My fingers tapped nervously on my regulation jumpsuit-clad leg. There was no-one else in the room, but my eyes kept avoiding...something in the stainless steel kitchen. It was just so odd, all metal and sanitary and characterless. It was what I had expected, but I still wasn't used to the uniformity. I sighed. Was I going to be put to work or did they hire me to sit around and convert oxygen into carbon dioxide? I stared at a liquids heater. They told me to stay here until orders came. There was no window in the kitchen and I longed greedily to catch another glimpse of Earth turning beneath us.

I love Earth so much, despite my mother's best efforts to turn me against it. She says that Earth is weak and that Europa will carry us much better. I did some research on Europa, but I only found the basic information we were all provided with: it was investigated in the 2110's, it was teraformed over the years with equipment sent there piece by piece, it orbits Jupiter and so on and so on. I stayed on Earth for as long as I could, but the final Leaving will be taking place in a few hours. Mother and Father have left for Europa already, but I insisted on staying on Earth 'til the last Leaving. The last Leaving will be the largest one, and I signed up to work as a member of the kitchen staff because it meant that I boarded early and missed the crowds.

I regretted my decision. I just wanted to see Earth again. I had given up my last days there. I felt cold steel through the thick material of my jumpsuit as I leaned back on the utensil board. The small room was suffocating. I jumped and hooked my suit on a knife when a recorded voice suddenly sounded in the room.

"Staff Member 252, water is required in Room 1."

My heartbeat sped up as I struggled to unhook my suit from the knife. They didn't tell me that I would be serving Room 1. I couldn't believe that I would be allowed into the control room, the room where...Would I be serving water to Cedric Geyston? I scrambled to fetch a flask and three water refills. Metallic clangs reverberated throughout the room as I bumped around in the small area. Holding the flask and water, I almost ran into the kitchen door before it sensed I was there and opened obediently.

In the corridor, I slowed my frenzied pace to a calm march and tried to look official. I knew exactly where Room 1 was, everybody did. There were few other people in the corridors, but the ones that were there were marching just as crisply as I was. I passed people, turned corridors and ignored the chunky metallic walls and the pale light panels that cast an unnatural light on everything. My boots thudded on the floor and the rhythm of my steps helped me to calm down. As I walked, I repeated words in my mind, hoping to get my thoughts in order. I was not the first one to serve water to Cedric Geyston, it was nothing special.

I was still nervous when I reached the door to Room 1. The security guards standing next to the door didn't help to calm my nerves. I wiped my left palm (my right hand was holding the water) on my jumpsuit and cleared my throat hesitantly.

"Water for Room 1?" I ventured. One of the security guards nodded and pressed his palm to a panel to open the door. I stepped forward nervously and the door shut behind me. I was inside another metal room with the door through which I had just walked behind me and another door a metre in front of me. I heard the sound of metal on metal and spun around just in time to see a thicker door shut over the one I had just walked through. I turned back to the other door and straightened my back, wiped my palm on my jumpsuit again and turned the handle.

As I entered the room, my mind went into panic mode. I could see the familiar outline of our leader against the glowing screens. The room was large enough to fit many people, but he was the only one there. Something was wrong. He always had bodyguards with him. I took a closer look at him. He was shaking, trembling all over.

"Are you alright?" I called, terror setting fire to my thoughts. I started to jog towards him, but froze when he spun around to face me. A shadow of a man peered up at me from the depths of the chair.

My eyes took in his trembling form, his sunken eyes that shifted skittishly to different parts of the room, his clenched hands and tired, sour mouth. He was a haunted man, and comparing this figure to the shining example of confidence from all the vids, I couldn't accept that they were the same man. His features were distorted with an image of rage, but I could see that all he really felt was emptiness and bitterness.

"What are you doing here?" he snarled.

"I," I searched for words,"I brought water." He rubbed a hand over his face. "Damn health scanners, telling me what I need." His hands stretched out to the table beside him and grasped a vintage glass bottle that didn't contain water. I became aware of the smell of alcohol in the room. The room was dark and the air was dry and stale. I looked at what had unmistakably been Cedric Geyston and noticed that he wasn't completely undone. He was clean shaven and his suit was ironed. His misery must have been something recent. I wasn't sure what to do, so I stepped forward to put the flask on the table and he lunged forward from his chair, holding the glass bottle threateningly.

"Don't move!" he rasped. He stared straight at me. "Do you want to kill me?" Dread simmered in my mind as my eyes widened. I had to get out of there. He was crazy.

I started backing away, but he shouted, "Don't move!"

I just wanted to get away, anywhere but there. It was absolutely silent in the room as we stared at each other. He looked away and started muttering under his breath. "Wasn't supposed to...messed up..." I caught only snippets of what he was saying. I kept a wary eye on him as he continued his talk until he looked like he had come to some sort of conclusion. He lifted his head and looked me in the eye in a manner that I recognised from his former self. "Europa isn't real," he said.

