“Once upon a time children respected their mothers.”
“No, please, I really want an answer!” I complained.
Mom turned and looked at me. “It’s not for your ears yet. Maybe when you get older…” Her voice trailed off.
“You’ve been saying that for twelve years, ever since I overheard you and Dad when I was five. I’m not a kid anymore, Mom.”
She sighed. “What happened is humanity got greedy and made Earth unlivable. We had to leave and the easiest place for us to go was here.” She opened the oven and the smell of roasting chicken came out. Mom loved to cook and what she made was always good.
“So why is that knowledge suppressed by the Senate and the Fortune 500?” I asked, taking a bite of last night’s leftovers, which was lasagna. Our kitchen was big and spacious, and we all spent a lot of time there. It had several overhead lights, and a big fan on the ceiling. Our walls were painted a light yellow, and there was a window over the stove that looked out onto the front yard. I had just gotten home and was enjoying an afternoon snack while Mom fussed over dinner. We had a grill in the front yard, which she liked to use sometimes for steaks or chicken.
Mom looked down. “Because nothing has changed.”
I stopped eating and looked up at her. “What do you mean?”
She went back to her cooking. “I’ve already said enough.”
I went out of the house and down the street to Taelin’s. I had a lot of friends, but Taelin was by far the closest.  I was stubborn. When I wanted to do something, I did it. I was also very opinionated. I got into a lot of arguments then. I turned to look at myself in a glass sculpture that we had out on our lawn. I had blond hair complemented by piercing blue eyes and a crescent-shaped birthmark on my left thigh. Standing at five foot nine, I was much taller than average. I had never bothered questioning the law or the corporate-run planet that we live on. But as I walked over to Taelin’s house, I started thinking about the law, or rather lack of it. Minimum wage was barely enough to survive, there were no pollution standards, and waste was simply dumped into rivers and oceans. Worker safety laws were somewhat lacking, and a flat income tax rate meant that the wealthy got much wealthier in comparison to the poor. Also, there was no corporation tax or antitrust law. If a law impeded corporations, it probably didn’t exist.
“Hey,” Taelin greeted me as I walked up to her house, “Your Mom tell you anything?”
Taelin lived in a double-story house. Her family was one of the wealthiest in town. It had a wrap-around porch and a rocking chair in the front that her mother liked to relax in with a copy of the newspaper and a cup of coffee. In the back there was a hammock strung between two trees. I spent a lot of my life in her backyard. “Very little. She said that we ruined Earth and then we had to leave.”
Taelin tied her brown hair into a ponytail and rolled her matching brown eyes. She was very skinny and average-sized at five foot four. “And then we came here, to Paelion?”
“Yes. And then she said that we weren’t allowed to know because nothing has changed.” I sniffed. “Is that hot chocolate I smell?”
We talked and talked and talked about the new clothes we were going the buy, the new couples at school and anything else that seemed even remotely interesting. Taking our hot chocolate outside, we lay on her hammock and laughed at the gossip of the day. I love to simply look up at the sky and let the warmth from the sun bathe my face. At night, I love to simply watch the moon and the stars.
I remember that day vividly. The sun was shining, the sky was clear. Our house smelled like the chicken Mom was making for dinner and the sounds of children laughing and talking filled the air. It was a good day, the day I learned the truth.
* * *
“SMOG IS FINE. IF SOMETHING HAPPENS, WE CAN ALWAYS MOVE AGAIN,” thundered Senator Thanatos of the province Adarel.
“It’s filthy in here!” Taelin touched the side of the vent we were in and I had to clamp a hand over her mouth to prevent a shriek from escaping. She had never been good with dirt or dust. She was a bit of a princess, really. Complaints and friendly insults frequently flowed from her mouth. When she didn’t like something, she made sure you knew it. But my favorite thing about Taelin was that, when you needed her, she was there. No questions asked, whatever it took.
“So it’s a little dusty. It’s the only way we can see the Senate,” I whispered.
Taelin shifted to look at me. “A little dusty? Talk about understatements. When I get out of here-“
I never did learn what she was going to say because Thanatos resumed his speech. “Pollution does not matter. Look up at the sky. There are thousands and thousands of planets that we can move to. The destruction of Earth did not matter, and neither will the destruction of Paelion. We can pollute thousands of planets and we will still have thousands more to move to. This is why I oppose this measure. No laws to help the environment are needed because Paelion isn’t needed.”
