Is There Life on Mars?

09-03-2308

It seems I can’t look anywhere these days without seeing another pair. Walking slowly with beaming smiles, hand in hand without a care in the world they pass. Happy couples: left, right and center. Everyone appears to be in a relationship.

Everyone’s got their lovi. I can’t even double take at a girl without seeing her smooching some tanned, muscled slagvent over my shoulder. It’s frustrating. When I’m to my lonesome with a cloud of smoke, people watching usually makes me feel better about my situation. Why does there have to be so many couples about these days?

It surely hasn’t been this depressing all year long. I remember not more than two weeks ago sitting at the boardwalk watching summer girls passing on the orange sand. Bikini season at full steam. Enough eye candy to give you a sugar hangover tomorrow; anguish of an entirely different definition. There truly seemed to be no end to the procession of scantily clad women, not until now anyway.

No, it seems now the pairing instinct has kicked in and each of those seemingly untouchable women have begun to dig in for winter. I understand well enough, Earth trend dictates that everyone wants to be single all summer long to taste as much life as they can, and then settle down through the cold months and split again when the flowers bloom. What doesn’t make sense is why here on Mars, where there are no cold months, no snow to lock yourself inside from, no icy gales to bundle up in, you can watch it happen every year right as rain. But they’re not sticking together to keep warm and there’s no reason for seasonal relationship fluxes in a place with no seasons.

I can’t deny that I don’t feel a tug though. I’ve been single for nearly a year now, and only really happily so for maybe hal of that. But its been the greatest, most productive time of my life, and it hasn’t let down since it started to get good. But I guess I still feel it, what everyone else must, that certain loneliness.

Is it cause I’m tired of being single? Am I sick of not having, or just knowing I don’t have, a loved one to turn to for anything from a hug to a dry shoulder? Or is it social brainwashing that has me down? Because I see it every day it could just be a bandwagon effect, making me want to catch up and grab hold of the relationship cart again. Get your very own Lovi today! Perhaps I’m just never satisfied with life, always feeling like theres a hole inside. Its been too long to remember if seeing someone can even fill that void. Could it be I’m just jeally?

I must note how strange it is that just a random couple walking their pet over there invokes such a strong feeling within me. Logically, I’m better off now than I ever have been–young, single, and talented living on Mars. I’ve really had no desire to break out of bachelorhood, but I still want what they have for some reason. I want to be loved, to be listened to, to be warm. But do I want it badly enough to possibly forfeit everything going for me?

I take a final drag of my cigi and put it out on my heel, sinking into the plastic bench as I exhale.

PREV: CH. 18 «Smoking Indoors»

NEXT: CH. 20 «No Bugs»

08-07-2308

I continue to find amusement in the way smokers are viewed by the inhabitants of Mars. Ask anyone who lives elsewhere and they’ll agree: that whole world has to be smoking something! If there’s anything I remember about my image of Martians from my childhood it’s that they smoke like chimneys. I mean tobacco cigis and otherwise, as Cannabis Iapetus is practically legal on this planet. Since the turn of the century, and the Martian Green Rush, there’s been legislation in the works to treat the herb like alcohol in terms of sale, tax and penalty for possession. I would be lying if I said the availability of such green grass on Mars didn’t sway my decision to move here.

Mars is so progressive. In this forward thinking spirit the past decade has seen an unprecedented concern for human health, and smoking of cigis was, of course, banned in all indoor establishments, even in bars and restaurants. Everyone assumed it would just pass like every other crazy decree Mars had issued in the past, but it caught on like wildfire, especially to parents with little ones and parents-to-be. Go figure.

It was so successful in implementation that it was carried across the rest of Sol. Now it seems like every major city on Earth has put a ban on smokers, starting with DT and New Tros. I bet by know you can’t even smoke your pipe in Brightleaf—the capital of big tobacco on Earth. If I could think of one thing I enjoyed most about being back at home in the suburbs, it was being able to light up at the table the nano I was done nomming.

