapsed due to the fact that the leading politicians had died. 

Hope Coldwell was one of the last scientists to die. She had tried to come up with as solution for the problem all by herself for years, but had failed to do so.  

***

This is also a contest entry for a contest on the BeyondSol profile.