“The plan is to launch from Earth and then land on Olympus Mons.” I have spent too much time on the Internet researching Mars, the way you might flip through guidebooks to plan your next vacation. “It has this huge, red impact crater. Twice the size of the Grand Canyon.”
“Olympus Mons,” said my oldest and stupidest friend. “Like the biggest, warmest vagina in the universe.”
I understood, for a moment, why some people think getting stoned is boring.
Then Marcus said, “Why do you stay with her, man?”
There are formations on Mars that resemble volcanoes, valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps. I say “resemble” because the surface of Mars is geologically dead, no volcanic activity to recycle chemicals and minerals from the interior to the exterior. Dust storms cover the entire planet for a month at a time, and only 43 percent of the sunlight that reaches Earth gets to Mars.
If you were awake during a dark Mars night, you might look up and see two small moons. They are believed to be made of the primordial matter of the solar system, the stuff that existed before anything else: water, sticky tars and oils, amino acids. Their names—Phobos and Deimos—mean fear and terror.
In the thin atmosphere of Mars, hurricane-force winds would feel like a gentle breeze. This weak atmosphere offers no protection from the sun’s radiation, and there isn’t enough pressure to keep water in a liquid form—it sublimates into a gaseous state and vanishes.
I fell in love with Amber in an atmosphere like this, during a Thunder Bay February. It was -42° with the windchill, and we were partying at Marcus’s place. It was Amber’s idea to try to vaporize water—she’d seen it on TV. “You just bring it to a boil,” she said, “then toss it.”
She put the pot of water on the stove until it boiled, then tried to rally us up off the couch. No one moved. Marcus was playing Mario Kart, and the rest of us were too drunk to care. No one wanted to put on boots, tuques, and coats. “Fuck off with your science shit,” said Marcus, who was sort of her boyfriend at the time.
“Dickhead,” said Amber. “I’ll go myself, then.”
But I followed her up the stairs. “So what’s the deal?” I said. “The water will, like, disappear?”
“It vaporizes.” She carried the heavy pot of water, which was still bubbling. “Instantly.”
I loved her focus. The intensity on her face, the wrinkle between her eyes.
We didn’t bother to put on coats or boots. We opened the door, stepped out onto the porch in our socks. The cold was so sharp in my lungs that I coughed.
“Okay,” said Amber. “Three. Two. One!”
She dumped the boiling water from the pot. And instead of landing on our feet, it turned into steam. We said nothing, just stood together, and the water traveled upward like our breath.
Soon they were down to fourteen competitors, then twelve, ten, eight, six. There ’s Amber, resident botanist and go-getter. There’s Tamiko Hoshino, thirty-two, from Japan: a medical doctor, yoga instructor, and Ph.D. in astronautical engineering. (She’s also super hot, so there are a lot of shots of her doing sun salutations.)
There’s Ramesh, twenty-six, from India. He has a good story too, which he illuminates on his website: “I am an IT graduate with experience handling critical computer applications. An orphan, working since age ten to fund my education, I am a mentaly [sic] agile day-dreamer and a scientist who loves finding answers. I can also do stand-up comedy acts.”
There’s Marion, forty-six, from France. A hairdresser who happens to have a photographic memory and is better than all of the other candidates at remembering flight procedure and physics. She applied for the MarsNowTM experience on a whim, and is always crying with happiness.
Sergey, fifty-one, is a chess champion from Ukraine and the least TV-appropriate of all the contestants—his gray hair sticks up and his accent is ridiculous and he tends to say things that don’t quite fit into sound bites. “I would like, on Mars, to create a more logical society, free from judgment and hatred. This will be difficult. This will be the true challenge. Technology cannot help us solve this.”
And then there’s Adam, from Israel. In his own words: “I am, first and foremost, a medically trained doctor who is also educated in alternative therapies. I served in the Israeli Defence Forces, working with pilot/vehicle interfaces, and am familiar with most aspects of avionics. I believe in every human’s right to sovereignty over their body and mind.”
Adam, from Israel. Soulful brown eyes and smug cheekbones.
