The whole world changed the day that space flight became affordable. Instead of being exclusively for the super-rich, the average everyday citizen could take a short trip to space for only a week’s pay. N.A.S.A. and all the other multi-billion-dollar-a-year space agencies made more money from passengers in the first month than they did from government contracts for that year.

The space industry took off like light speed through the solar system. The only real downside to all that travel, was that there wasn’t another breathable atmosphere on any of the other planets. They’d even checked every single one of the moons, and under the surface of every glacier or frozen sea. The only place that people could live, without terraforming, was Earth.

The downside was that Earth needed terraforming itself. Pollution and the ravages of time had taken their toll on the planet; and all that was left to do was fix it.

The first step people took, was to remove all the radioactive waste. What people didn’t realize, was that millions of tons of it existed. No one knew what to do with it. The idea of dumping it on another planet, or even the moon, was immediately rejected as only shifting the problem and not dealing with it.

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“Shoot it into the sun.” One of the brilliant scientists of the day suggested. “It’s a giant nuclear furnace. If the stuff doesn’t burn up in the sun’s corona, it’ll definitely be burned up once it hits the surface.”

With no other plausible or possible alternatives, the scientific community decided. A campaign to rid the world of nuclear waste, to be disposed of in the sun, was the best course of action. For the next 10 years, all radioactive waste was recovered from the Earth. It was sent into space on a direct course for the sun, on practically a daily basis. Once ships were close enough to the sun, they jettisoned their cargo, and the momentum alone carried it into the sun’s gravity well.

On the 10 year anniversary of the first flight of the mission, the last shipment of nuclear waste met the surface of the sun. Humanity as a whole rejoiced, because they had finally rid themselves of the worst thing to have plagued mankind. What they hadn’t known at the time, was that it hadn’t saved humanity at all.

It was the beginning of the end of 'humanity' as we knew it.