Is There Life on Mars?

11-25-2308

I wished goodbye to my Earthling neighbors as they left my apartment. Then, after shaking my head in amusement, I turned to sit and lit a Martian Spirit, almost choking as I took that first drag. I pulled up my scarf, leaned back and closed my eyes to the brisk night wind as I pondered.

Two years of living on Mars has been a serious download. You get hit with a lot of information rapidly, and it’s not necessarily even good info. I’m still trying to filter out what’s not just spam, personally. One thing you might not learn too quickly is no one living in Amazonia is from Amazonia. Most residents aren’t even Martian; they all moved far, far away. Everyone here came from some other planet. Whats really weird is how many you’ll run into from your own.

My roommate, Tohm, was a lanky Earthling from New Tros who came out to Mars, ironically, to sober up 2 years ago. Our neighbor, Charae, was a stacked Lunarian that wanted to be a wealthy star but ended up a dancer instead. Dune, my guitarist, was born in Earth’s cold north and never complained about the weather here, though his family was from one of Saturn’s more tropical moons. Gerund may have been the only Martian on the planet I didn’t want to bludgeon yet.

What I found absolutely tickling, though, were the amount of people I’d run into not just from earth, but from the suburbs of DT where I grew up. A week after I moved to Costa Mensa I helped a group of girls carry furniture into our apartment complex. Justene was born in Chesapeake and lived in Dominia until she was three, and Manna was born and raised just down the street from me in McLean, leaving the Earth about the same time I did. Eon, of course, was a high school friend that came to Mars 6 months ago who now, by some sort of luck, came to be my second roommate two weeks ago.

A half dozen other friends already came and went, either back to Earth or on through the rest of the solar system. And I asked everyone I knew the same question, why did you want to come to Mars? Startled, I found out each person had a very similar reason to mine.

Everyone came here to follow a dream, whether it was success or fame, wealth or power, or just taking control of the life that was rightfully theirs. Each person felt like they’d never have accomplished their goals where they were, and some light drew them in to this place like a co-dependant moth. Everyone held this magical esteem of Mars, be it projected upon us by movies or teli, handed off from the prosperous antenna-clad travelers who came to Earth, or if it was just a figment of our collective imagination.

I never gave up the hope that I would achieve what I set out to do here, but I’ve conceded that I may need to start on the other side of the planet. I snuffed the cigi out and went back inside to discuss travel with my roommates.

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