It’s him. I know it’s him: FirstMan34, from the chat forum. He’s the one. I can feel it. The one Amber will be locked up with inside a space capsule for months. The one she’ll fall in love with. The one who will fondle her pliant flesh in zero gravity. The one she’ll get space-married to. The one who will father her Martian children.
And I’ll be here, on a planet that has breathable air and koalas and ballpoint pens.
According to director of marketing and communications Johanna Flinkenflögel, I could make a donation to MarsNowTM via PayPal and receive a small replica of the Lockheed Martin MarsNowTM Lander to show off to my friends. Or I could have my name printed on one of the landing parachutes. Or perhaps I’d like to virtually travel alongside my girlfriend via my own Mars selfie?
No. No, thank you, Johanna Flinkenflögel. Because I know something you don’t. I know that Amber will never sit still, never settle. Mars will seem great for a while, and so will FirstMan34. But eventually Mars will be as stifling as this basement suite, and FirstMan will be just like me, the guy who’s always around.
And I’ll be here, on a distant planet she distantly remembers. I’ll be the one she wants. And she’ll send me an email from her Settlement Structure. An email that will travel through the ether like smoke, from one satellite to the next. An email that will take between seven and twenty-two minutes to load on my screen. I know this. I can feel it. An email that says: I miss you.
Three weeks ago the MarsNowTM competitors were in Scotland and the “challenge” consisted of lifting an entire tree and tossing it through the air like in the Highland Games. Marion, the French hairdresser, couldn’t even pick up the tree—sure grounds for elimination.
Amber strained, lifted the tree a few inches, then there was a terrible popping sound. Her right shoulder, the same injury that had cost her a gymnastics career. She dropped the tree and breathed in short gulps, but she didn’t cry. I have never seen Amber cry.
I picked up my cell and called her immediately, even though I knew her phone would just ring uselessly in a trailer or a green room somewhere. As her voice mail came on (You’ve reached Amber. I’m not living on Mars yet, so leave a message!), I watched as FirstMan dropped his own tree—abandoning his chances at winning—and ran to help her. I watched as he used his medical training to force her shoulder back into its socket, which caused another horrible pop.
“Looks like an alliance has formed,” said Bridget, the host of the show, a woman whose only qualifications seem to be breasts that defy gravity.
Then the camera was tight on Amber’s face. “I’ll never get there,” she said. “I’ll never get there now.”
“Look at me, Amber.” FirstMan took her head in his hands. “You’re already there. It’s not outside of us.” He touched her chest, his hand over her beating heart. “Mars is in here.”
I said nothing into the phone, letting her voicemail record my silence. Then I hung up.
Why? Why do I stay? Because I want to feel sorry for myself and get high? Because I’m afraid of being alone? And because I thought she would change.
Two days after the Scotland episode, Amber walked in the door of our suite. She’d been sent home to recover during the show’s break, all of her travel and physio and massage bills covered.
I had just begun the harvest, and the suite was full of cut buds, which give off an odor that’s wet and mulchy and alive. The smell reminds me of Amber’s pubic hair, of opening her up and putting my tongue inside her.
“Gross.” She dropped her red MarsNowTM duffel bag on the floor. “I forgot how this place gets.”
For two days, we ignored each other. I said nothing about her moment with FirstMan and neither did she. Our place no longer felt like a garden—everything was too damp, too muggy. The quiet between us felt wet and heavy, a thing that could drown you.
Amber mostly stayed on the couch, icing her shoulder or sleeping or texting with FirstMan. I did what I would have done anyway: clipped the buds, then laid them out on newspaper to dry. And I was expanding the business, baking the leaves, then soaking them in Bacardi and honey.
She pointed to one of the bottles and said, “What’s that?”
I told her my plan to produce a sweet, potent Green Dragon. My plan to sell it hipster-style, in growlers and Mason jars. My entrepreneurial spirit must have impressed her, because she went into the bedroom, rummaged in a drawer, and came back with that small glass pipe.
