SECOND CHANCE

Linda Murčová

I stepped into the room. Nervous, but full of interest. "Don´t be scared, I won't hurt you. " whispered she quietly and moved a bit closer to me. Her wheelchair made an awful scratchy noise . "Hi granny." I said, waiting for an answer, but nothing came. " Well... yeah, dad told me that, umm, you wanted to see me, so here I am." She moved a little closer again. "Sit down, my little boy, just sit down and focus on the story I´m about to tell you." Her voice was shaking and that made me feel even more worried.

"Long time ago, when your parents weren´t even born yet, there was a big accident on the planet. But the planet wasn't our Mars, its name was Earth. Our population lived there for millions of years and didn't do well. We all knew what the problem was, but nobody really cared. We were hoping for brighter future, but nothing more. We had to deal with tons of plastics... have you ever heard of plastic, my boy? No? Okay, let me explain that to you.

In the age of plastics, almost every single thing was made of this mysterious material, starting with bottles and ending with toothbrushes. People used it just once and threw it out immediately. After some time, there wasn´t any space left to put the trash, so people decided to simply throw everything into the oceans. And this was the beginning of destruction. Of course, there were also many other problems like forest fires, decreasing of animals or CO2 pollution, but people on Earth used to speak about plastic, because it was the main thing they could help with on their own. In 2019 a young smart girl from Sweden, Greta, came to the leaders and started fighting for nature and future, but nobody listened to her because she was only 16. She wanted to save the world and humanity heard her, but they decided not to listen. So here we are, Jeremy Thunberg junior. Your great-great-grandmother was really strong woman, wasn't she? Don't you get it? Greta was my granny, you silly. She took couple hundreds of us and got us to the Mars about 100 years ago, planet Earth is now just a dirty place full of dead bodies. But we survived! She chose to give us the possibility to live. Aren't you happy?"

I felt like now I don't understand anything. So there were milliards of people on the Earth? Why were they so silly and did nothing?! Were they all blind?! So many questions and no answers, but I know one thing exactly. If I could travel back in time, I would help Greta save the planet. So why didn't they??