Guest blogger August Stadtfeld is a junior at The Marin School in Sausalito.

I settled on a large boulder, having finished my days work. As I relax, I remove my protective helmet, and I can breath. The heavy equipment is dropped, making an audible thud.

The recycled air fills my lungs, both calming my nerves,and stinging my sinuses. I’ve worked in the red mines for several years, collecting precious minerals for our small community. It is a difficult task, but I carry it out dutifully and without regret, for the colony is in dire straits.

We have been stranded on this cruel orb for generations, and I know not how long we can last on its brittle, lifeless, uncaring soil.

Unlike most here, I can remember what life was like. Before our communities’ cruel twist of fate. Back then,we were a content group. Our society was optimistic for our future, with hopes and dreams of what we could accomplish on this new home of ours.

Back then, I’d explore the world’s surface, as many have before. Occasionally I came across a small rover, its structure long broken, sent to examine our future home many years ago. These remains were my only company as I looked up at the stars.

On this airless world, the stars shine so brightly. But not as brightly as the planets. They glow like beacons, calling others to their surfaces. Jupiter shines almost a dull copper, Saturn is a subtle gold. Our species home was a glorious blue.

Our home was a sign of hope. Our home, once so bright and full of potential, which once shined a bright, clear red, is now only a dark, scorched brown.

After our colony was built, a disaster occurred, unlike any other seen by human eyes.

Our sun, with its warm and calming influence, that had helped us grow for countless millenia, betrayed us. Some say what happened was our fault, that we had tampered with forces far beyond humanities comprehension, and other said it was an act of God, that we were being punished.

The sun lashed out, its eternally raging inferno destroying everything in its path.

Mercury and Venus are gone, reduced to dust. Our colony was spared, but the planet was burned. It’s a wasteland now. But the blue planet, that which began our journey to the stars, that is the one that suffered the most.

As the heat struck it, its surface cracked. The seas dried up, the continents fragmented. From our colony we saw the cities glow white hot, and melt into nothing.

 As it cracked, the planet grew hotter, and when the final blow struck,when that last wave of wrathful heat came, the blue planet shattered.

Its remains flew across the stars to parts unknown.

We are the last of our species. We exist in this vast, uncaring universe alone,with no sign that anyone else has survived.

Many of us have given up,waiting for the inevitable time that the sun burns even hotter, and removes us from existence. We stand here, at hell’s gates, with no hope for salvation, as we weep for our lost home

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