Then she sat beside me on the floor, filled the bowl with a few of the buds that were laid on the newspaper, lit up, inhaled. Her chest rose and fell; the smoke slid out of her mouth.
“Oh, my god,” she said. “Those Mars guys would shit if they saw me right now.”
I supposed she meant the producers and CEOs, the guys in suits. The ones who are raking in advertising dollars as our relationship implodes like a dying star. “Fuck them,” I said, and Amber laughed in a throaty, raspy way.
She passed me the pipe. It was damp from her lips.
The weed was too wet and the smoke singed my throat, but still, it was good. In fact, it was perfect—not too heavy, not too light. We moved to the Voyager and our spines melted into its cushions.
“I overheard one of the engineers say he hoped we’d find precious metals on Mars,” she said. “And carbon compounds. Stuff we can eventually ship back to Earth.” Her laugh was cynical this time, the bitter disappointment of the true believer. “The space economy. That’s what they called it. They want to turn Mars into a garbage dump, just like home.”
“Someone always makes money,” I said.
It surprised me that Amber, of all people, didn’t know this. But she has always believed in absolutes. Right and wrong, good and evil, heaven and hell. She was never satisfied to just grow weed—she had to attend legalization rallies, had to post things on Facebook about the medical benefits of cannabis, had to try to convert the whole world.
“I guess I thought we were going for some grand reason,” she said. “For the mystery of it.”
The side of her body touched mine, flowing over my skin like honey. I passed her the peace pipe and she sucked smoke into her lungs.
Can you blame me for thinking this meant something? For thinking that since she was willing to get high—to risk that the next MarsNowTM-administered drug test would show traces of illegal substances in her blood—it meant she was done with Mars? For thinking it meant she was home?
“There’s a face on Mars,” she said. “In the Cydonia region. A human face.”
Her eyes were closed just like when her dad would say grace around the table when she was growing up.
“Why?” She turned to me. “Why a face? Is it just a random rock formation? Or is it a sign?” She touched my arm. “You know? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are we here?” She laughed. “God, I sound like I’m stoned.”
“That’s ’cause you are.”
I had my own questions, no less impossible to answer. Why do we love who we love? And why does love die?
Sitting beside her, my body felt light as air. “Maybe this is what it feels like,” I said. “Zero gravity.”
But Amber shook her head. “No.” A smoke ring left her mouth and floated through the living room. It dissipated, disappeared. “Zero gravity is a trip,” she said. “Way better than this.”
Amber recovered. FirstMan did such a great job of setting her shoulder, and her muscles were firing so quickly, and her physiotherapist was a miracle worker—in two weeks, she was back on set. And now there she is, on TV, for the special two-hour finale. Part of it was shot in Dallol, Ethiopia, the hottest place on Earth. The sun scorches down from above and heat bubbles up from the ground through volcanic activity. The earth is covered in bright, swirling mineral deposits—it looks like a different planet than the one I know.
Amber looks different too. They’ve done something to her hair—it’s straighter, shinier, tamer. And they’ve done something to her face to make it look less open, less natural. Less. She’s wearing this tight unitard thing with the MarsNowTM logo over her heart. When she runs or jumps through the heat, the unitard thing shows off the slim, hard muscles of her arms and legs. I noticed when she was home that she now waxes those arms and legs, even though the hair that grew there was fine and soft.
There’s a dark, raised mole on her left thigh—a perfect circle, a pristine planet in the galaxy of her long leg. I can’t see it on TV, but know it’s there.
Then the shot changes and we’re in the L.A. studio. Marion and Sergey were eliminated last week and the four remaining competitors are onstage, wearing those unitards: Amber, First-Man, Tamiko, and Ramesh. One pair will be chosen to go to Mars. People in the studio audience cheer and hold signs: Team Tamiko! Adam and Amber Forever!
I could have been in the audience too. Isn’t that what you offered, Johanna Flinkenflögel? I could sit front row, holding an I [heart] Amber sign. I could cry in a not-too-ugly way as MarsNowTM steals my girlfriend forever.
But I refused this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Amber said she wished I would “support” her.
