Quite honestly, if we do manage to destroy the planet with our

Host: The sky above the city was a murky orange, the kind that comes when smog and sunset make a reluctant truce. The air felt heavy, thick with the scent of burnt fuel, fried food, and a faint electric tang from the neon signs flickering down the street.

A digital billboard loomed over the skyline, its endless loop of eco-ads flickering: “Save the Earth — There Is No Planet B.”

Inside a small rooftop bar, the world seemed to pause—not because anyone was listening, but because everyone was too tired to speak.

Jack sat near the edge, a half-empty glass of something strong and amber before him. His grey eyes stared out at the horizon, where cranes still moved—building what might one day be ruins.

Jeeny leaned on the railing, her hair catching the dying light, her brown eyes watching the smoke rise from the industrial district far below.

On the radio behind the bar, a soft, dry British voice read a quote from Mariella Frostrup:

“Quite honestly, if we do manage to destroy the planet with our devil-may-care attitude to natural resources, I'd suggest we leave, as a dossier in our defence, the collected letters to agony aunts and uncles down the generations. It would certainly prove that we weren't all bad.”

The radio went silent. The city did not.

Jack: “You hear that? Even the apocalypse has a sense of humor.”

Jeeny: “That’s what makes it bearable. Humor is the last thing we’ll lose before oxygen.”

Jack: “She’s got a point, though. We’ve written more letters begging for love than for mercy. Says a lot about what we cared for.”

Jeeny: “It says we were human. Messy, lonely, needy, full of contradictions. You can’t measure compassion in carbon emissions.”

Jack: “No, but you can watch compassion burn while people buy faster cars.”

Host: A soft wind lifted the napkins from a nearby table, carrying them like ghosts across the floorboards. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed—long, mournful, like a cry from the planet itself.

Jeeny: “You really think it’s that bad?”

Jack: “I think we’ve passed the point where belief matters. Whether or not we ‘think’ it’s bad doesn’t stop the ice from melting, Jeeny.”

Jeeny: “But maybe belief is all we have left. People still fall in love. Still write those letters Mariella talked about. That has to mean something.”

Jack: “Meaning doesn’t clean the oceans.”

Jeeny: “But meaning keeps us from drowning in despair.”

Host: The bar lights dimmed, and a neon sign reading “OPEN LATE” flickered, its reflection shivering in the glass of Jack’s drink. The air smelled faintly of rain, though the clouds held none.

Jack: “You ever think the planet’s just tired of us? Like a host who’s too polite to ask the guests to leave?”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But if we’re the guests, we’re the kind who leave little notes behind saying, ‘Sorry for the mess.’”

Jack: “You think letters to agony aunts count as apologies?”

Jeeny: “In a way, yes. They’re confessions, Jack. We’ve been confessing for centuries—every heartbreak, every doubt, every ‘Dear whoever can understand me.’ That’s our defense: not perfection, but longing.”

Jack: “Longing doesn’t save the world.”

Jeeny: “Maybe not. But it proves we had hearts, even when our hands were dirty.”

Host: The city hummed, low and eternal. The skyscrapers stood like sentinels, their windows glowing—each one a cell in the organism of a species too busy to stop, too clever to survive itself.

Jack leaned back, his voice turning dry, edged with the kind of irony that barely hides the ache underneath.

Jack: “So, what—you think future archaeologists will find our love letters and say, ‘See, they weren’t monsters after all’?”

Jeeny: “Maybe. Or maybe they’ll just see that even as we burned the world, we still wrote poetry about the fire.”

Jack: “Romantic, in a doomed sort of way.”

Jeeny: “Everything worth feeling is, Jack.”

Host: A plane crossed the sky, a thin white scar cutting across the haze. For a second, they both watched it—silent witnesses to the contradiction of human progress: beauty and destruction, hand in hand.

Jack: “Do you ever get tired of defending us?”

Jeeny: “All the time. But then I see a kid planting a tree in a cracked sidewalk, or an old couple sharing a blanket in a storm, and I think—no, not yet. We’re not done proving we’re not all bad.”

Jack: “You make it sound like we’re redeemable.”

Jeeny: “I think redemption isn’t about fixing everything. It’s about not giving up on what’s broken.”

Jack: “Even when we’re the ones who broke it?”

Jeeny: “Especially then.”

Host: The bartender turned down the radio, but the echo of Mariella’s words still lingered in the space between them, like an aftertaste of truth. The city’s glow pulsed through the windows, turning their silhouettes into shadows of thought.

Jack rubbed his temples, his voice softening into something between a sigh and surrender.

Jack: “You know, sometimes I wonder if we deserve the beauty we keep destroying.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the test. To love something knowing you can’t ever fully deserve it.”

Jack: “That sounds like every bad relationship I’ve ever had.”

Jeeny: smiling “Exactly. Earth’s just the biggest one we’ve ever been in.”

Host: The rain finally came, light but constant, tapping the rooftop like gentle fingers on a coffin. Jeeny closed her eyes, lifting her face slightly toward the sky, as if she were daring it to remember her.

Jack watched, a faint, rueful smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Jack: “If there’s anyone left to read our dossier someday, I hope they laugh before they cry.”

Jeeny: “They will. They’ll see the mess, the madness, the love letters, the protests, the selfies, the art—and they’ll know we were complicated, not cruel.”

Jack: “You really believe that?”

Jeeny: “I have to. Otherwise, what’s the point of all this surviving?”

Jack: “Maybe survival itself is the apology.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s the promise—to try better next time.”

Host: The rain deepened, the city shimmering, its sins and hopes running together in the gutters like ink on old paper.

In the distance, thunder rolled—not in anger, but in patience. As if the Earth itself were saying, I’m still listening.

Jack and Jeeny sat in that half-lit silence, their faces calm, their glasses empty, their hearts neither absolved nor condemned.

Just—aware.

And above the noise of a restless world, Mariella Frostrup’s words echoed, not as irony but as mercy:

“It would certainly prove that we weren’t all bad.”

Host: The camera would pull back, rising through the rain, over the glowing rooftops, past the sprawling streets where life, against all reason, still moved, still reached, still wrote.

The letters were already there—millions of them—floating through time like soft pleas to whoever comes next:

We loved. We tried. We failed beautifully.

And that, perhaps, would be the only defense we’d ever need.