by Rob Dircks
“Becoming?”
She picks up a tiny seed, I can barely see it on the tip of her finger, and whispers, “This is just a dream. It needs to become real.” Pointing to a large plant in the corner with huge leaves, she hurries over, pulling me along, and plucks a small pod from the plant, placing it in my palm. “And then back home again.” She squeezes my hand closed, and when I open it, the pod has burst and hundreds of seeds spill out. She grins and looks around the greenhouse. “I wonder if I’ll have children someday?”
“You do have a child. Harlon. And three grandchildren. Rock, Paper, and Scissors.”
She laughs. “Like the hand game? Ooh, let’s play.”
So she knows the game after all. At least in my dream. Funny.
Her hand shoots out as Rock and I cover it with Paper.
She smiles. “You are Paper.”
“I am.”
She makes Scissors with her other hand, and I see the three of us, and then we’re there, in the kitchen in the trailer, three triplet toddlers, tugging on Nana’s housecoat, we’re all claiming to have boo-boos on our knees. She scoops us up all at once, and plops us on the counter, and turns to get the Band-Aids. She turns back, and one by one, places a Band-Aid on our imaginary injuries and kisses them. I’m looking down at her hair, and it’s strange, I don’t remember it being so dark. Then she looks up from my knee, and I know why.
“Mom?”
“Yes, Pepper?”
“Oh, for crying out loud, you can’t even get my name right in my dream?”
66
Tesla
“Wakey wakey. Eggs and bakey.”
Is this still a dream?
Tap. Tap. Tap.
No. It’s Larson. Tapping on my Term Sleep chamber. Ugh. I hold up my fingers. Five more minutes. Please. Where’s the damn snooze button on this thing?
“Paper. Paper. Time to wake up.”
He’s unlatched the cover to the coffin-like enclosure, and is feeling my hands. They’re ice cold. My body is shivering from head to toe. No, not my body, it feels like someone else’s body. Strange.
“I- I- I- I- f- f- f- f- f-ree- free- zz-”
“Don’t talk. Here, let’s get you out of there.” He’s pulling me – or this other body I’m residing in for the moment – and putting a big silver blanket around it. Almost immediately, my shaking starts to subside, and my limbs begins to feel like my own. Okay, I’m me. So far so good.
“You were moaning, Paper. It sounded like you were arguing with someone.”
“Y- Y- Y- Yeah. That’s about right.”
I look around, as if something will show me the passage of time, like a tree in the middle of my cabin with the leaves turning color. Nothing. I could have been asleep for an hour. Or a week. Or the three months we were supposed to sleep. Or a million years if something went wrong.
“How long…?”
“Exactly on time. Well, a little early actually. I wanted to show you something.”
I float, groggy, following Larson, through two hallways, to one of the storage bays. I haven’t been in here yet, this is where all the massive equipment for the domes and experiments lies in wait. Seems like a strange place to have our first post-Term-Sleep team meeting.
He punches in a code and the doors slide open.
And there it is.
A cherry red 2008 Tesla Roadster convertible.
“Holy cow. It’s real.”
“I thought you might know about her.”
“Of course I know. The legend, anyway.” Way back in 2018 there was a man named Musk, with big plans for Mars (very much like Larson I suddenly realize), who sent into Mars orbit a test ship, including, according to the tales, his car, a cherry-red Tesla Roadster. It was never confirmed, or if it was the private records were long gone, so only the hardest-core star watchers even knew about the story, from trolling conspiracy UFO and Mars landing sites. Not that I’m saying I’ve ever done that, but, okay, whatever, yes I’ve done a whole lot of that.
“Zach. Be honest. That car is the real reason for this whole thing. The show. The mission.”
He laughs. “Absolutely!” Floats around to the driver’s seat and pulls himself in, buckles up, turns the steering wheel left and right. “Actually, I just won a wager. A rather large one. So lucrative I couldn’t resist having Martha reel her in. Come, sit.”
