How to Mars

by David Ebenbach

  Stefan, who had been sick the most recently, put his head between his knees. “Ohhhhhhh,” he said.

  Again: the baby shower seemed doomed from the start.

  In fact, Josh was just standing up, looking like he was about to suggest that discretion was the better part of valor and that maybe they should cut the party short or at least postpone it until after Home Sweet was fully under control again, but Nicole, who seemed the least affected by the smell, put her hand up before he could say anything: Stop right there. And then she lifted her hand and pointed one finger in the air, as if to say, I’m about to say something decisive.

  Which indeed she did. “Spacesuits,” she said.

  Everybody looked around. Spacesuits did have their own life support systems. They made their own air.

  “But is our air supply in actual trouble?” Jenny said.

  Nicole looked at Stefan.

  He pulled out his tablet and scanned something there. Then he went over to one of the vents and consulted the tablet again. And then he went to a couple of other machines and came back.

  “I don’t think it’s a significant problem,” he said. “Things look good as far as breathable air goes.”

  Nicole nodded. “Spacesuits,” she said.

  “Am I even going to fit into one?” Jenny asked. She hadn’t left the habitation unit recently because of the possibility that she’d outgrown the suits.

  Josh put his arm around her. “Let’s find out,” he said.

  And so they all got into their spacesuits—Jenny uncomfortably but still manageably—and found that, after a couple of minutes, the suits had cleaned out any and all of the rank air they had brought with them on their bodies, in their lungs.

  Some viewers cheered. This was the kind of resilience everybody wanted to see in a Marsonaut. And, for the record, once the shower was over, Stefan found a way to stop the smell, and nobody died.

  Interestingly, though, the rest of the episode, which stayed with the shower until it was finished, struck not a triumphant tone but something instead more poignant.

  The audience knew from previous episodes that the suits were all fitted with internal microphones and cameras, which allowed the producers to share voices and show faces even when the Marsonauts were outside the walls of Home Sweet, out on Mars itself. And they did use the microphones as the group sat suited in the middle of their common space—their living room, in the language of some of the audience. The viewers got to hear their voices as the group finished up the baby picture game, and also as they each wrote secret wishes for the baby on slips of paper that were then sealed—awkwardly, with big puffy suit-hands—in an envelope that would be shared with the baby when the baby was old enough to read them. Their voices came through clearly as the party culminated in the giving of gifts.

  But the editors—and this was the really interesting artistic choice—never looked inside the helmets. There was not one shot from inside the helmets. There were no faces. And so there were just these people—indistinguishable from one another, really—sitting in a circle on their chaises longues, breathing clearly, and handing between them: two pairs of hand-knitted booties; a tablet showing a newly assembled playlist of all the popular music of the last twenty-some years that it was essential for the baby to know; another tablet that pulled up a carefully curated photo album of everyone who lived on Mars—especially the parents but also everyone else—living their lives and showing off who they were in all the ways that people do that; even a little handmade wind-up toy that did flips in place. It was beautiful, really, and the way they shot it, from outside, made it all the more beautiful because it was so understated and it seemed so very far away from the planet that was watching it. And then there were gifts between the two parents-to-be, but—this was remarkable—the editors didn’t even let the viewers see the gifts. All you could see was the puffy suits. One suited parent said “Oh, Jenny.” The other said “Oh, Josh.” With lots of different feelings in their voices. Really it was an incredible moment. It was a moment that promised some possibility of elevation, of redemption.

  And then . . . all the lights suddenly went out. The common room went pitch black.

  After a long moment, Trixie’s voice came out of the dark. “Oh, scrotum,” she said.

  In this way, another T-shirt was born.

  The Phenomenon of Event Horizon Recurrence

  Purpose of document:

  Trixie and Nicole have advised me to outline a “birth plan.” The concept was new to me, but it turns out these are common among mothers-to-be (on Earth) and it’s particularly sensible in my circumstances, given the unknowns, variables, etc., on Mars. Josh, when he heard the recommendation, seized on it. Continues to be very concerned about the “impending birth,” though tries to hide it. Does not realize that words like “impending” give him away.

  I continue to be more concerned about what comes after.

  In any case, here is a birth plan (constructed by a person who never, ever planned to be giving birth):

  Settled (or nearly settled) questions:

  The nature of our situation on this planet means that certain decisions are out of my hands.

  Epidural injections for pain

  Unavailable.

  Vaginal birth vs. C-section

  Neither Nicole nor Trixie is interested in performing a C-section unless absolutely necessary.

  Water birth

  Impractical. We lack a sufficiently large tub, and it’s in any case not an efficient use of water. Also sounds odd to me. Am not a cetacean.

  Birth ball (also a new concept)

  Unavailable. And also odd-sounding.

  Vacuum extraction

  Thankfully, given the mental image I have of it, unavailable.

