The Last Song Beneath Paris

The Last Song Beneath Paris

16 May 2300 — Underground Paris, Level Seven Central District

It is 2300, and Paris no longer belongs to the sky. Fifty years after the Nuclear Global War left the surface world an uninhabitable wasteland, the city lives seven levels underground. Real sunlight exists only in holographic projections and the memories of the old. To young people, the sky is a concept from history books.

Deep in Level Seven, an abandoned subway station has been converted into a performance hall. Tonight it overflows with people. Above the stage, a massive holographic night sky of blue and violet galaxies drifts through artificial smoke, creating an illusion of open space above the crowd. The air is damp and warm — machinery hum, electric heat, and the ever-present smell of rust.

Evie stands backstage with her companion Anaïs. In a quiet moment before she goes on, Evie closes her eyes. She remembers her mother’s voice — a memory of real rivers, real bridges, light reflected across water. Her mother once believed that was what the world looked like. Later came radiation sickness, white hospital rooms, and breathing growing thinner. Only then did Evie understand: the sky of her mother’s childhood memories had already been an artificial illusion. Earth’s beauty was gone long before the war finished it.

Anaïs watches her silently. She knows Evie rarely speaks about her mother. “Maybe Mars can become something different,” Anaïs says softly. “A place where we can begin again.” Evie doesn’t answer immediately. She knows that for most people, Mars is not a dream — it is an exit, repackaged as a dream after too many choices have disappeared.

Tonight’s performance is part of the United Nations’ Mars migration campaign, which the UN calls “cultural mobilization for humanity’s second home.” The world’s four remaining great powers — America, Europe, China, and India, known as the Big 4 — provide money, industry, security, and political pressure. Mars Migration Transport operates the fleet. The UN provides the moral language. Forty-eight ships carry three thousand passengers each — one hundred forty-four thousand people per wave. To move 3.4 million people to Mars at the current fleet scale will still take roughly fifty years.

Evie dislikes the political machinery beneath it all. But she also knows that many people still need to believe this migration is hope. And so, holding her old microphone, she steps onto the stage and sings.