Save Us, Mars

I’ve never gotten used to the heat of this room, but I have learned to stand it. With all of the refining, the room often feels like an oven; but with how important it is, I guess it’s worth bearing the heat if it means our mission can carry on. These refineries help us to produce oxygen and are the heart of our outpost here. Back on Earth, too many plants and other oxygen-producing organisms have died out from civilization spreading out too far and too little of the natural landscape was destroyed. Many people who don’t have healthy lungs are easily hospitalized from overexertion from actions as simple as walking since the oxygen content in the air has become so low. It certainly doesn’t help that the Earth has also become overpopulated, which is what led to the expansion of cities.

As a sort of “side mission,” we are also looking into saving the iron scraps we get from removing the oxygen from the Martian soil.

We are nowhere near alone on our new home. When we first arrived, there was something like one hundred other drop zones established, which in turn means about one hundred attempts to colonize Mars. In the unfortunate case that Earth cannot be saved, this is their “backup plan,” which I find unethical, but I guess I don’t have any better ideas if Earth cannot be restored.

Our habitats are built to be self-sufficient by recycling nearly everything and utilizing the few resources we are able to acquire in Mars’ deposits of ores, such as aluminum, lithium, titanium, cobalt, zinc, copper, and many more. If it wasn’t for these capabilities, there is no possible way we would have survived this long. The places we were dropped into are not the best for survival, but they are the most likely places for us to find success for Earth. Unfortunately, this means that Mission Control predicted the survival rate of each colony to be only thirty percent. Sometimes that makes me wonder if I’m an idiot for agreeing to this desperate cry to Mars for help.

To get myself to stop brooding, I decided to get my surface sample for the afternoon done. I’ve always loved the suits we were given; they are sleek and full of tech, far better than the first moon mission space suits. Granted that was almost one hundred fifty years ago, but still. I’ve always had a fascination with technology and what humanity has been able to build and accomplish.

As I put my suit on, I think back to my family back on Earth. I was devastated to leave them, but it helped to think about how leaving them may be the only way I could get to see them again.

I snap out of my state once again and continue gathering my equipment. Once that’s done, I walk into the airlock. With my helmet on, the gentle alarms are a little muffled. Almost immediately after the alarms start, the chamber begins to depressurize to the standard atmospheric pressure of Mars. Once this pressure is reached, the outside door is unlatched, and I’m free to walk outside of my home away from home. Nearby is a rover – my rover – which is designed for sample collection. I board it and begin turning everything on.

Once everything is set, I begin the drive. I’m on my way to a drill I set up yesterday in a valley. The reason we give the drills so much time is the samples that are collected show eighty feet down from the surface. Every three feet or so are represented as one inch in the sample tube, giving us a general idea of the contents the entire way down.

It took only a little over an hour to arrive. As I approached the drill, I remembered my admiration for this technology; even though it performs a simple task, it is still very complicated and intricate. I can understand every component of it, yet I marvel at the complexity of such a simple device.

Once I loaded the sample in a tube on the rover about two feet long, I set the drill to retract. Either later tonight or tomorrow morning, one of us will return to it and move it.

On my way back, I remembered the Valles Marineris is close to my route, so I added a few extra miles to my route to visit it. The view from here is gorgeous. Even as a barren wasteland, the rusty color of the rock and dust of this valley is captivating. It is so vast and expansive. The patterns of the sand down below show how the Martian wind blasted through here creating shapes only present in nature.

I find the sun closing in on the horizon and I’m reminded to continue my route. There is still a few hours left in the day, but I can’t take too long or I could arouse suspicion of slacking off. As a Senior in our colony, I can’t set a poor example for everyone else, so I begin driving again.

The first thing I hear when I return is that another zone is down. A dust storm was hitting the area during its last transmission. Many assume some large debris tore a hole in the walls big enough to overwhelm the emergency pressurizers and the whole place was depressurized faster than people could prepare for.

“They don’t know exactly how many, but they think only twenty-eight colonies remain,” said my companion Finn.

“How long ‘till you think we’re next?” I return.

“Who knows anymore? Could be in an hour, could be never.”

“You don’t really care when it happens, do you?”

“I do… it’s just I’m sick of this place; it’s too barren to spend this much time here.”

“I know what might help,” I offer.

“What?” he asks, slightly intrigued.

“Well, to start there’s the garden in the greenhouse.”

He scoffs. “I’ve been there too many times. It feels too artificial now.”

“Then, you could probably take one of the extra rovers and go explore.”

“Where would I go? Everything is dead here.”

“What about…um…” I was running out of ideas already. I get it; where we live can be depressing, but complaining and moping about it certainly won’t help.

“You can stop trying,” he says, bringing my efforts to a halt.

I empathize with him. It does feel hopeless on our desolate home quite often. “I’m sorry,” I attempt. “Let’s just go eat.”

Right now, the only food we have available is a nutritional mixture. It looks terrible and the texture is even worse, but they still add enough sugar to sweeten it so that eating isn’t completely miserable. If it wasn’t for the soupy, hot gelatin-like texture, I wouldn’t mind it much; but we’re desperate for food right now, so I won’t complain.

