For the last two days Michael had found himself thinking in an new direction. All the old stuff we depended on is gone and that's okay. He didn't care at all if he never saw space again. In fact he'd rather not go back to it and even if there was a way to fix it all he didn't want to go back to Earth: He was positive in fact that they could never go back; none of them. He was positive he wouldn't be able to live that way again anyway... Not after this. Less than two years ago his entire life, his entire focus was wrapped up in the old way. Hadn't he been waiting for the countdown to go on his next mission? He had. Back to space? He had no choice, he would have to go, but his life would not be space... Travel... Missions...
The world did not end. We think so highly of ourselves that we believe that the end of society means the end of the world and I guess it did mean the end of the Earth for us... some of us, but the end of the world? No. The world will go on and on when we are nothing at all but dust upon the ground. We will pick the world up and drag it around with us from place to place forever until there is no more time left. It was what our ancestors on Mars had done: Picked up and moved their entire civilization to Earth. And Earth had proven too hard to adapt to and so we had had retreated to our DNA and become slightly different; enough so that it didn't matter and we had begun again.
This time on Hay Vida we might not have to retreat to our DNA at all. It might be possible to go forward and adapt as we age. But even if we did retreat it would not be world ending. It would only mean beginning anew in a more basic way: A more basic configuration of the true life form that we were.