Remember how we stood tall and proud, that Wednesday 6 September 2147, as captain Mike Miller waved his last goodbye at the threshold of the Defiant’s door? He was going to lead the first group of humans beyond the orbit of Mars into the depths of the Solar system, and then into the vastness of space, and back. A fifty year round trip to collect data, a prelude to the colonization of the nearest inhabitable star system. Humanity was leaving its cradle and taking its first baby step into the galaxy.

How many people had gathered on this glorious day in that remote area of the former United States of America? Ten thousand? A hundred? A million? History has not recorded. All awaited the ignition with bated breath. When the storm of fire raged from the bottom of the rocket, and it began its slow, almost reluctant, ascent towards uncharted territory, thunderous applause rose to meet the din of the cryogenic engine. Everyone craned to follow the tiny mote of flashing metal, until all that was left to see was a white vapor trail that the wind soon blew away. Then the crowd whooped, and everyone hopped into their car back home to watch the latest news from the crew.

During the first days, all the newspapers and TV channels buzzed about the event. Large cover splashes promised to tell everything about the life on board, while prime time shows vied for live interviews of the astronauts – the rocket had barely reached the moon orbit and the turnaround of electromagnetic waves was still a matter of a few seconds. Then the hype slowly subsided. All things considered, it was at this point no different from an inhabited trip to Mars, something that had already been done a couple of times during the previous century.

The weeks went by. As the rocket hurtled into space, Earth relapsed in its usual business of diplomatic crises, sporadic skirmishes over disputed borders, famine for some, death for many, while the happy few enjoyed the bliss of a blithe life in swanky homes protected by towering fences and armed guards. So it had been for centuries, and so it would endure.

At least it seemed. But it happened, just as the Defiant was about to cross the orbit of the first cobble in the asteroid belt: the crew vanished into thin air. One minute they were alright and busy, the next they were gone. The rocket flew on along its computed trajectory like clockwork. No onboard instrument registered anything suspect. Yet, the crew had disappeared. Cameras inside the rocket showed empty spaces. Mission control on Earth scanned every tiny corner of the ship, to no avail: no corpses, no evidence of injury or incident. Just nothing.

What has happened? Newspapers and TV channels burst with crazy theories: a sudden madness had struck and all the crew members had jumped out into space; some unknown force field had wiped out all organic matter; the crew had been abducted by aliens and then carried away to a remote system to be studied and maybe dissected; a secret weapon had been inadvertently triggered and had backfired. And so on. In the middle of that strife, only a few enlightened voices pointed out that the only way to unravel this mystery would be to launch a second, faster rocket along the exact same trajectory, and investigate either at the very spot of the disappearance, or aboard the ship when the new one would have caught up with its slower counterpart.

So it came to pass that that second rocket was built in haste. No throng gathered when it launched, but the expectation was immense. There was a riddle waiting to be solved in space, everyone wanted to get to the bottom of it.

Eventually, the new rocket reached the location where the first crew had disappeared. Who didn’t witness what happened at that precise moment? How many times has that video been played, again and again? Even the scant archives we keep store dozens of copies of it, copies of those few seconds that would change human destiny forever. How can anyone possibly forget the face of Jack Crow, the captain of the mission, talking to mission control, suddenly breaking off, looking around, puzzled. “Do you hear? Those voices? The music?” Then, as he peers through the nearest window, that expression of awe, “But, but. Oh my goodness, we have arrived in par –” A blank as the signal fails, a short flurry of noise on the screen, then the image, back and vivid.

The image of an empty seat.

Two hours later, the only likely interpretation had spread worldwide on the social networks. “Par –”, the cutout bit of Jack Crow’s last word, could only be the beginning of “Paradise”. It was beyond doubt: both ships had crossed an invisible border into the heavenly regions that only God and angels and the souls of the blessed were allowed to roam. The crew members had been snatched away, whisked off to whatever place God had deemed fit to them.

The most skeptical among the skeptical claimed that it made no sense, that the captain had been victim of a hallucination, that his senses had been overloaded by a strange phenomenon, that it was nothing but hard physics. But who would believe them? No, the evidence was obvious: God’s home was over there, several millions kilometers above our heads.

The pandemonium was indescribable. Churches all around the world, which had been almost deserted, suddenly overflowed with people. Murderers, thieves, drug dealers, hoodlums, rapists, bilkers, bullies, corrupted politicians, all made public excuses, fell onto their knees, beseeching God’s forgiveness. The Pope, and all the other religious leaders, exulted. God’s existence, sapped by centuries of science and agnosticism, was unexpectedly vindicated. At the very moment it was giving out the last breath, religion has won the battle. More than four millennia of hopeful faith were at last rewarded.