There’s just something about a filling meal and cigis that go hand in hand so well. Whether it’s relaxing the blood vessels hard at work carrying new nutrients to your body, or if it eases the flow of digestion and your bowels, or if it’s just the idea of doing the worst thing for your body right after the best thing–a cigi makes a perfect dessert. The fact that you have can’t smoke inside here is enough to make you not want to eat out at all. I’d rather just order a pizza and wait half an hour than have to step away from the table for a smoke every 20 minutes.

Diners must have lost millions from star-freighters not being able to relax and stick around for those extra two slices of cherry pie, and late night waffle units from the rockers, freaks and students that now leave after they’ve finished their meal, instead of lounging about in a vinyl booth for another hour or two until they’re hungry again. Could this be why fast food is so prolific on Mars?

The non-smokers may have won the battle, but they still think there is a war to be won. I’m sitting outside at the Gypsy Den, a cafe catering to hip youths and rebellious types. I usually get breakfast here sometime in the early afternoon—or whenever I wake up from a night of playing music with the band. But even in this indie joint where everyone sits outside because they need to have something smoldering in their tips, people the other tables tactlessly pantomime waving smoke from their face, or shoot you mean looks from behind their lattes. No, rather than accept that artists and writers are going to smoke, they have to raise a big stink about lighting up in the very refugee zones we’re restricted to. It’s not like they don’t have the entire indoor seating area to themselves to enjoy or anything either.

Nothing’s ever enough with these Martians!

PREV: CH. 17 «Marsquake»

NEXT: CH. 19 «Martian Couples»

07-31-2308

I woke up today at about the same time as everyone living in the Western hemisphere of Mars

At approximately 11:42 AM a tremor developed on the Olympus side of a fault running all the way from Novus Angelicas to Noctus Labyrinthus. Its epicenter lay just east of the city in the suburb of Titon and seismographs finally estimated the magnitude of the disturbance to be 5.4–a fair size.

At the time I was passed out on the floor of my friend Gerund’s unit in Costa Mensa. Still wearing my clothes from the night before and reeking of alcohol, I was resting quite well, all things considered. suddenly I was jostled from my dreams of rockets and music to a building commotion about the unit. The next thing I could tell the very foundation of the homeunit began to wobble. It wasn’t a rattle, a shake or a rumble, it was as if the rigidity of the structure had given way to the form of a gelatin mold. The semi-solid floor rippled beneath me as I rolled over and lay on my back, I had no conditioning to find cover or panic in this moment, I’ve never experienced anything like this before in my life.

And as quickly as it came, it was gone, leaving echoes of its roar as it trailed off, little reverberations slowly winding down like a spinning coin. Gerund looked up from his bed, no more disheveled than normal, and asked if I was alright, to which I just nodded with a grin. I let out a sigh as I rolled back over and enjoyed the moment after the rush, loving every beat of my excited heart and short breath I took as they slowed to their normal paces.

My first Marsquake, or rather the first one I’ve been conscious to experience. I’ve been told by a few people there have been ones small enough for me to sleep through, but I never believed them; quakes are monumental. Earth’s core was far too stable, and tectonic movements too minute to cause such tumultuous incidents, the biggest thing I ever had to worry about there was a tropical storm, maybe a hurricane, just hazardous weather. Not like here at all, here where even the planet is against its people in it’s sick alliance with the atmosphere and the sun to return to the surface to a quiet, serene, crispier landscape again. I think I get why every Martian lives with a certain fear blinking in the back of their minds, knowing easily that today or tomorrow could bring The Big One.

I really don’t expect to be living on Mars by the time it comes to that, though, so I’m not gonna start worrying

PREV: CH. 16 «Interplanetary Cuisine»

NEXT: CH. 18 «Smoking Indoors»

07-20-2308

A dead calm came over the early afternoon. The wind dropped suddenly and the mixed feelings over our second day of fishing had just been stirred a little more. The sun was hot and Earth’s humidity made it so much worse, all 9 of us on this little charter boat huddled under the canopy in the middle of The Taurus. Yesterday had been much better, chasing Chesapeake Spadefish and Saturnian Seabass and catching them by the handful, little bastards putting up a fun fight. No such haul now though, today had only seen skates, rays and an occasional shark; one a little bay hammerhead my dad reeled up, but she bit through the line when she caught a glimpse of the boat and the eager, net-handed faces.