"Please can I go, I won't tell anyone anything," I gushed, desperate for escape. "I will leave you here, or bring you anything you want, please-"

"Did you hear me?" he asked, incredulous, but I kept ploughing on.

"Is there anything you want? Anything you need? I am very good at keeping secrets- "

"You CAN'T GO!" he roared. I kept absolutely still, not wanting to set him off again. "You cannot get through that door. It will never open again, do you hear me? You can try all you want. That door is locked for good and you're stuck here." I stared at him in shock. I spun on my heel and ran through to the interconnecting room and pounded on the metal door. "Let me out! Let me out!" I gasped. I looked around for panels of any sort, but there was nothing.

"Listen to me," Cedric shouted from the other room. My head was pounding and my blood rushing through my ears. Everything was so loud. "Why?" I asked. I didn't expect an answer, but I got one. I turned and Cedric started talking from the doorway.

"Europa...it doesn't exist. It's there, but it's just...it's just snow and ice."

"I don't believe you," I said.

"Whether or not you believe me, it's true. I have known Europa isn't habitable for a long, long time. The whole story started as an attempt to calm people down when the first floods came. They sent out a vessel, sure, but it never made it to Europa. They told everybody that it worked, that Europa was inhabitable. People accepted it. People calmed down. People are so STUPID!" He yelled the last part.

"What is this? If Europa is fake, then what is all this?" I gestured to the enormous spaceship around me. I was stalling. "What are we doing? Where are we going?" A horrible thought entered my mind. "Where is everybody from the first Leavings?"

Cedric laughed. It was hollow and bitter and it made me cringe. He turned around and walked back to the control room. I followed him and stood next to the desk. "See that?" he pointed to one of the screens. I saw Earth, turning slowly. "That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. They chose me to protect it. If we stayed on Earth, we would've let it burn. We would've burned it for the heat it produced and at the same time poisoned ourselves with the fumes. We would've eradicated everything so that we would be the last to go... And then we would go. We would go so horribly, suffering right up until the last minute, desperately trying to catch onto some form of hope. And the last people would've died on the empty planet that could have been so full of life."

Cedric turned to me, his dark eyes glittering.

"They chose me to protect Earth, all the animals and the plants and the water and the rocks, and they chose the right person to do it, because I will sacrifice," he was still staring at me, "anything for that planet. They didn't put much effort into appearances for the first leavings. This one, however, OH, you know us humans. We want to go out with a bang. You want to know where the first Leavings went? Here, boy, I'll show you firsthand."

There was a moment of calm and then there was chaos. I saw him lunge towards me, stretching his hands out. I grabbed for the half-empty glass bottle on the table and swung it through the air. He was staring a bit to my left, a manic smile on his face. My hands were clenched around the bottle neck and I saw his head snap to the side a split second before I heard the smash. The cold glow from the screens made the glass shine blue as it scattered in the air and droplets of red accompanied it. I closed my eyes as a thump sounded, the sound of a body hitting a metal surface. Exhaustion ran through me as breaths tore in and out of my chest. I opened my eyes and saw what he had been aiming for.

A large button stood out obnoxiously on the plain metal surface, small white lettering printed neatly on the black plastic. A key stood upright, stabbed into the keyhole that opened the covering of the button. The lettering read, 'Self Destruct." I turned my head and almost looked at the heap on the floor. I couldn't. The air smelled like copper and salt. I believed him. Just like that, everything went dull and I was numb. The room was blurry. My hands were blurry. I wasn't aware of the piece of glass still held in my pressure-whitened grasp. My chest lifted up and down and I shook. I didn't notice the irony, that I was in the same condition in which he had been when I first entered the room. We had nowhere, we had nothing. My future was replaced by a black hole, a void, and I stood and tried to comprehend the mass of emotion that everyone on this ship would never feel. I realised that my mother and father were gone. Floating in space.

I closed my eyes. I was alone. I didn't allow myself to sink to the floor and cry. I had too much adrenaline. He had been about to kill us all. And now I was about to do the same thing. His speech made far too much sense and I knew that I had to do it, and I wished for the human in me to go away so that I could be a robot and be strong enough not to weep when I did it. I stepped forward and placed my hands on the metal surface near the button. I leaned on it, head bent over. Get this over with before you chicken out. The black button stared at me like Cedric's eyes, intimidating. I moved my hand above it, and in a small, crisp movement, I pressed downwards.

As the sound of destruction ripped and tore and sliced through the air, I thought of Europa, our haven.

The End 

~~~

Europa by ELImstsuj is the winner of Challenge 6 on the ScienceFiction profile.