New lives began. Lives where all felt the weight of an invisible eye scrutinizing them from millions of kilometers away, but with such a keen sight that no one doubted every move or thought was instantly registered and appraised. At first, the consequences were rather positive: people became helpful to each other; wars ended on the spot; old people, usually rejected by busy families, were welcomed back. Crime almost disappeared – only madmen dared break God’s prohibition of murder. Couples remained faithful, even during hardships. Children obeyed parents and teachers again. People endeavored to put aside prejudice and become tolerant. It was as if a part of paradise had descended onto Earth.

The clergy thought it was now time to ask God his opinion on debated matters like abortion or homosexuality. They sent prayers and prayers begging for answers or signs, but nothing ever happened. God was out there but He was definitely mute. Pundits reasoned that He still didn’t want to meddle in men’s business. That interpretation gained momentum as time passed, and finally it was decided that each one was free to choose, even if it meant putting salvation in the balance.

And so it went on during two or three generations. Then that picture perfect society slowly came apart at the seams. Life was stifling. Morals overshadowed everything. Passions had to be checked. Transgression was no more permissible, even in thought, unless you wished to jeopardize your afterlife. Thought patterns became uniform. It was dull. It was tame. It was joyless. It was boring. A bunch of rebels trumpeted that even Hell might be a better place to live in. People looked up at the night sky wistfully and grumbled. Why were we caged? What was the purpose of stars, nebulae, galaxies, and all the wonders we could see through the telescopes, if they were forever out of reach?

To that question, fundamentalists of all shapes and sizes had prepared a canned response: it was punishment. God had punished humanity because we weren’t worshipping Him properly. There were too many infidel and He didn’t want us to expand until we were back on the right path. Each religion blamed the others. Jews called out Christians for their fake prophet, Christians in turn accused the fake prophet of Muslims, who passed the buck to Jews and their wicked rites. The three monotheistic religions turned against Hindus and their many gods, who taunted Buddhists. All lashed out at atheists. Tensions escalated again, until Earth became a tinderbox.

No one remembers where the first spark sprang up or where the first bomb detonated. The planet burst aflame in several places at once. Shells pelted down. Blazes and destruction engulfed the cities. Bullets rained on the survivors who had hit the roads to flee that living hell. And when nuclear weapons released their payloads, the Earth was defiled forever. Billions died. The luckiest were vaporized by direct hits. The others suffered a slow and painful death as the result of radiation burns and mutations. Radioactive dust flew high in the atmosphere, contaminating entire continents and blotting out the sun. Temperatures nosedived.

And God? God never showed up. He laid back in His heavenly recliner and watched us slaughter ourselves with a smile on His lips.

And now, a century later, here we are. What remains of Earth? It is locked in a new ice age. All what’s left of Europe and North America is a crust of radioactive slag buried under an ice cap tens of meters thick. Australia is covered in ice, too, but for its northernmost part. Africa and South America have been contaminated by highly radioactive rains that wiped out but all animal life. China is a vast crater. Japan has been flooded several times. The only areas that escaped the fallout while being warm enough to be inhabited are middle Pacific islands, Indonesia, and a few patches of land in southern India and Central America.

How many of us have survived? A few hundred thousands? A million, tops? We left the cities, abandoned their gaping wounds of charred concrete and melted girders to seek shelter in the forests, build wooden huts and eke out our livelihoods from fruits, berries and vegetables. Every so often we indulge in meat and, for those who live by the sea, fish. But most animals have been contaminated, too, and eating their flesh is like poisoning ourselves. The seeds we scavenged from former cereal fields we tried to plant but most of them had their DNA damaged and never grew.

Yet, we could start afresh. Many machines have survived: cars, ovens, fridges, computers. We don’t have electricity but we could easily rig up old solar panels and make them work. Lots of books have been recovered, we have plenty to read. The knowledge is still there, albeit in scattered form.

But why would we? What use do we have for that knowledge anymore?

We used stand tall and look up at the sky in wonder. Now, we hunch and look down at the muck in dejection. The stars do not mean anything anymore to us. They’re just deception, small beacons lit and placed in the sky to lure us. But we are no fools. We remember the lesson. We’re not going to be suckered another time.

Philosophy is dead. The interest in science has dwindled. The new generation doesn’t even want to learn to read or write. What good is it, they ask? What good is it to acquire knowledge and wisdom, if we’re bound to bump our heads against an impervious wall? What has God left to us? The parched deserts of Mars which shudder under a distant and feeble sun? The molten valleys of Venus and its high perched clouds which rain showers of sulfuric acid? How merciful of His!

And I? Every night I wake up, walk to the threshold of my shack and ponder. What if? What if it had been just a joke? What if there never had been any god or paradise, but just a cynical prank set up by an alien and hostile civilization? Why bother with war? Let the indigenous species destroy itself, allow for a little while until the planet has recovered, then land and claim it your own. Easy-peasy: no fight, no casualties.

Put away in a box I have a radio receiver and a couple of spare batteries. Every now and then I jangle with them and think about turning the rig on. But I’m afraid of what I would hear. The rational part of my brain tells me it would only be static, but the other part expects something else: a jeering hysterical laugh echoing forever in the boundless void of infinity.