When our ancestors first arrived on Paelion, they divided the planet into 25 provinces, each one electing one senator to the planet’s government. Sadly, Adarel had quickly taken control of the government and Thanatos was the latest one of a string of Adaren senators who made a pretense of democracy in the senate, but controlled most of the votes and was guaranteed to win. At that time, there were just six dissenters, led by Senator Artemis of Lincois. It was enough to get the Senate to vote on measures, but not enough to win them.
Artemis spoke next, but it was fruitless. As expected, when the vote came on whether to pass environmental laws, the tally was six in favor and nineteen against.
When we got home we were feeling subdued by what we had seen in the senate. “What’s going to happen to us?” Taelin dangled her legs off the edge of her hammock.
I turned on my side and looked at her. “We’ll die for money. We will die because the corporations don’t want to use renewable resources. Every day that passes gets us closer to our fate. And the worst thing is, I don’t think that there is anything we can do.”
  “We have to try. Paelion is our home. I feel ashamed to be Adaren,” Taelin’s eyes sparkled with purpose.
We worked all night producing flyers and leaving them at people’s doorsteps. We also made big posters that we planted in our yards. They encouraged people to take a stand against the destruction of our home. They also encouraged people to make their own decisions and not be blindly led on by lying propaganda pamphlets.
I kicked the soccer ball back to Taelin, “Today’s the day.” We were in her backyard again, kicking a ball around. We had mugs of hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows to top it off and the air smelled like the woods that were next to her house. We sometimes liked to walk in those woods, or even just lean against the trees and relax. We took pleasure in noting the different types of trees and plants and loved to see wildlife, like little chipmunks or rabbits.
Taelin stopped the ball with her foot and took a sip of her hot chocolate. “Yeah. We’ve done our part, and now all we can do is hope that seven senators come to their senses and vote in favor of our world.”
Sighing, I picked up the soccer ball. “Let’s take a break. And about the law, with all the propaganda that’s been digested by the community, nobody is believing us when we tell them that pollution is bad.”
* * *
She was angry. She had every right to be, for it was the day after the vote.
“What’s the problem with their brains? Maybe they don’t have any. Clearly they have the combined intelligence of a carrot. I think a rabbit would do a better job governing!” Taelin thundered as she paced back and forth through the yard.
I was standing on the veranda, resting my hand on the wooden rail. The sun beat down mercilessly and we were both wearing t-shirts and shorts, with sandals. We’d had to dig them out, as we had put them away when autumn had started.  Autumn was both of our favorite seasons, since we both adored the changing of the color of the leaves and their subsequent fall was fascinating to us and we watched them almost every year.
  “We knew it was a long shot. We started acting just a few days before the vote. Whenever the next vote is, we’ll have much more time to prepare, and hopefully we can make a difference. Remember, all we need to do is win once.”
* * *
It was only downhill from there. Landfills began to overflow about ten years later, and about five years after that the whole province of Lincois had to be evacuated due to rising sea levels. The stars disappeared under a cloud of smog two years after that, and we all had to start wearing masks. By the time I was forty, deforestation had taken most of Paelion’s trees. It seemed like we found dead animals daily, either dead from starvation due to the lack of vegetation or having choked on the smog. We couldn’t watch the sky and stars any more. There was no more enjoying the coming of autumn and the changes in the woods. We never saw wildlife scamper around the woods. Now there was only collecting dead animals and burying them. I’ve chosen to write this little story about Paelion because I want someone to know what happened to Paelion. In less than an hour now, my family and friends will be boarding a spaceship and leaving Paelion forever. They’ll be taking this story with them, to keep as a reminder of what not to do. Paelion’s uninhabitable now. There’s a cloud of smog and dust rolling in that will soon cover the whole planet. Taelin and I, however, will not be going with our families and friends to humanity’s new home. Paelion is our home and we are going to die with the planet. We hope that our staying here will send a strong message to the rest of humanity and that they will try harder to treat the planet better next time. We’ve decided that we’re going back to the hammock behind her house and that will be our final resting place. We lay side by side like we used to and watched the sky as the smog rolled in and smothered us.