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The day didn't seem too bad, Scott thought.  The sun was not shining but the sky was bright just the same.  The clouds weren't their usual dark grey, either.  They were the bright white and ashen colour they were on days when the sun negotiated with the clouds…but usually lost.  One cloud in particular stood out above the rest, seeming to span from here to infinity as it slowly sank to earth like its many brethren.  It seemed, as Scott looked up at it, that if one could walk on the clouds it would be the large snow-covered hill one needed to climb into heaven.  The almost-lumbering mass was lumpy and thick, making it seem completely solid.  Trailing off, as most clouds today, into the west.
Sometimes looking up at the clouds brought him a minute or two of peace.  The peace never did last very long but it was enough to calm him out of any foul mood.  The calmness was able to help him to think straight.  Just then, the wind blew quite strongly and the leaves ushered past him, yellow, green, and red.  A chill ushered itself up and down Scott's twenty-year-old body as he zipped his coat up a little farther.  A sniffle reminded him of his little sister's presence to his left, and his peace was once again broken.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" she said, her face crumpling up at the bright sky.  She wore wire-thin glasses which fit onto her cute seven-year-old face.  They were pink with a small flower emblazoned on the end of each arm.  She finally gave the sky up as she stared at her older brother with a patience that most lost after the age of twelve, when other things become more important.  Stephanie hopped off the pile of leaves she had been playing in and put her Barbie back in her coat pocket.  That doll had been her favourite ever since she had gotten it as a birthday present a couple of years ago.  It almost seemed as though she would never be able to get rid of it, Scott watched her yet again stuff her long blonde bangs back under her hot pink toque.
"Nothing. Let's go Stef," Scott said holding out his hand to his little sister.  Stephanie stepped along with Scott, holding his left hand, skipping as she went.  The school yard was now very different from his childhood.  When he had attended this school he could remember hundreds of kids.  Running and playing around the school during lunch hour and after school, he’d spent many hours at peace in the yard. Literally bulging classes, and politicians promising larger schools and more teachers, replaced the playtime.  Now the yard was full of education terminals and one of the few baseball diamonds remaining in the city.
In recent years the need humanity’s need to better itself combined with the curiosity of the unknown.  Even more people were going to university to become doctors, military personnel, or highly paid colonists.  So far there were colonies on the Moon, and other settlements beginning on Mars and its moons.
It was surprising, to Scott anyway, how the scientists were treated nowadays.  Before the mad dash for Mars and to expand they weren't paid much attention.  But now, after ‘the dash' as the media had so appropriately dubbed it, scientists were paid more and treated better.  Scott had been worrying for some time now that the world was almost being abandoned by its inhabitants.  For a while it seemed as though it was, though few seemed to notice.
In the first three years of the expansion there were regular launches every day.  Eventually it expanded to several per day.  By the end of the second decade there were only enough people left to keep the planet "running".   The launches were much less frequent now, and Scott was grateful.  Sometimes he felt that it was a standard of their society to "want" to leave Earth.  He had felt the pressure to leave as many of his friends and family had left, and now his mother was spouting the rhetoric.
Then there was Mars.  It held new promises of untouched, and therefore undamaged, resources.  But more space for the starving world was the most appealing aspect of it all.  One could buy a plot of land and do whatever one wished with it.  No one was to go out of their living area unless it was necessary, as oxygen was in short supply recently.  The main oxygen generator had broken down, the press telling the world that it was because of faulty wiring. It was problems like these that made Scott want to stay.  You never had to worry about an oxygen shortage when walking through central park.
Scott smiled as he and his little sister walked down the street together.  She seemed happy just to jump in puddles, throw pebbles at the dirt, and talk to her doll.  He enjoyed the break in his daydreaming, if only for a few moments.
The Earth had much more room for everyone now and they were alone on the street.  It was typical for this neighbourhood and many across the globe to have just a few families living on the same street.  There was less than half of the city's population remaining and still more people were signing up for the colonizing ships.  There was now probably less than one hundred and fifteen million people on-planet at one time.  This left the Earth with more resources for its own use, and most of all; more space.
With most of the North American population gone the native Indians had their land back without so much as an argument.  The ceremony was long, as they usually were, with the chiefs of the respective nations standing in their ceremonial garbs and smiling.  It had taken them almost three hundred years to regain what had been taken from them, and they were happy.  The government said that now there was room for everyone they were happy to give the land back. But the response from their counterparts said that it was because of their belief in passive resistance that lead to their ‘freedom' as one chief called it.
"I'm thirsty," Stephanie said, tugging at Scott's arm.  Waking from his daydream, he reached into his pocket and handed his sister a water bottle.  He had begun carrying it for her while she had been running and jumping into the piles of leaves, not wanting her to break it and cut herself.  Stephanie eagerly screwed the cap off and drank, keeping it in her hand when she was done. "Know what I wanna be when I grow up?" she said loudly, necessitating Scott to look down at her.
"What's that, Stef?"