With our quarry of Corellian Cobia successfully eluding us and distaste taken in the turn the weather took, we needed something to lift our spirits. My father turned to Edd, the large grey-rooted Ionian, seated on the cooler closest to him. The two had been friends and business partners for ages, and after meeting him for the first time I realized why they stayed such good friends. Edd is an jolly old fellow who never runs out of stories and is always an absolute riot, the perfect kinda guy to have stuck with you on a dull day. All morning he had resorted to jokes and riddles to keep us awake while nothing took our bait, and now my father knew of a perfect weapon to unsheathe for this moment.

“Hey Edd,” he said with anxious grin, “Why don’t you tell everyone the Tortuga story?” This lit Edd’s face up like a Christmas tree, and he slapped his hands together licking his lips.

“What a splendid idea, my good man!” Edd turned to his now captive crowd. “I’d like to treat you gentlemen to an enchanted tale about Venusian dining, but first I’m afraid you must hear of the horrors of Saturnian Cuisine,” he said, meanwhile motioning for my father to supply him with a beer, at no time taking his attention off his audience.

“If ya don’t know of my past,” he begun, “I was an immigrant rover driver in New Tros, delivering pies all over Nuwerk. Oh it was the pits. One day I found a matchbook with a number for computer school on the back and I thought to myself ‘I’d do anything to get out of this void’ for the second time in my life. Buy the next year I was working for HAL Computers, designing reservation systems for interplanetary and eventually inter stellar travel companies, engineering credit mainframes and installing interplanetary intranets across the Solar system. It paid well, and they put me up in some of the nicest places in the system while I was on the job, sometimes staying for a month at a time. Well, lets just say I got a taste of culture.

“This one time I stayed on Mimas for a week, I asked my host to take me out to enjoy a traditional meal of his people. I didn’t want to see a single familiar word on the menu, just point to something and be pleasantly surprised. He knew just the place, and after he watered his plants for the evening he took me there with haste.

“Now you gotta understand my mood going into this: I sat down at a round table elbow to elbow with a dozen smelly Mimasians, all grabbing at the food in communal bowls with their bare hands. I didn’t see a single utensil or napkin, so instead I looked for a dish that everyone wasn’t knuckle deep and double dipping into. I spotted it, right next to me was a small plate piled with white objects about the size of golf balls that looked like they were covered in something like coconut. I grabbed it, noticed it was crunchy, but once I bit through the crispy exterior I was treated to the most amazing explosion of flavor. I smiled and grabbed two more, and had the third to my lips when my host came up and patted me on the shoulder. “Edd! You like the deep-fried pigeon heads!!” And sure enough, there was a little crispy beak and two little squinty eyes. Well what was I supposed to do, I popped it in my mouth, finished chewing and smiled.

“A couple of years later the company let me bring a friend to Rhea, while I was there to help program the computer at the then new Gaia spaceport. So I took Jon, who as Keret knows,” Edd said motioning to my smirking and nodding father, “is a most timid little man from Amalthea. He’s come fishing a few times–I’ll bring him next year, we’ll all have a real laugher. Anyway, Jon and I are sitting in a the most popular restaurant in this fledgling port’s boom-town. The first half of the evening he hardly moved, staring at his plate in contempt, trying to occupy his lips with a glass of beer for as much of the night as he could.