  Medical procedures checklist:

  I am open to the following medical interventions:

  Induction of labor

  Pain medications (aside from the epidurals we don’t have)

  Alternative pain-reduction methods (e.g., visualizations, breathing exercises, etc.)

  Artificial rupture of membranes (if water does not break naturally)

  External fetal monitoring (basically, “stetho-ing”)

  Use of IV/catheter if necessary

  Episiotomies (please no “natural” tearing)

  Overall, when in doubt, intervene; science, after all, has gotten me this far. Only exception: Forceps. Outside of total emergencies I want to avoid anything that could damage the newborn’s skull/brain. There’s enough to be worried about as concerns the brain already.

  Labor atmosphere:

  Location

  Presumably, I will be giving birth in the common room; not much room in the bunk dome. And personal privacy is not a priority on Mars. (Also, chaises longues actually really comfortable.)

  Eating/drinking during labor

  If okay with my doctors, okay with me.

  Getting up, walking around during labor

  Sure.

  Allowing photos or videos

  Moot question? Destination Mars! will be filming the whole thing regardless of my birth plan.

  Specific birthing positions

  See attached diagrams.

  Personalizing the enviornment:

  Music

  Trixie has recommended upbeat music, but am not sure I can handle music as upbeat as she’s imagining. On the other hand, this is probably not the ti
me for pieces from my personal collection. Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Helicopter String Quartet,” etc.

  Nicole’s choral music?

  Cello music? Zoë Keating might be nice. Or Sheku Kanneh-Mason?

  Josh humming?

  Lighting

  Dim? I don’t have a strong opinion. Josh wants bright, so that Trixie/Nicole can see well.

  Smells

  The noxious air freshener mix supplied by Destination Mars! should be turned off.

  Personnel:

  I would like the following people to be present during labor/delivery:

  Josh: Birth coach and general support, at least when he’s not panicking about the birth.

  Nicole and Trixie: for obvious reasons, and also to keep Josh calm.

  The birth plans I found online tend to mention biological family—does the mother want her parents, siblings, etc., to attend?Of course for me this is impossible, for multiple reasons.But, what about my sister, if she were alive and we were on the same planet? Would I want her here? My sister was my sister. But she was also, to use a tired metaphor, in some ways like a black hole—an irresistible and dangerous center of gravity. The only escape from which is distance. To be beyond the event horizon. And there’s so much distance between us now; far more than the distance between Mars and Earth. Is it enough?

  And although the infinitude of my sister’s distance makes my parents’ seem almost manageable—I could, after all, have them watch (on delay) via video link—I still can’t cross that distance. Or, more accurately: I don’t want to. It’s not my parents’ fault. But I have needed to escape the family my sister was born into. Even if it has meant escaping into the emptiness of a planet like this one. Maybe especially into an emptiness like that.

  Though sometimes these days despite myself I do feel a need for something. Something.

  And Josh will be here. Josh is my family. I would not want the world to be empty of him.

  And this baby will be family, too. Whoever this baby will be.

  Which is to say that to leave one event horizon may be to reach another.

  Others: Nicole says that if the six of us here on Mars (soon to be seven?) are not a family then we’ll be nothing. In other words, empty planet. So what about the others? Do I want them there if the alternative is for them to be strangers?Roger: Probably neither harmful nor helpful in a birthing situation. Optional.

  Stefan: Potentially harmful? Josh believes Stefan is more than the angry man he seems to be, the man who hurt Roger when we first got here and who still walks around looking at everyone like something that needs to be run over with the rover.Is Josh right? I don’t understand Stefan.

  But . . . is there a significant difference between wanting to escape and wanting to run people over?Obviously yes.

  Also simultaneously possibly somewhat no.

  Do I understand Stefan?

  Conclusion: I think I might want something rather than nothing. It just . . . it just depends on what the something is.

  I of course reserve the right to change my mind about any of this at any time.

  Also, Trixie and Nicole tell me that the most important priority in constructing any birth plan is to avoid setting your heart on it. Because that’s one thing that rarely comes to pass: the ideal.

  The Patterns

  You’re still here. We weren’t sure whether you were temporary or permanent, and of course we can’t know for sure—these days we basically don’t know what’s going to happen—but it’s starting to look more like permanent. Which is a kind of stability, some of us point out. But then others say that you can’t be stable if you’re the opposite of that.

  You can see how forward and backward we are.

  We think you would use the word bickering?

  Sometimes when it’s all too much we go to the edge between where there is something and where there is basically nothing. Well, we’re always there, and we’re always here, because we’re always all around everywhere, but we go more to that edge. We go because it’s quieter there. Better. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the fact that, since you got here, there are some of us and there are others of us, which was never the case before, and it doesn’t change the fact that we’re hot and we’re cold and we bicker now. About you.