“Does FirstMan34 support you?” I said.
“Wow,” she said. “Have you been spying on my browser history? That’s classy, Kev.”
“You know what’s classier?” I said. “Running away from your problems by moving to another fucking planet.”
So now I’m here, on the couch where Amber and I used to watch Guys and Dolls and hold each other when Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons sang “I’ll Know When My Love Comes Along.”
“How do you all feel?” asks the host, Bridget. She can’t move most of the muscles of her face, but she can widen her eyes in an imitation of human empathy. “Today two of you will be champions. And two of you will be eliminated.”
There is ominous, pounding music. There’s a montage of scenes from earlier in the season—lots of running and sweating and hugging and weeping.
Ramesh says, “I feel good. I feel ready.”
Tamiko is doing some sort of yogic breathing.
Amber and FirstMan are holding hands.
I hit the mute button because I can’t stand that music. Then I pick up my phone and dial the 1-900 number that keeps flashing along the bottom of the screen.
“Hello, and welcome to the MarsNowTM hotline,” says an automated voice—the pleasant but mechanical voice of a woman. “Please listen carefully to the following options: if you want to purchase MarsNowTM products and memorabilia, please say, ‘I want to make a purchase.’ If you want to vote for one of our Mars-NowTM contestants, please say, ‘I want to vote.’”
“I want to vote.”
“Thank you.” The voice has a slight accent, and I imagine it belongs to Johanna Flinkenflögel. “Please say the full name of the contestant you wish to vote for.”
“Amber,” I say. Then, more clearly: “Amber Kivinen.”
“I have recorded your vote for: Amber Kivinen.” The machine pronounces it Am-bar Kiv-eye-nen. “Thank you. And do not forget to visit our website at www.marsnowandforever.com.”
“Okay,” I say. “ ’Bye.”
But I stay on the line, and the voice starts up again: “Please listen to the following options.” I listen to the following options, but they’re the same choices that were available to me before.
“What I’m wondering about is why?” I say to Johanna. “Why are we here? Does anyone notice? Does anyone care?”
“I’m sorry,” says my automated friend. “I canno
t understand your request.”
Then I realize this might not be Johanna after all. This might be the voice of God.
“If you would like to return to the main menu,” says God, “please say, ‘Main menu.’”
I hang up. I reach for that little glass pipe, the one that used to be the color of Amber’s hair.
What most people don’t understand is that pot isn’t a plant or a drug or a habit. It’s a location—a place to travel to. A place between waking and dreaming, between living and dying. I could spend the rest of my days there. And I will too, when Amber goes to Mars. Because who will blame me? And who will stop me?
I pack the pipe, light it, breathe in like it contains the purest form of oxygen.
And on the muted screen, Amber and FirstMan are hugging, near-crying, holding each other—it appears that they’ve won. They’re going to Mars.
I stay on the couch. For days or weeks or months—hard to say because time doesn’t exist, not here in the garden. But I do watch. I watch the launch, when the rocket bursts from its chamber and Amber and FirstMan are mashed back into their seats. I watch as they glide through the atmosphere, jettisoning their fuel tank, which will be their final mark on this Earth—the tank falls to the Indian Ocean to rust down there like an old ship.
I watch as they hurtle through space, swimming like fish inside their shuttle. I watch as they eat freeze-dried asparagus and shower with wet wipes and pee in the HAB module’s urine receptacle. They do exercises by strapping themselves to a treadmill. They meditate. They play Uno.
There are difficulties: one of the external fuel tanks dislodges, and the MarsNowTM people talk them through the emergency procedure. FirstMan has to do an EVA, as in extravehicular activity, as in space walk. He grips the sides of the module; he reattaches the fuel tank; he survives. Afterward, he and Amber say a prayer, thanking a god they are beginning to invent together.
During a solar storm, they take refuge in a smaller, sheltered area of the rocket, an aluminum tube that is technically called the HUB Tunnel but which they rename “the womb.” They curl up together and float in the dark. This is where they share their first kiss.
The Dark and Other Love Stories Page 4