“‘Psst! Edd,’ Jon whispered leaning in to me, ‘We’re eating bait!’ I told him its not bait, it was Pingafish caught fresh that morning in this very port, and was renowned enough to bring us halfway around the moon in the middle of my vacation. ‘There’s no dish without fish!’ Jon said to me moments later after having his terrible epiphany. Its true, it was all seafood in front of us, but until that moment I had thought he was a real fisherman. I pointed to a plate “You like fried calamari, right?” I said indicating a tray of sauteed squid-like things beside him. He shrugged and picked up one of the whole squid-things with a pair of chopsticks and stuck it in his mouth headfirst. Upon biting into it, its tendrils began to move and wriggle, and in shock and disgust John spit out the living creature. He then received similar looks of shock and disgust from around the table, but at the taste he he left in everyone’s mouths. ‘I-I’ve got weak teeth,’ he came up with quickly, but no one bought it.

“Afterwards, I took John aside and scolded him about rejecting their food. Told him no matter how vile or disgusting of a spread he had to treat it like it was the most tender delicacy he had ever put to his pallet. ‘We gotta prove to these guys that Earthlings aren’t tasteless, uncultured insects,’ I recall saying.

“Well, I also I recall making the mistake of inviting Jon to come with me to Venus. We were heading near Ishtar just to visit a friend of mine who owned a brewery. We arrived at the portal of the Solar Beer Brewery and were greeted with cigars and given the grand tour by the short Europan owner. After meeting the factory floor girls, and finishing our cigars in his glass office overlooking the assembly line at full steam, he brought up nourishment. ‘I don’t know how you guys feel, you must be hungry after your flight, I know I’m famished. Let us get ourselves some food and drinks, yes?’ he offered.

I was eager and glanced at Jon who looked a little uneasy and asked ‘What about the factory, can you just leave it unsupervised?’ I could have shot him an icy glance, knowing what he was doing, but the Europan responded ‘Oh, not a worry at all’ he said , thumbing for a button on the handle of his chair, and suddenly the break whistle blew on the floor, “The girls will come with us,” he said with a grin.

“At the most popular restaurant in town we sat a dozen deep at the nicest table they could offer, with a giant bay window over looking the harbor and a saffron, early afternoon sea. By no coincidence, this establishment was sponsored by Sol Beer, and it was free as long as we kept refilling our glasses and posing for photos. After two hours of that punishment the food arrived, carried upon three giant wooden plates and set before us the table by shirtless waiters, and all the Venusian girls cheered. A fourth, smaller plate was brought and placed on our end of the table before of Jon and I. The small white golf ball shaped objects it contained made my heart jump up my throat, but I swallowed it back down. ‘Whats that?’ I dared to ask the Europan.

‘Oh, Edd! That is Tortuga, of course!’ he said with a smirking slur. A moment later a realized he meant sea turtle, sea turtle eggs, a species extinct on Earth and endangered on Venus. ‘You mean like ENDANGERED Tortuga?’ I spat out in dismay. ‘Yeah, they’re great, you gotta try them, here!’ He said picking up an illegal delicacy.

“He squeezed it in his finger tips and it warped like a water balloon. ‘It’s leathery like any other reptile egg, no? So you take a knife,’ he says lifting a small bladed scalpel with a carved wooden handle, and taking one of a half dozen multicolored sauces in front of him, he pours a bit into the slit. ‘Once you choose a sauce you just put it to your lips, and,’ he says before following his instructions, then squeezing the contents of it into his mouth and swallowing it down, then smiling says ‘That’s all there is. Go ahead, Edd!’

“I picked one up and held it in my fingertips, squeezing it a little to test its elasticity. I took the knife, cut my slit then inspected the sauces, picking my poison as it were. I picked a dark red sauce, figuring it would be spicy, I’d just burn out the flavor if it was gonna be as weak as I was expecting. I poured some in and held the prepared egg to my lips. When I squeezed that lump into my mouth I swear I almost lost my stomach, it had the taste and texture of a ripe ball of snot. And I don’t mean the pleasant, drippy snot, I’m talking about your lumpy, black-spotted-smoker’s phlegm. I smiled and looked down at Jon. It was his turn and his face was as red as his hair, he was slagging bricks and sweating bullets when I nudged him, almost jarring him from a trance. ‘It’s not hax,’ I lied to his face, ‘go ahead, Jon.’

