The John Irvine Band - Scanning The Dark Horizon (2023)

It was time to leave Earth. Truth be told, it was time years ago - but we’d held on, waiting for things to get better. They never did, of course. They’d only got worse.

We were always Scanning The Dark Horizon, constantly looking out for anything that could be considered a threat to our already fragile existence. Anything appearing through the far-off gloom - a brief dot on the radar, a sudden flash of light beyond the cloud, the smallest flicker on a screen could be a sign that we were about to come under attack.

Since the warming, opposing factions had risen up all over the land. Each species was fighting for its own claim to what was left in a hopeless pursuit of dominance. Like The Cloud Seeders. They ‘visited’ us every few weeks - sometimes more - attempting to alter our weather systems. At first their tech was poor, adding nothing to the already burnt-out conditions. But lately they’d greatly improved their science (their carriers had become more and more impressive, too, over time) and now storms raged more or less constantly. In truth, we’d not seen them for a while, but their presence could always be felt - lurking, biding their time. And recently, the appearance of hostile Solar Winds had done a good job of standing in for them. Although we couldn’t detect whether they were a natural phenomenon of the North or if they were man/alien made, these electrical disturbances were doing a damn good job of blocking our equipment signals; futzing up our comms.

The North. That’s where we’d wound up. Flooding was constant in the lowlands as the tides were permanently screwed-up. Habitable land in the South had become scarce, and everywhere there were fresh stories Of Seas And Oceans breaking down the remaining inland barriers, leaving complete destruction in their wake. So we had to live at the higher altitudes. I say ‘live’, but in truth this was no life - it was simply survival. With all our time spent frantically scrambling from here to there in a bunch of clapped-out geodesics - we were desperate, lurching from one terror to the next, and one more big rain would just about do for us.

Our lives hung by A Delicate Thread. Every action was a gamble. Every movement a risk that needed calculating, and the odds were stacked against us. So what was the answer? We’d tried everything. We needed a Lifeline - but where was that going to come from? And this morning, The Storm Chasers mission had taken place as normal - but the crew didn’t return, everyone was lost. For me, that was the last straw. We’d become A World On The Run and I was in no doubt that we would have to depart - immediately. We’d have to give up this planet once and for all. There was no way of reversing what we’d done and it was time for us to make a new home. But, this time, not screw it up. I didn’t hold out much hope of that, but what else could we do? But still certain people doubted the idea. “Better the devil you know,” they’d said. But I knew I was right. It was time to go. It was time to leave - as fast as we could…

Suddenly, the alarm went off on the radar.

I sensed the horizon go dark. I knew immediately that the Seeders had returned.

I heard the thunder roar - like a final, dying cry - and then the rain began to fall.