It was 2247 CE. He was on Titan, visiting for summer break, and he wanted to know what it was like back on Earth.

Tell me what it was like, he said.

She thought about it for a moment.

Don’t you already know? she said, finally.

Well, yeah, he said, but I wanted to, you know, hear about it from someone who had first-hand experience.

She opened the window. She had ordered a cup of coffee, and the drone that was delivering it to her house had just arrived. The drone scurried into the room through the open window. She took the hot cup of coffee that was sitting on the drone. The drone made a beeping noise, and lowered itself onto the carpeted floor. She blew the steam off, and took a sip, pondering about his request.

I’ll tell you a story, she said, lowering the cup of coffee. I don’t think repeating what you’ve probably heard a million times before would really put into perspective how ridiculous humanity was during that time period.

He sat down, and she took another sip.

The berries. He looked at them, studying them carefully. How they gleamed with the morning dew. He had been in this garden for, who knows how long. It was so beautiful. He picked some branches from a nearby tree, and threw them into a fire that he had set up to boil water, and keep himself warm during the winter months.

Something about this garden didn’t seem quite right, though. The lamp that shined on him seemed much more hazy than he remembered, and, as he looked at the water, he noticed the ash that his fire produced had entered the water, and there seemed to be a tiny layer of black powder covering parts of the surface. It seemed to have killed off some of the fish that lived there. He used his finger, and, gently, pushed some black powder aside. He could see fresh water underneath, as well as some green algae that had been growing under the surface. He started clearing more black powder, when he saw a tiny orange fish underneath the water. It looked at him for a second, jumped out of the water, and splashed back in again, creating ripples through the water, causing some of the algae to move a bit. Beautiful, he thought, beautiful. He refocused his attention at the big berry bush that was sitting to his left. However, he saw, some sort of ooze, covering the plant. He thought it was raining at first, and looked upward. But the light above him was bright as ever, actually, wait. He stared hard at the sky above him. The light seemed brighter than usual. Weird, he thought. Then he refocused on the sky itself, and saw that the sky’s color seemed to have changed a bit. Strange, he thought, whatever, a good rain will clear up, whatever that stuff is. He stopped. When was the last time it rained? It hadn’t rained for the past few months, and it was wintertime. Or was it? The temperatures for this winter were higher than what he remembered. Perhaps it had something to do with that fire.

He knew that plants helped with air quality. A good few new plants would probably clear up whatever unhealthy stuff his fire produced. He plucked a branch off the berry bush, plucked the berries, and threw the branch into the fire. He ate the berries, and threw the seeds onto the ground. There, he thought. That should be enough vegetation to clear up whatever was in the air. Ah, the garden, so beautiful. Feeling proud, he decided to climb the hill that was at the edge of the garden. He looked at the tiny hole that he had made a little while back. He had thoughts of leaving this garden, and seeing what was out there. He had tried to stick his hand through, but all he felt was icy coldness. Yikes, why had he wanted to leave this place? It was so much warmer, and better in the garden. Ah, he thought, the garden, so beautiful. 

It was then that the berry bush caught fire. The fire spread, from plant to plant, faster than he could run. He rushed down the hill, back to his fire. Why did he leave it burning? He dipped his hand into the water, but all he could feel was black ash. He thrust his arm into the ash, and dived in. The ash was at his shoulders before he finally touched water. He cupped the water in his hands, thrusted out of the layers of ash, and threw it at the fire. He did this a couple more times until the fire was completely out. By then, the entire garden was burning, and the light above was covered in an eerie red hue. The seeds, he thought, but no. They had burned too, and there was nothing left of them. The smoke from the fire made it so that he couldn't breathe, even when crouched down. He ran up the hill, covering his eyes, and ran headfirst into the wall. He grabbed a nearby rock, and threw it as hard as he could, nothing. He kicked, pushed, and finally broke the wall. He looked outside, and found only rock at his feet. The coldness was immense, but he had to get out of the garden. He ran across the barren rock, the coldness seeping into his bones. He didn’t stop until he reached a giant fault in the ground. He stopped, and looked back at the garden. It was completely dead. All he could see was smoke and ash. He realized where his blind faith had led him, and he realized that he couldn’t ever go back again.

She peered out the window, watching a meteor shower that was passing by. That's that, she said. She put her empty coffee cup onto the hovercraft, which made a beep noise before scurrying out the window. They watched as the craft flew over the horizon, with one of Saturn’s rings visible in the distance, across the hazy orange sky. She sighed, and started to stare at the light on the ceiling. Her story had caused him to get lost in thought, and he resorted to walking around the room. 

After a few seconds, he stopped walking, and said, at the end, why did he, he stopped talking, thinking about it further. 

She snapped out of her trance, and shifted her eyes to look at him, with a bitter look on her face. They probably didn’t tell you this, but the earth is much worse off than what they teach you in school, she said, the damage that humanity did, why, it would take, at least hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps tens of millions,  for the earth to heal completely.

He sat down again, and peered through the window. He thought back to when he saw Earth during his flight to Mars. He’d even taken some pictures, since most pictures of Earth that were before the 22th century had been destroyed, and he also wanted to chart Earth’s healing through the years. He wondered why there hadn’t been any settlements on Earth, and, he never really thought about it before, but he understood.