Authored: June 26, 2015

I looked out of the window and saw the last city of man before me.
Deserted and barren, there was nothing left.
Our ship floated above the city, scanning for life signs
But there was none.
We had come so far and hoped for much.
We left our planet in search of the originators of the message
On our way here, we had come across Voyager
As it entered the Magellan Cloud. We listened to the message
And took from the dead spacecraft the tablet
And we moved across the Milky Way
And to the Solar System of Nine bodies and between them a vast meteor field
We passed the Red Planet and came to the Blue-Ruddy Planet.

Now we are here, parted the clouds of Earth
Our instruments say this Planet once had life
Below us is evidence of such claims
Validation, but we had come too late.
Our sensors picked up radioactivity
A barely breathable atmosphere now full of toxins
Images came back from our scanners
Showing the dead animals and plant life
The remains of old Life.

I imagined this civilization at its height
And wished we had come in time to save them from death
The sun set on this world; it will take time to bring back to ecological balance.
The chimes sound and I know we are leaving this place of deathly silence
I shed a tear for the lost opportunity.

As we leave the atmosphere of Earth and move back into orbit to link up with our Mothership,
I look back onto this badly hurt world
We shall return back to our Worlds, and we shall learn from this journey
And maybe in a thousand years' time, when we return.
There may be a new strain of life on this world.
That may stand the test of time.