When I woke up on July 26, 2337, it seemed like a normal, average day. But little did I know that my life would change forever. It all started when I woke up and started complaining about having to go to work. I always hear how people would love to work at NASA like I do, but becoming an astronaut and being rocket physicist is much harder than it sounds. My daydreaming was interrupted only by the morning news in hologram form. The report of riots happening in major cities nearly made me spit out my coffee, considering I lived a few miles away from the ones springing up in Los Angeles. After reading the headlines ‘Depleted resources” and“ Drop in food causing mass panic ”, I knew I had to get to work before the roads were blocked by the police holding back the rioting.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. My alarm clock went off. After having my daily dose of coffee to wake me up, along with my breakfast, I said goodbye to my family then left for work. That time was when the North American Federation and the UST (Union of Soviet Territories) launched an all out nuclear salvo. The fusion weapons decimated the world’s major cities, leaving parts of the world in ruins. When I get to the NASA building, I groan, trying to forget my memories about the day of war 13 years ago. After getting the job that I work at, I sat down at my desk only to see a memo on it. At first it seemed normal until I saw what it was about. A space program called Project Savior. I nearly threw up in my mouth hearing that dreaded name “Project Savior”.  Just to try to prove my speculation was wrong, I opened the packet only to confirm my dreaded assumptions.
The document’s first lines are ¨You have been selected for Project Savior, a series of manned rockets designed and calibrated to land on Mars. This plan will be in effect when we have decided humanity's last hope is to abort Earth and colonize Mars.¨

¨Are you okay Matthew, you seem pale¨ states my boss. ¨By going on Project Savior, you must leave behind your family and colonize mars.”          

My worries are true, I have to choose between my family, or being a potential hero. Slamming my hands against my desk I reply, “No, I CAN’T JUST LEAVE MY FAMILY BEHIND, just for something like my job.”

“Well then, I'll have you know that you're fired. You will no longer work here tomorrow.” My boss whispers to me to calmly. Devastated, I walk back to my paper work. While driving back to my home, I had to swerve my car to avoid burning patches of road. Walking out of the car I dropped to my knees crying at the sight of it. My home. Covered in ash. My family nowhere to be found. The sound of a gun rings throughout the air. Right when I turn around I felt a sharp pain in my in my neck, then I collapse on the pavement.

“Sorry if that stung badly, we needed to get the the civilians out of the crossfire, and we couldn’t be sure who was in the gang war or not.” “They’re trying to get the limited resources that are left, just for themselves. The looming figure says it like they had repeated it several times.

“So you tranqed everyone...was that the best idea you had?” I interrupt, still choking on the sobs of my dead family.

Our priorities were to stop the violence first. Then, get things sorted out.”, “Anyways, my is James, and NO MY NAME ISN’T JAMES BOND, I’ve heard that joke way too much...” James muttered, nearly screaming to me at the end.

“So where am I exactly” I replied.

“You’re in a police safe house now, you don’t have to worry now. If you want to look outside, just look through the walls. You can look outside of them, but other people can’t. It’s like a one way mirror.” James stated, as if trying to make the situation better for everyone else in the police building. The faces all around me filled with grief, as if they had suffered a similar fate as me.
The sound of  a gunshot rang through the air, ending the muttering and interruptions of everyone around me. The doors burst open and gunshots flew past me. CRACK, a bullet flies past my leg, then one embedded itself into my hand. Screaming in pain, I frantically ask if there is someone who could help me. I run over to the nearest firearm hoping to stop the attackers. Pulling the trigger, I disabled some of them but that wasn’t enough. Blood. Blood is everywhere. James and the L.A police department. finally held off the attackers but that wasn’t enough to stop the carnage that had happened. It is like a bomb of blood had gone off.
“Well it seems that this safe house wasn’t very safe after all”, James says over his heavy breathing, like he had ran a marathon. Despite his police badge and his official papers, his crazed look is really getting to me. Trying to figure out my options, I quietly figured out how to escape from this so called safe house. After much waiting, I finally swipe a keycard from a guard to help aid my escape. The chaos ends and the police overlooking the warehouse clean up the blood stained floors. This is my chance I thought to myself.
As I sneak through the crowd, no one notices me as my plain facial features allow me to go unnoticed. I click the button on the keycard and the side of the building disappears as if the wall itself was a hologram. This creates mass chaos before my eyes, as the people in the warehouse try to run outside. I run towards the nearest house out of the crossfire. I smash the window of the nearest car, getting the attention of the owner in their house. I’m glad that I learned how to hotwire cars from a few years back, when chaos broke loose, I think to myself.
“What are you doing?!?!” The car owner screams at me from his front door. Knowing that he won’t run to me in time, he points a gleaming rifle barrel in the direction of my face. As the window glass shatters, I duck to avoid being torn to shreds and I finish hotwiring the car. Finally I get onto the road, with my only worry being the driver’s seat car door that keeps swinging open from the broken hinges. I drive to the one place I can go to. The Nasa building. As I finally enter the parking lot, my tire blows so I have to run all the to the building. Bursting through the doors I see that the place is mostly deserted. While I go to my office to look for clues, I see my boss packing up his stuff.