I float into the passenger seat, and we look out the front windshield at the magnetic dipole shield components that’ll be installed shortly by the team- hmmm. I shake off the last of my grogginess and look around, and for the first time notice it.
“Zach. Why are we the only ones awake?”
67
How Much Do You Trust Aurora?
Larson reaches over and buckles me in. “How much do you trust Aurora?”
“Well, I was beginning to trust her like a sister, until you just said that.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to ruin your budding friendship. Forget I said anything.” He reaches to unbuckle me. I swat his hand away. “Like I’m going to forget you just said that.”
“Very well. As you know, there was a very sophisticated sabotage attempt during Stage Two of the show. I can’t be too careful.”
“And you think it’s Aurora?”
“No. No. Of course not.”
“Of course not. She won, Zach. She made it. What the hell reason would she have to sabotage this voyage?”
“Please listen. We are all susceptible to outside influences. Powers that can sway us into making decisions we wouldn’t normally make. Actions we wouldn’t normally take. For reasons we might not even understand. It happens. And as I’ve taken stock, of all of us, including myself, I understand we all have moments away from the cameras. Moments that aren’t accounted for. It’s natural, even on a heavily monitored television show. Everyone on this ship has them. But Aurora has more. Many more. Plus entire evenings that can’t be accounted for during the show.”
“Tequila.”
“Excuse me?”
“She snuck tequila – don’t ask me how, she’s a magician – into the studio, and would hide out in a storage closet and write songs. I was even in there one night with her. I’m not kidding. That’s the truth.”
Larson’s face visibly brightens, and he exhales deeply. “Thank God. That’s what I was hoping to hear from you. A logical explanation. Now we can wake the others. Excellent. So you trust her.”
“A hundred percent.” I must still be groggy, because it feels like someone else is saying the words.
68
Mars
I can almost reach out and touch it. Hold it in my hands.
Mars. Like a little red ball, wanting to play catch.
We’re on a spacewalk again, all of us except Larson and Skylar, I’d like to think that our presence out here is crucial, but really we’re just standing by while Martha deploys the cluster of magnetic field generators and an inflatable container that will create a magnetic shield in a stable orbit between Mars and the Sun. If anything goes wrong I can’t see how we could possibly save this complicated contraption, there are a million wires and panels and ways to tear a nice big oxygen-sucking hole in your spacesuit, and we’d probably all wind up as corpses floating in a loose orbit around the planet forever. But Larson insists, and Martha agrees, so we’re here. The dipole shield will deflect high energy solar particles, which strip the atmosphere away, enough to allow the planet to slowly restore it. Then, theoretically at least, some of the oceans will return, the greenhouse gases will multiply, and with some other terraforming tweaks we might be able to live on Mars. Theoretically. Eventually. Not in my lifetime, or my children’s lifetime, maybe my grandchildren’s. Maybe someday a Farris will call Mars home.
I wonder what they’ll be like. Will they be like me? Is that a good thing? Will they be like Dad, with his soft-spoken strength and mischievous glint in his eye, or like Nana, always seeing silver linings and giving without ever expecting anything in return? Or will they be l
ike my mother? And would that be as bad as I think? Probably. I hope they get Rock’s and Voomvoom’s dimples.
I wonder if they’ll be like Angel.
“Farris! Stop daydreaming and hand me that wrench. And don’t go flinging it into space like last time.”
God, you’d think DanDan’s sour attitude would turn around, here of all places, at the doorstep of the breathtakingly beautiful Red Planet, but it’s gotten worse. It must be the ever-present pebble in his boot that is Aurora, his arch enemy, not me, but he treats everyone except Larson with pretty much equal disdain. I keep trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, like Tom Bradline, who eventually got an Official Paper Farris Positive Appraisal, but I’m sorry to say the jury is handing me at this moment the verdict on Daniels: he’s kind of an asshole. I hope my grandchildren aren’t like him.