"I wanna be a Dolphin doctor!" she shouted with glee, giving a slight hop.  Her eyes were once again huge, like saucers.  Both she and Scott laughed at that. "And I wanna get my own really cool boat…the kind that Dr. Doolittle has!" she stopped for a moment, clearly concerned. "Do ya' think they made n'other boat like that?"
She had been referring to a new television program about a veterinarian that could speak to animals and understand them too. He traveled the world healing sick and dying animals (and dolphins alike). The boat was very long and sleek, with a large fish crane at the back.  It was capable of lifting large dolphins and such from the water so Doolittle could speak to them.  Apparently the good doctor lived on the boat and had complete freedom from being tied down.  The only other thing that he had to worry about was the dreaded Fish Pirates, large muppets with over exaggerated noses.
Scott relished in the irony of the television show’s intent.  The point of the show was to show the children of earth that freedom and independence was favourable.  You could easily do that by, well, leaving home.  In this case it was helping the children of earth to realize that leaving earth was the path to freedom and independence.  But Stephanie was intent on staying, cruising the oceans of Earth, all thanks to this great show.
Scott stopped and stooped down. "If not, Stef, I'll make one for you," he said, his eyes wide and his arms on hers. "It will be a boat with a bigger crane, so you can get a whale out of the water.  One that a Dolphin doctor would love and it'd be better than Dr. Doolittle's boat, too!" Stephanie's young face beamed and laughed as she heard her older brother's promise of the future.  Her giggles and shouts of glee could be heard throughout the neighbourhood.
"Wow!"
Scott listened to his little sister's dreams for her own future…all on earth.  She hadn't even thought of the fact that she could just jump onto a transport and go to another planet in the solar system.  She didn’t even consider becoming one of the “courageous” colonizers.  He found it quite ironic, actually, that it didn't even enter into her mind.  But she was young and had much of her growing up to do.  Things can change over a long period of time, but right now the hope and aspiration in her eyes was enough to make a grown man cry.
Scott very nearly did.
As he walked her into their dark house, their parents not yet home from work, he prepared her for bed.  She continued on her dream.  Even as Scott bathed her and toweled her off she continued vocalizing her dream of one day riding the blue oceans of Earth in search of sick dolphins.  Throughout the evening and to her parents she recounted her dream making sure not to leave out any of the smallest details.  Scott's parents listened as most parents do and patted her head when she was finished. "That's very good dear. Now off to bed." Father had said.  Mother took a little while longer to react, actually thinking if it was a viable career for her daughter.  Mother had always been a meticulous empiricist and she wasn't about to stop even now.
"But what if you decide to move to Mars or the Moon?" The question was asked tactfully, with the precision of a master marksman.  It was one of those questions which Scott didn't want to hear because it was designed to crush the dream.  It was known that Mother really did like the concept of moving, but stayed here on-planet while her daughter was growing up.
Initially she had wanted Scott to apply to the New Washington University on the Moon.  When he had decided not to go she had accused him of being selfish and didn't speak with him for a week.  They'd stayed up many hours into too many evenings debating their positions.  No matter his argument she trivialized his motivations and rationale.  Mother had won every argument the two of them had ever engaged in and that was what made it so terribly difficult for him.  She relentlessly pounded down her reasoning and didn't bother to consider her son's feelings on the subject.
That was her problem, though. As soon as she made up her mind about a course of action that was it. That was the final straw, it was a command decision and no other considerations were to take place.  Days had gone by before they had finally resolved the issue and Scott had felt even more distant from his mother ever since.  But this time it didn't take Stephanie a few days to decide, her answer was immediate and resolute.
"Dr. Doolittle doesn't sail the oceans of Mars, mom, he's here on Earth," with that, she ran up the stairs to bed.  Mother's frown followed her youngest child, and Scott was worried.  Was the frown a cause of her disappointment or was it foreshadowing?
To Scott's surprise, Stephanie continued on into her bedroom as he tucked her into bed.  She even asked him if he could tell her a story about a sick dolphin.  Scott, not wanting to hurt his little sister's feelings, made up a story of his sick dolphin and of how a young girl, fresh out of university, saved an entire family of dolphins from a dreaded virus.
After leaving Stephanie's bedroom door open a crack to let in the bathroom's light, he walked down stairs.  His parents were still watching the television, a documentary on the early space program difficulties in 2005.   He decided he was tired and that he should go to sleep.  He knew also that his mother had been in one of her stubborn moods lately and that she'd been arguing with father again.  Walking out of the dining room and into the kitchen, he was deep in thought and didn't notice the small red-and-black pamphlet sitting on the counter top:

WILLIAM'S REALTY
YOUR GUIDE TO MARTIAN HOMES.

He found himself longing for Stephanie's absolute conviction to stay home on earth, where she belonged.  Sometimes he just wasn't sure whether or not it was feasible for him to be a doctor, or some other professional, and stay.  Sure, there were new incentives for doctors and much needed professionals to stay on Earth but there was a yearning to explore.  Either way it was imperative for him to help her in any way that he could to realize her dream.
Even as Scott checked that Stephanie's door was open just enough to let in light from the bathroom, and as he himself went to bed, he hoped that she would continue dreaming her dream of sick dolphins.