“With a shaking hand he picked up the closest squishy egg, made a carefully though jittery incision, and without hesitation picked up the red sauce, having the same idea the I had to scorch his taste buds off. With a final nervous getsure he put the egg to his lips and squeezed. The expression on his face that followed was one of sheer terror. His eyes wide and searching for something, to help him, he finally sighed and pulled the egg away from his mouth. Clenched between his teeth was a poor, half-developed turtle embryo; little legs and a little head, with a little see-through shell. Just when I was just fearing the worst, John sighed again, remembering Rhea, he popped the little thing into his mouth and with a couple crunches swallowed it down and smiled.

“Our little Europan host had been flirting with a new employee this whole time, only tuning in halfway through, and had chosen a poor time to finish his glass. When he at last sipped it all it and set it down he exclaimed down the table ‘Oh gork, Jon! You got a fragged egg!’”

PREV: CH. 15 «Here on Mars»

NEXT: CH. 17 «Marsquake»

07-15-2308

I parked my red dust-covered crawler on top of Fender’s tallest hill. The same red dust coated everything as far as I could see. All the units and the streets and palm trees. It hung in the air and cast rusty lighting through the haze of a windless afternoon. The view wasn’t as uplifting as I’d hoped.

This morning when I woke up I just didn’t feel right. Maybe I had been eating better when I’d been visiting my parents, or it could be rocket-lag interfering with my sleep cycle…I couldn’t put my finger on what was off. I figured a decent meal might help, so I treated myself to my favorite drive-thru and took a drive to clear my mind. Two near-accidents with unaware Martian drivers later, I realized it would be more calming to get off the freeway and land somewhere.

I took the next exit, bared right into the first neighborhood and found myself ascending a mountain in moments. It seemed like a decent place to meditate, so I parked it where the road ended. It was barren, I was alone with my thoughts. But I didn’t feel any better now, looking down at my home below over a questionable fast food hamburger. I had to sigh before taking another bite, but it wasn’t even the greasy meat patty that had made me lose my appetite. I could watch all at the activity occurring at Fender Municipal Spaceport. Seeing all the spaceships is invoking my longing to ever be on the move. I only just got home but already I’m sick of the stagnation. I want to stay fluid.

They’re small ships, the largest an interplanetary at the best, though. I’m pretty sure thats an Helen-class down there, that probably means some dignitary came down last night. I passively ponder high-jacking a rocket and seeing how far I can get. I’m sure if I could get to Callisto I’d find a way out of the Sol System all together, the trick would just be getting myself through the asteroid belt. Or even just out of Mars orbit for that matter, I’ve never piloted anything larger than a surface skimmer or a work-skiff, and never flawlessly. If I’m sure of anything though, they give me a leg up on maneuvering a bulky rocket, but theres still too many things I’d have to know how to do, things I should bother to learn about before taking off. Like landing.

I could always snag myself a shuttle and just hop over to ISP Olympus, stow myself away on a freighter or transport heading to Saturn, find away to the old routes and hitchhike my way off Pluto. Always? Thats hardly plausible at all. I sighed and threw my half eaten burger into my bag, took a dissatisfied swig of soda from a straw and started my crawler. I lit a Martian Spirit and put the Fender Municipal behind me.

PREV: CH. 14 «Still Stuck on Mars»

NEXT: CH. 16 «Interplanetary Cuisine»

06-23-2308

Sitting stifled, watching the ships get to depart. Surface Skimmers, shuttles and starliners take their turns arriving and embarking. And I’m stuck here on Mars still.