Martha interjects in our coms. “You can all come inside. The deployment is a success. Captain Daniels, I can take care of that last connection. Paper, hold on to that wrench.” Aww. Martha’s watching out for me. She’s a sweetheart.
We return to the ship, and before our next sleep cycle, we’re already on approach for landing. Martha, alas, hasn’t had any luck restoring coms with Earth. Larson and her agree the government must’ve temporarily jammed all signals coming from our direction, so any satellites or land stations trying to communicate would just get static. He’s hopeful that Ted, ever-dependable Ted, will figure something out (if he’s not already rocking back and forth whimpering to himself in a federal prison cell somewhere).
“Keep trying, Martha.”
“Of course, Zach.”
The good news is that we don’t technically need coms with Earth to do anything here on Mars – no telemetry, computing power for attitude control system, power, propulsion, nothing. Larson really just wants to be able to livestream his historic footsteps onto the first planet other than Earth human feet have landed, and I can’t blame him. He’s finally gotten everyone – and I mean everyone – excited about this voyage, this incredible step for humankind – and now no one will even see it? I feel bad for him.
But my little pity party for Larson only lasts a minute, as the excitement of what we’re about to do starts shooting adrenalin through my body. We’re hopped up, strapped in, Aurora and I next to each other, out of the way of the real crew, while the High Heaven gently circles the planet for a few more minutes. The solar arrays have been stored, we have plenty of fuel, and we’re ready. All systems go.
Aurora nudges my arm. “Hey, pssst. I never got to ask you.”
“How you managed to get this far? I have no idea.”
“No, wise ass. What did you dream about? On the way here.”
“Oh. My family. It was nice. Very warm and fuzzy. Then my mother. Not so warm and fuzzy. She’s annoying, even in my dreams.”
“I dreamed about this.”
“This, like the whole show and voyage and everything?”
“No. Like this exact moment. Us, sitting here, looking out at Mars, having this exact conversation. And then we landed in the dream, and the next thing I know I’m running, as fast as I can, away from the ship, towards something, trying to suck air into my lungs. I ran for three damn months in that dream. It was exhausting. I can’t remember what I was running to… oh.”
I turn to her. “What?”
“I just remembered.”
“And?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Well, now you have to.”
“I can’t. It’s going to sound weird.”
“Just about everything you say sounds weird. Try me.”
She scrunches up her face, embarrassed. “I was running to… you.”
“You had a huge piece of fake cheesecake right before we went to sleep, didn’t you?”
“Come on, Paper. I’m being serious. That’s weird, isn’t it? The whole running thing.”
“Sure. But it sounds better than dreaming about my mother for eighty-five days.”
“I thought we were out for ninety days.”
“Right. Duh. Ninety. I’m an idiot.”
“You are. Hey, remember that first flight, on Martha the plane thing?”
“Of course. I threw up on you.”
She laughs. “That too. But something, I don’t know, like the dream… I’m sorry if this sounds even more weird, I feel like I’ve sort of been running to you ever since that first night.”
“Uh-oh. Are you going to break into song? Is this when you start belting out your new single, ‘Running to You’?’”
“Hey, I like that! Can I use that? Hey, Martha, can you make a note? ‘Running to You,’ words and music by Aurora. Title by Paper Farris.”
“Noted, Aurora. I will remind you on the return trip. Please secure yourselves. Descent will begin in ten seconds.”
Martha tilts the ship a few degrees as we drift, automatically tweaking the radial thrusters to keep our heat shield directed at the thin atmosphere. Daniels reaches for his joystick and looks over at Larson, clearly pleading. “Sir?”
Larson smiles. “Dan, please. Call me Zach. And yes, you may take us down manually.”
Daniels contorts his face, I think it hurts for him to actually smile, but he does, he’s beaming actually, and he confidently transitions into manual flight mode, using Martha for guidance but retaining full control.
