With their planet's death imminent, every Martian desperately hoped to gain a spot on one of the five survival spacecraft.
But they also knew that the ships could only carry - at the most - 10-12% of the planet's population of 4 Bn.
A select few guaranteed passage: Those were the Martians with mission essential skills , Scholars and experts in STEM, Art, Music and Dance and a small group of elders with in-depth heritage preservation knowledge.
And lastly, a lottery was held to choose a group of 100-150 Martians with "voyage enhancing" skills (aka concubines, "socializers", "physical therapists", etc).
It took less than a week to load supplies, check-off passenger rosters and pre-flight the five Space Ark Behemoths.
As the huge flying ziggurats lifted off, a banner flashed on every Martian's Mind's Eye screens: "The Votes have been tallied. Final Destination: The Planet EA (Earth)."
Submitted for your entertainment.
May you and yours be well and loving life today.
In Lak'ech,
JaiChai
[See more of my NFTs on OpenSea:
https://opensea.io/collection/orbitingoutliers, https://opensea.io/collection/isoc and https://opensea.io/collection/quaevolant]