There Is No Other Planet

	A few months turned into a year and the population was running low on food. Everyone knew that the time was coming to return home. Another discussion was held that night. It was decided that they were going to travel back to their world the following week and hope for the best.

	The little man nearly wet himself when the earth split open and a huge fireball shot out of the crack just inches away from where he was sitting.

	He ran as fast as his little legs could, but it was too late. Without noticing, he fell into a small hole made by an earthquake. Two continental plates shifted against each other, creating the rumbling, and he fell straight down to the mantle where he disappeared forever, never to be seen again.	

	One day, a little man was relaxing and soaking up the sun. He lay on a little hill, in the middle of a scenic countryside, unaware that the spot that he lay down to enjoy the afternoon sun was about to change forever.

	They drifted for days looking for a place to land. Once they finally found a planet that was temporarily habitable, they unloaded and decided to have a meeting about what was going to be done about this disaster.

	A plan was made to stay on this new planet for a few months until they could return home.

	After scientists did a thermal image, testing the heat of the planet, they discovered that the earthquake was triggered by extremely hot and fast mantle convection.

 	There was no trace of any civilization. Everything that was constructed on that world had seemed to disappear. A group of scientists surveyed the area before the ship landed to make sure that the planet was stable. The climate seemed to be the same as before with the exception of the ground registering a bit warmer.  As the ship hovered in the air, people started pointing out patches of singed ground. They realized that those patches were very small hot spots that were leading down into the lithosphere. The lakes also seemed to be over magma chambers due to the fact that they were all either steaming or boiling.                                                                         

	It was going to take a few weeks to travel back home. By the time that the ship departed it had nearly been a week later than their set date. Anxiety filled the air as they drifted away from their temporary home. Was their planet still going to be habitable? The King announced that they would arrive in several hours. As the world slowly drifted into view, a unified gasp echoed throughout the ship. 

	As the ship got closer, they realized that there was only one land mass, but that wasn’t all. Mountains and volcanoes shot up out of the one ocean which were identified as mid ocean ridges. These mid ocean ridges were caused by the oceanic plates diverging, with their edges moving apart from each other.  The ship circled the planet. Waves seemed to be visible from space and darkened lines in the ocean showed bottomless trenches along the shoreline.

	After realizing that the earthquake may never stop, the world’s king decided to take action. Everyone was ordered to board the spaceship and evacuate immediately.<br/>

	Chaos and panic filled the air as everyone filled the ship closest to their homes. By the time the last person had boarded, it was already obvious that this planet would never be the same.

	Once upon a time, in the far off future, on a planet much like our own, there was a civilization that thrived in perfect peace. It was a happy time with no worries of the future or the past.

	Although, little did they know that their way of living would soon be altered forever.

	A seismograph was taken to test the magnitude of the earthquake, hoping to find some sort of explanation for this disaster. The test read that the earthquake was a magnitude 14 which would be the highest ever to be recorded. As the ship left the layer of debris that the earthquake caused, their broken world continued its trembling without them.

	Their planet slowly faded away behind the ship. Everyone was in shock. They still couldn’t believe what had happened.

	The three huge continental plates that made up the world began to converge creating a huge earthquake. Where the continental plates and the oceanic plates converged, a subduction zone was created.  The oceanic plates sank under the continental plates, creating mountains and what seemed like a never ending horrible rumble. 

	Huge waves called tsunamis devoured the shoreline, taking everything in their path back out to sea when they retreated. Mountains shot up in an instant, spitting molten lava straight from the mantle. 

	Although there seemed to be many dangers on the planet, the King knew that there was no other option than to stay there.

	They unloaded the ship, and in time, decided to start building small towns along the shoreline. The King ordered his guards to build a small castle where people could seek refuge if needed. Small aftershocks continued to occur even though the original earthquake was long over, reminding the people of the horrid past. They now knew that their world and its forces of nature were not controllable, even on days when everything seemed to be working in perfect harmony. 

	As the world slowly disappeared from their point of view, something looked different. The planet didn’t look how the maps had shown just days before. All of the continents looked closer and more bunched together. Could it be the next Continental Drift?

	It couldn’t be. Usually a Continental Drift takes up to 200 years to reach Pangea but it seemed to be almost complete in just a few hours.  How was it possible that the three continents of this planet could have floated on hot magma to create one land mass in such a short time?

	With this harrowing experience, the people of this world felt nothing but grateful of their wonderful home, and never took for granted again the strength of Mother Nature.

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