The ship’s temperature increases from the friction of the atmosphere, just enough to make it uncomfortable and introduce the bowel-evacuating thought that there is every chance this will not work, with close to forty-thousand failure points, and that the first people on Mars will be dead people. I wonder if my family has bought a little box for me at the Fill City One mausoleum just in case.
I’ve only been to the mausoleum once, right after PopPop died. I was too young to get it, the permanence of it, I remember looking at the little door wondering how PopPop would live in there, it was way too small, and there weren’t even any air holes. And then he just never came back, and when I asked where he was Nana said, looking up with mist in her eyes, “Heaven,” and that was it: I wanted to go to Heaven to visit PopPop, to bring him home so Nana would never be sad again. So I built levers first, like little see-saws, heaving the heaviest rocks I could carry onto one end, and hurling myself a staggering three inches into the air. Catapults were next, though after my first test with a stray dog as pilot, catapults were immediately banned. (The dog survived, and we took him in, and we named him “Gimpy.”) Then, by the time I was constructing rockets, the memory of PopPop had become foggy and distant, leaving only the compulsion, the obsession with flying up and out, getting away from it all, into the heavens. I have never shaken it.
I wipe a tear from my cheek as I watch Captain Daniels bring the High Heaven about, nearly 180 degrees, with our engines now facing down, and us looking up into what is starting to look like a sky, almost blue. We’re falling nearly five miles per second, a feeling both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time, until Daniels engages the engines and we begin to decelerate.
I look over at the monitors, afraid to see some unexpected boulder in our way, but the landing site has been meticulously planned, flat and clean. Daniels makes little micro-adjustments on our way down, gracefully balancing gravity, thrust, and crosswind, until we’re mere inches from the Martian surface.
Clunk.
Psssshhhhhhh.
Silence.
We look around at each other, uncertain. We’ve trained for this, all of us, even the two completely incompetent TV show contestants, but somehow it doesn’t seem real. Have we…?
Martha breaks the silence. “Captain Daniels, you have successfully landed the High Heaven on Mars.”
We erupt in cheers and hooting – “WE DID IT! WE DID IT! WE DID IT!” I spy Daniels mopping his face with his sleeve, turning away but it’s plain to see he’s crying, I hope it’s tears of joy because he just manually landed a freaking spaceship on Mars.
Larson unbuckles himself, and the others follow,
and floors emerge – yes, fake wood – for us to stand on, and everything tilts to adjust for the gravity. Me? I’m hanging by my seat belt, it’s tangled into my flight suit. Somehow no one is surprised.
Drew rescues me, and I flop to the floor. Wow. This gravity thing, which I really thought I loved, having lived with it my entire life, isn’t so great after all. Or in the words of Aurora, who’s sitting next to me rubbing her temples: “Gravity blows.” Once we had left Earth three months ago, the feeling of weightlessness was actually liberating and fun. I didn’t expect to like it so much, and I didn’t expect to hate this feeling of coming back to Earth – I mean Mars – so much.
Luckily, with the Term Sleep and our Martha-mandated exercise regimens, muscle and bone degradation isn’t an issue, so we’re up on our feet in minutes, making our adjustments more mental than physical. Daniels is marching around like he does this every Saturday morning, barking orders and flipping switches and turning dials.
Larson reaches out two hands for Aurora and me, and lifts us up. I’m amazed at how strong he is for sixty, until I remember that Mars’ gravity is only a third of Earth. It’s not like the moon, just a sixth of Earth’s gravity, where you can bound around in huge leaps across a small crater, but it’s enough to give the appearance of superhuman strength.
Here we are, standing at the top of a 350-foot rocket, celebrating, and suddenly I can’t believe I never asked: “So… how do we get down?”
Daniels actually grins at this, and Larson laughs. “Ah, yes! Aurora and Paper, follow me.”
We descend one of the ladders – which during our voyage was a hallway – into one of the large storage bays. As Martha seals the door behind the five of us – Drew will remain behind on the ship for now – we climb into spacesuits and lock our helmets on.