As people continued to move through the base corridors, there arose a public disturbance concerning two elderly men who were known for spending their time cooped up in a corner. The reason for their stationary lives was a mystery to the population.
“At last we are free! Humanity is free from all that plagued us before we took to the stars! I might have not seen it then, but now I do! We need nothing other than the means to survive. All the want, power, and corruption, we are free from it. All is perfect! Can’t you see that?” said one man to the other.
“This? What, living inside a bubble on a planet that moderately meets our needs? We have lost all connection with what makes us human. Let’s preserve this!” The other man contested, this one with longer hair.
“And for how long? It’s just us two right now. We tried to spread our message. We tried to pass on our ideas and beliefs to this new generation. We tried to save America, but we failed. It’s over. America is over.”
“Don’t you dare say that! They have corrupted you! You are confused!”
“And you are not? Look at us, choosing to remain within an arbitrary circle that you claim to be U.S. borders. You think you can just draw a country on the ground and live in it? This is not Earth. There is no America here. This idea that exists in your head is nothing more. We tried to preserve it, and it didn’t work. Life is starting over, and we are now at the beginning of time. Let us move forward!”
“And history? Everything that once made us who we are? Where we came from? Our culture? That means nothing to you anymore? You surely cannot think that we are living on a blank slate and that the past means nothing. This is not the beginning of time, our landing was not genesis. There existed another society before! We existed!” the old man with longer hair said, almost as if to confront the spectators who had no idea what was going on, living off the idea that their society began from a spaceship. The mystery of where the spaceship came from was never questioned, as the founders of the colony sought a new society and believed memories of Earth would only taint what would be the birth of a new and civilization-free humanity.
“It doesn’t exist! Don’t you see? This is our chance to start over, to learn from our mistakes, history’s mistakes. We can turn around and live as if none of it ever happened! If this generation believes in genesis, then we are free from all the greed and corruption that plagued Earth! It might as well have never existed! We can truly start anew!” proposed the other man.
“You can’t do that!” argued the man with longer hair.
“Why not?” the other man said, motioning a threat to leave the circle.
“Because we are the last solace for America. We are the only ones left who remember. We are America’s only hope. If we give in, then you are correct. We may as well have never existed.” the man with longer hair said forcefully as if to pull the other man away from the edge of the circle.
The crowd of people looked confused around these two men, and begin to grow rather uncomfortable, unfamiliar as to what America even meant.
“We are old, we are the only ones left to hold onto these memories. Let’s just let them go. They don’t mean anything anymore.” remarked the man with shorter hair.
“I refuse to simply exist! I long for the days of identity, patriotism, unity, and money. Oh how I miss money! That’s what this colony needs! Drive, passion, love. Not this… existence. I feel like we are nothing but bacteria, just living it out on this desolate host planet. I miss my home, I miss my family, I miss my job, but most of all, I miss America!”
“And that’s the problem. You defined yourself by your borders, by what you have, by who you control. Your concepts of money and national identity, they don’t exist here. And now look at us, reduced to two old men who spend our time around a circle we drew ourselves, our own America. No one recognizes it!”
“I recognize it.”
“And you will be the last! I’m stepping outside of this ridiculousness.”
The man with longer hair grabbed the other man by the ankle, causing him to fall to the ground.
“I won’t let you leave, you traitor!”
A fight ensued as the man who had fallen kicked the other man square in the face.
Having gotten up, the man with shorter hair stomped on the U.S. border and brushed it off with his foot.
“It’s over, I’m leaving.”
The man with longer hair scrambled to redraw the circle around him. Unaware of why this man was so hastily drawing a circle around himself on the ground, the crowd appeared to burst into laughter.
“Genesis is a lie! You didn’t just come here! Where do you think you all came from!” the man with longer hair yelled out.
The crowd continued to laugh and followed the other old man by stomping on the old man’s circle, which appeared to be drawn with nothing more than sidewalk chalk.
“Stop that! This is America you are stepping on!” the man with longer hair said, trying to push away the many feet that trampled upon his borders.
“This isn’t utopia! This is not the vision we had when we set out for the stars! This is not the humanity I know! Are you truly content just living out your lives in this iron-clad complex that you call the colony, that you call utopia? This, this is not utopia! I knew utopia, and I realize it now more than ever!
Realizing it was pointless to convince this generation of a past that only existed in his own head, the old man gave up.
“I don’t want to live here anymore.” he said to himself as he kneeled down on his hands and knees, feverishly trying to redraw his borders.”
Appearing as a passing novelty, the crowd grew bored of the old man and dispersed to carry on with their daily duties.
The old man gazed out the window at the desolate landscape, void of anything, and fell to the ground and died.