“I MUST go on Project Savior” I shout to my boss “There is nothing left for me here, at least in space I could have some use.”

“Seems like you got here just in time, we were getting reading to go to the launch site.” My former boss enthusiastically replies. “Do you need a ride, your car looks like a scrap heap.” Groaning at my former boss’s comment, I say yes. It's not like I could walk there, I think to myself. After much driving, we finally get to the launch site, where many ships were ready to launch. 

“Well it seems we are here.” My boss states. The view is breathtaking, miles of laser like devices, ready to send a ship to mars. Reading the sign of the huge array before we entered the final building, it says “E.M.P.A.S, or electromagnetic propulsion array system.” As I entered, I saw preparations being made. Systems being calibrated. Checking flight trajectories. Loading the ship with all of its cargo.
“Almost ready to go?, because you should be, us astronauts are leaving in half an hour.” The astronaut exclaims like he won the lottery. “Don’t you just think space is exciting?”
“Not as much as you apparently”, I respond. “My name is Matthew, and what is yours.”
“I’m Tim. And anyways, I shouldn’t bother you now, you must get ready.” Tim declares with a hint of frustration towards me, probably because I got here late.

“Right.” I reply, thinking he wasn’t so bad for a first impression. Rushing to get ready, I catch a glimpse of a news report from an old fashioned 21st century T.V. My first reaction is why they had such outdated technology but the headline truely catches my attention. “Widespread famine growing, as war torn, and contaminated farming land all over the world produced little food this harvest. Likely culprit of the contaminated soil is from International skirmish a few years back, when a handful of nuclear weapons were fired.” I shudder as I realise that a famine of this size could kill hundreds of millions, or worse, billions.
After I finished putting on my space suit, Tim, me and 7 other astronauts walk out of the building towards our designated ship. “It’s huge” I think to myself, “550 feet tall and 75 feet wide, much larger that the original Saturn V that originally put men on the moon.” We enter a restricted area called “Project Savior test site:Rocket Neptune 6 launch site. The array starts to power up, signaling that the rocket would launch soon. We had to walk up a 1000 foot tall tower to get to the rocket, as the rocket needs to be suspended in air at first for it took take off. We all hope it didn’t fall from the support tower like last time, or the rocket would crash killing its occupants.
Finally we board the ship, just waiting for the final countdown. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, I squirm in my seat, barely able keep calm with my heart racing. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Blastoff! At the end of the word launch, loud metallic sounds came the support tower, signaling blastoff or a colossal fail. The looming suspense finally ends, and the ship is thrust into the air by the electromagnetic array beaming energy towards us. Although the rocket’s speed is only a tiny fraction the speed of light, the estimated time to reach mars is only 38 hours. After the day and a half long voyage, the red planet is finally in sight. Other than barking commands at each other when we needed to change course, we were silent the whole ride. The ship safely lands on the surface and when the doors open to the outside, an alarm goes off to break the silence. Martian life forms detected.  Intelligent life confirmed.