I usually make the mistake of partying the night before I take a trip. So of course today I woke up late, hungover and burnt out from another last hurrah. It took more than a nano to realize my alarm was sounding, and that’s what the shrill noise filling the room was. Frantically I threw last night’s clothes back on, and began that last minute dash to make sure everything everything I needed was stuffed in my carry-on. At first I snuck around the bodies lining the floor downstairs, careful not to disturb them before I left. I don’t know what I was thinking, this tip-toeing went on for a good 15 minutes before I remembered they were giving me my ride. So with an hour left before my ship would board I woke everyone up and tried to share with them as much of my panic as possible.

It only took 20 minutes to travel about half the way to Novus Angelicas. Gerund’s lifetime of experience living on Mars gave us the edge to slice through the ground traffic in his sister’s open topped rover. I’d left my sunglasses in the carry-on stuffed it in the tiny boot, so I had the pleasure of my hair cutting at my eyes the whole ride. I was slightly distracted by my decreasing deadline.

Just inside the NA county limits lies a small space port at Porro Beach. I feel attached to it, since it was the first plot of Martian soil I ever set foot on, and it’s the closest port that extends service to my favorite spaceline, Rocket Red. After a negative stigma was affixed to space travel at the end of ‘01 the aeronautics industry took a hit. In its downfall many companies completely went under, opening a niche for start up corporations to get a hold. All the new liners are flashy and bright, years more advanced and aesthetic than the aging fleet of clunky starcraft holding our planets together.

An Oedipus-class ignites it’s reactors and errupts into the atmosphere just as I grudgingly sip my coffee. I’m sitting in a smoking area outside of baggage claim right now, cursing myself for wearing black on a day like this. An unexpected meteor shower passing Luna is the focus of my frustration right now. I was supposed to stop over on my old moon for an hour before catching a connecting shuttle down from Earth orbit. The weather has all departing craft grounded on her surface for the next few days. I didn’t even know that meteor showers could impede space flight.

I was placed on standby for the last flight leaving Mars tonight: A non-stop Perseus straight to Goddard, the spaceport just outside of the capital. I won’t actually leave until about the same time I was supposed to arrive there. With another seven hours to go, I watch another space ship blast off and light myself another cigi.

ROCKET RED AND THE SPACEPORT BLUES

I like flying with Rocket Red because it’s new and flashy. You get your very own touch screen in front of you and a pop out controller in your armrest. You can order from the menu and request assistance, play games and watch movies, even chat with folks in other seats…because you’re not stuck traveling on the same rocket with them for the next 6 hours and you can’t just get up and have a conversation with them.

Rocket Red makes magic out of the spaceframes they bought up for their fleet. I’ve traveled within much larger vessels though, the Perseus are a series of mid-size economy liners. Most commonly used for interplanetary commuting, travel to an adjacent planet system. They were designed with the highest passenger yield for minumum size and fuel consumption, and she boasts a capacity almost twice as large as her sister, the Danae-class, a luxury liner of the same length commonly launched by more bougie companies.

The rocket flights with a higher fares would probably book out of a spaceport a little nicer than Porro Beach. There’s hardly enough seating for all the people it sees daily and it’s the only spaceport I’ve been to where you embark your ship directly from the tarmac. No mechanized aerobridge ramp to meet the main hatch from the elevated comfort of the terminal building…just a collapsing stairway to climb to the airlock.

Not looking forward to breathing in all the rocket exhaust, but it will beat sitting in this fragged place.

«···»

I’m finally getting off this wretched rock. The Perseus-class ship I’m boarding is a brand new, top-of-the-line star cruiser. Trimmed to match the rest of the Rocket Red fleet. I love spaceships, but as much as I wanted to stand admiring the vessel from the jetway, I had to push along to my assigned seat with everyone else.

After our slow moving milling of a line made its winding procession among the seats up the whole spacecraft, I found my lot by a window. Putting my carry-on in the overhead compartment, I flopped exhausted in my seat and breathed a long needed sigh of relief. Finally my journey home begins without any further ado, I remember glancing out the window at another ship beginning ignition sequence as my heavy eyes sealed.

PREV: CH.13 «Visiting Earth»

NEXT: CH. 15 «Here on Mars»