A Different Doraemon World

"This place is truly strange," Karen murmured, biting her thumbnail, her face a mix of confusion and anxiety. "As Kelly mentioned, there's no sun here. So where does the light come from? Everything should be pitch-black, but it's not. The surroundings are bathed in a blue hue. We can still 'see,' we can differentiate between the sky and the ground, perceive shades of brightness. And what's stranger—'the air' feels odd too. There's been so much happening that I didn't notice earlier, but… we… we don't seem to be breathing. What on earth is going on?"

Doraemon sat down heavily, his expression pained. "I don't know. I can't analyze it. Right now, we're no different from microbes on a speck of dust—forever unable to comprehend the source of the light surrounding them. And just like them, we can't begin to understand what this environment truly is."

"More importantly, how did Earth even end up here? What could have happened?" Kelly asked in confusion, truly unable to comprehend it.

Doraemon took a deep breath. "Don't worry. We'll move humanity to another planet before Earth's destruction. Whatever happened here doesn't matter—it won't affect humans."

Hearing this, Nobita couldn't help but feel a wave of sadness. "Earth is so beautiful… and now it's come to this…"

Doraemon shrugged. "Nobita, everything has an end. Human lives end, and so does the life of a planet. Humans live for around a hundred years, while Earth has lasted billions. This is natural. There's no need to feel regret or sorrow over it."

"But what about our memories, our legacy for future generations?" Nobita protested. "All traces of humanity will be lost in a place like this."

"How can you be so sure new life won't emerge here?" Doraemon countered. "In hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years, perhaps new life will arise once again on this dead Earth."

Nobita shook his head. "That's impossible. This place is full of radiation. And Karen already mentioned it—there's no light, no air, no nothing. How could new life form in such conditions?"

Kelly and Karen nodded in agreement. "Exactly, this environment is far too harsh!"

But Doraemon refuted their argument without hesitation. "Human imagination and knowledge are still very limited. You're judging this environment by human standards, but those standards are too narrow.

Humans assume that life can't exist without oxygen or water. That assumption is incorrect—and frankly, laughable. Humans need oxygen to survive because you evolved in an oxygen-rich environment. But how can you be sure that other forms of life would need oxygen? A species might arrive on Earth and suffocate in oxygen because their survival conditions are entirely different."

Kelly and Karen fell into deep thought after hearing Doraemon's words. Nobita, meanwhile, was dumbfounded. "So, you're saying life could still arise here? And it might even evolve like humans?"

Doraemon couldn't definitively confirm this—it was, after all, a matter of hundreds of millions of years in the future. But he firmly believed new life would eventually emerge here, so he nodded confidently.

After a moment of contemplation, Karen snapped her fingers. "Maybe Doraemon's right. I've studied the origins of life on Earth and discovered some interesting things. But because evidence was scarce, these findings remain hypothetical." She glanced at Doraemon and continued, "Humans weren't the first life forms on Earth. Neither were dinosaurs or primitive organisms. Earth's history spans over four billion years. During this vast expanse of time, there may have been several cycles of life emerging and disappearing on Earth.

"Each time a form of life vanished, Earth's environment changed. The most recent transformation led to an oxygen-rich atmosphere, with the planet moving closer to the sun. This allowed oxygen-dependent life forms to emerge. Through countless processes of natural selection, humans appeared and thrived in this environment."

Kelly chimed in, "Karen and I even found evidence suggesting other civilizations existed before humanity. Unfortunately, it's not very convincing. Still, we've always believed human civilization wasn't the first or only one on Earth. For some unknown reason, these earlier civilizations were wiped out, leaving only a few traces behind.

"One of the reasons we worked to build the time machine was our desire to prove this hypothesis and understand why ancient civilizations vanished. But before we could investigate, we discovered the events of ten years into the future, forcing us to put our research on hold."

Doraemon's expression suddenly changed as he hurriedly shifted the topic. "Let's focus on figuring out why Earth ended up here!"

"Huh? How?" Kelly and Karen asked, intrigued.

Doraemon retrieved his mini telescope and pointed to a pink television-like device he'd taken out earlier. "This TV is called the Time Television. We can use it to observe the past or future. I'll set it to the day Earth was destroyed, and we can see what caused it to drift here."

"The technology of the Përjetësia people is truly unimaginable!" Kelly and Karen exclaimed in astonishment.

Doraemon adjusted two knobs—one green and one yellow—beneath the Time Television. The screen flickered with static before displaying an image of Earth. Everyone sat around Doraemon, their eyes fixed on the screen.

Doraemon made a few more adjustments, setting the device to the day of the war between humans and robots broke out.