  Do you have some of you and others of you? If you do, how do you handle that? How can you be multiple Patterns and also one Pattern? That’s our bigger question these days. But is that something you even try to work out?

  Speaking of which, some of us have been studying you. Taking peeks inside. Listening. Maybe even communicating, is what it seems like. Or almost. And so some of us say that there’s a lot we could learn from you, if we could just find a way all the way in. We could learn heaps, is what gets said.

  Others of us are pretty sure: we don’t need you for anything.

  Which just restarts everything again. It’s not the best.

  And so before we get too remote and proximal we shift more toward the edge and try to count the lights in the basically nothing or we shift to the down and look at temperature Patterns underground or we just think about better times. Anything and anywhere that it’s a little quieter.

  Or we try to solve this.

  We think we need to solve this. Which is to say we think we need to solve you. Except we’re pretty sure that isn’t exactly the word we’re looking for. Do you know what we mean?

  There has been some progress, at least from our end. From your end, we don’t know what progress would even look like. But on our end we’ve found that some of the things you brought with you and that make water happen and different kinds of air happen and so on—we’ve found that those things can be changed, because we’re partly inside those things. Tampered with, really. And that tampering seems to make you move quickly this way and that way, and manipulate those things to try to make them the way they used to be—fix?—and there’s even more noise. It’s unpleasant. But we call this progress because maybe this is a way to get faster to the endpoint we’re looking for? The point when the chaos is Repatterned?

  Oh, right—now we remember. The word we’re looking for is dead. Or kill? Something like that.

  Not all of us want that. Definitely not. But at the same time some of us for sure want that. And we’re getting concepts, or maybe ideas, about it.

  We’re more or less learning the ideas from you.

  Because the tampering isn’t satisfying. It doesn’t get it done. Basically, we don’t understand the things you brought with you. And so we can’t change them in exactly the way we want to. And usually you just make them the way they used to be. We try, and still there’s you afterward.

  But you probably understand those things you brought. You probably know how to change them so that the chaos gets Repatterned. The solving. The dead.

  Which is why it’s good that some of us have almost found a way in, even if those ones of us weren’t looking for it for Repatterning purposes. The others of us who do want Repatterning ask, what if the right opening can be found? A crack.

  Is the word crackers related to the word crack? We’re specifically wondering about that one. Because we have a specific concept. Idea.

  Anyway, so, while some of us study you, others of us also study you. We don’t have the same reasons. But the result is going to be the same: we’re going to find a way in.

  And then everything is going to change.

  On Chaotic Terrain

  Stefan was not keen on there being a child on Mars. It was already crowded enough.

  You wouldn’t think a group of six people would make a planet crowded, but it did, particularly if they all lived in one fairly compact set of domes together, which were surrounded by open land that you couldn’t live on and air that you couldn’t breathe. If they slept in o
ne small dome together, with no walls between them; if they ate at one small table together. And those six people made a planet noisy, as well, between Trixie’s snoring at night and weeping in her unproductive lab during the day, when there was also endless chatter between Jenny and Josh, and all the various recorded music people liked—Nicole’s choral music, Jenny’s experimental classical oddities, Trixie’s Top-40 pop—and Roger’s nervous throat-clearing and Josh’s smacking his lips at meals, for example. Six people made it messy, too. There were tablets all about the place, and rocks that Roger had brought out from his lab for some reason and then forgotten, and sand tracked in from outside and never swept up. Sometimes Stefan felt that there were electrodes stimulating all his senses at every moment.

  He was not keen on adding a child—a squalling, pooping, needy child—to the pre-existing commotion.

  Sitting in the front passenger seat of the rover as it grumbled along, Stefan was thinking about children on Mars because, well, because he was always thinking about it those days. It was hard not to, with Jenny so baby-enlarged that she finally couldn’t fit in her spacesuit any longer and had to spend all her time in the habitation center, waddling around belly-first, grousing about this or that. And he was also thinking about it because Nicole, breaking a lengthy, lovely silence in the rover, had just asked him about it.

  Specifically: “Jenny’s getting close. It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

  She was behind the wheel, her lucky Mardi Gras beads hanging off the dash between them, the two of them finishing up a trip to gather supplies from the lander that had touched down the day before. The rover was jammed full of boxes—trunk, back seat. There was even a box under Stefan’s boots, so that his knees were up awkwardly. And this wasn’t even all the supplies—the autopiloted rockets didn’t come very often, so each one always carried a lot of supplies. They had checked the manifest, knew what was there, and they would get the rest in the next trip, which could happen in no particular hurry. The big thing was that, as everyone had expected, the people at Destination Mars! had used the rocket to take a small measure of revenge for the pregnancy. Specifically, HQ had elected not to send any freeze-dried ice cream this time. Also, they’d included a snappish note—handwritten—on one of the food boxes that said, Shouldn’t you be growing more of your own food by now?