The Celebration (6)
"Crispin! We are going to late come on!" "Yeah Crispin we are going to miss it if we don't leave soon!" Me and my son kept shouting up the stairs to the buff black dragon "yeah yeah keep your panties on ladies I'm commin'" he replied as he rushed down the stairs almost triping at the top step. "Finally" me and my son said in perfict unison" "I swear if you guys were both otters I would think that you were related!" he replied in a sarcastic tone "and why is that?" I replied in an equally sarcastic voice "he snickered and walked past us to the door as we followed close behind, all the while I was certainly staring at a certain part of his anatomy that I found particularly attractive, unknown to him of course.
Once we reached the celebration of the crystal feast (aka Christmas) we took our places in the seating arrangement and waited patently for the speech to begin. This was our third year on the planet so the population was beginning to become quite extensive. Almost 30,000 people, a lot in only three years. As I made that observation the speech began. It is an important time to listen but it seemes to drag along forever and it is always the same information, how much land had been colonized in the past year, how many accidents had occurred with supplies and food stocks, nothing major as always but it is still interesting to hear what stupid things the citizens of Mars had done. As the speech ended the fun part started, the party. It may not be as formal as you may think but it is still a blast to attend, but it is not a "mandatory party".
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Once we arrived home we started to unpack
the things we had packed, chairs, cups, snacks, etc. we finished and headed if to bed soon after because of the fatigue caused by the party every year.
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I awoke with a start as I heard a strange noise emanating from the kitchen it was like a slow droning moan of something electrical, like an ice machine. I started off to the kitchen to inspect and as I rounded the corner I saw a sight like no other, complete darkness! I flicked the switch to activate the lights and then I saw what was making that sleep rousing noise, it was the television displaying that it has received a message. I flipped it on and it displayed a message that this was an urgent message that everyone in the living quarters should view. After I had woken everyone up I pressed play on the remote and the emergency protocall signal was shown for a short time indicating that their was a problem with the earths environment, we were not worried because we get signals from earth all the time because that is just the nature if them, but when the message started to play it was obviously not an accidental signal received by our stations, but something to be scared of, even if we hate humans. The earth was being roasted, the satalites keeping earths magnetic field and ozone Layer had stopped working because of power shorteges and no one had noticed. A massive solar eruption had doused the earth in radiation and killed all of earths inhabitants. "I'm scared" said Lewis, "we're all scared" was the only response given.