Since the Chimeran invasion, Jack and the small band of survivors had been traveling the stars in their small ship. For years and years they'd wandered and explored, all the while wondering what had happened back home, on Earth. Eventually, they decided to return, at least for a time. As they docked with the land-based spaceport just off the coast of Atlanta, they wondered what kind of desolation they would find on the inside, let alone on the surface.
There was indeed desolation in the port, but not nearly to the extent they'd expected, and, astonishingly, there were survivors. Small bands of humans had formed and were living an ad hoc existence. Jack's group fell in with the survivors, and for a time they all lived together. However, the survivors were mysteriously close-lipped about their experience. Once, Jack had questioned one, without much success.
"So, where are the chimera?" he'd asked.
"Hmmm?" replied the survivor.
"The chimera? The ones who invaded and wiped out the human race? Where are they? What happened, how did you drive them off?"
"What?"
Conditions on the planet were equally off-limits to the travelers, even if the survivors had any information. So, life continued in this fashion for some time, the two parties coexisting.
Even so, differences in opinion arose, and resent towards the ones who'd fled served as a catalyst for a coup. The spaceport survivors, along with a portion of the travelers, informed Jack and the remainder that they were leaving in the craft. Jack was devastated. As he said goodbye to the survivors, as well as some he'd traveled the stars with, his heart felt heavier than it ever had. He was losing his last link to space, forced to part with everything he'd seen and done in his adult life. That grief would never leave, not as long as he lived.
Once the craft departed, Jack and the people remaining hatched plans to fly an archaic jetliner on a scouting mission to the surface. With the survivors gone, they could finally indulge their curiosity about what had transpired on the planet in their absence.
The jet rumbled uncertainly as it neared downtown Atlanta. To their surprise, the passengers saw moving vehicles and pedestrians down on the highway. They decided to land the jet, turning the scouting mission into a one-way trip; landing the jet without a runway would cause irreparable damage, meaning they would never be able to return to the spaceport hovering offshore. Instead, they would rejoin the human race, building a new world even as they lived among ruins of the old one. Still Jack grieved.