The crops won’t be ready for a few days yet. When we arrived, we were given genetically engineered breeds of common crops with a growth cycle of only forty-five days. The only reason we have to resort to NutriGel is because of the recent harvest disaster. We do our best to always use crops first since NutriGel is a limited ration.

Ever since we landed those years ago, every sample at our facility hasn’t shown any promising results. However, we did make a discovery with the Martian soil soon after we lost communication with Mission Control. By using carbon monoxide, we can break up iron oxide found in the soil into iron and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is then superheated and broken into carbon and oxygen. The oxygen is used for breathing and the carbon is burned in a miniature power plant outside, which produces carbon monoxide, and the cycle is complete. I wasn’t joking when I said these habitats recycle everything. For whatever reason, Mission Control back on Earth seemingly abandoned us just weeks after planetfall, leaving us to fend for ourselves. One can assume the worst for what happened.

We both snap our heads toward a buzzing sound coming from the sample analyzer. We turn back to each other and just stare for a few seconds.

“I thought it would never happen…” I say, turning to my own thoughts to process this. That sound is the sound of our salvation; it is the sound of microorganisms being found.

No one on this station knows how to completely investigate this without the proper equipment, which we lack. The only places that hold technology for investigation are the research centers. Only three remain of the initial nine; we found the closest one to here is about six hundred miles away after a quick database search, which could take days to reach. Our only option now is to present this to the Administration of our facility tomorrow morning.

“So, let me get this straight: you plan to wander from base for six hundred miles and you think you’ll survive everything out there?” one of them says.

“What other choice do we have?” I replied.

“I have to agree with him,” says another to the first.

“I still think it’s suicide.” The President here has never really let anyone journey far, which is admittedly why we’re still all alive. Still, we need to break her rules just this once.

“The success of this mission means we can all leave this place,” I argue. “Yes, it’s risky, but when has anything ever been accomplished without risk?”

We sit there in silence for a few moments, then the President sighs and surrenders. “Fine. But you better come back safely for my sake, your sake, and for the stability of the colony.”

“Come on, what do you take us for? Children?” Finn chirps in.

The second person, the Advisor, retorts, “she is simply looking out for everyone and everything here.”

Annoyed, I ask, “So, do we have permission to do this or not?”

Reluctantly, she gives us what we came for. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

I just smile and nod my head as we turn away. I wonder to myself how she could be so protective, and Finn must have noticed my long gaze.

“She lost someone in a now-destroyed colony. Think it was her father. Happened a few years ago, which is why you’ve probably noticed a difference in her attitude between then and now.”

I just make a face externally and feel sorry for her internally. I try to do everything I can to avoid losing someone, which is part of the reason I am here, and thankfully I don’t know what it’s like.

An announcement comes over the PA and our Wrist Radios for us two to report to the briefing room within fifteen minutes. Finn and I decide to pack our own belongings for the time being. Once we arrive in the briefing room, I spot four other people in uniform; I assume they are our companions for this mission.

“Hello, gentlemen,” the Director of External Operations begins. “Meet the crew: Thomas, who is an engineer; Kyle, the co-pilot; Josephine, the pilot-”

“Call me Jose,” she interrupts.

The Director continues, “Kaylie, a specialist in microbiology; and Hugo, another specialist.”

Each of their expressions is different, ranging from excited to impatient. The Director briefs us on the mission, including supplies, rover type, time “limit,” and likely hazards. Everyone seems ready, and after confirmation, the Director walks over to a microphone and announces to load up Rover 03 in Bay 07A. He gives us one last hopeful, yet concerned look, then dismisses us from the briefing room.

Now my mind is racing. I hadn’t fully understood what I was getting myself into by going on this mission. The idea that the fate of humanity rests on our shoulders crosses my mind, and it’s enough to make me nearly vomit. I try to keep my head focused on one task at a time, but I can’t stop it from spinning around itself trying to find answers that will settle it, but all it’s doing is causing more anxiety. Sometimes it feels like even my own mind is out to get me.

In just a couple of hours, we will be trekking across the Martian landscape, farther than any rover is rated for, to a destination with unknown conditions, in order to spare the lives of billions. This time, I can’t stop the anxiety from rising from my throat, and I dash off to find a bathroom.

By now we’re fifty miles out already. Even though it’s been two and a half hours, it’s all going by so fast. To pass some of the time, we’ve been chatting with each other.

“Why, in the name of the stars, did they think putting these centers so far apart was a good idea?” Kaylie asked.

“Shouldn’t you know? You’re one of the specialists here,” Thomas retorted.

“I didn’t bother listening to that part since I was stationed where we are,” she replied with a touch of sarcasm.

“Well,” Finn began, “these centers were only placed on areas that had already been scouted by earlier missions from Earth.”

“So, the rest of the colonies were just a roll of the die?” Josephine asked, clearly unimpressed with the arbitrariness.

“Pretty much,” Thomas replied.

Conversations like this always seem to put everyone in a bad mood, and I hate it. I wish people were able to live with what was given to them instead of unhappily reacting to what’s given to them. If they did, I doubt many people would still think of Mars as a sad, dead landscape.

By tonight, we plan to be almost half of the way there. We’ll stay the night stationary and continue on our way by early morning. Later that night, we should be on our final approach.

While we wait, Hugo is attempting to make contact with the research center, but I have to agree with Finn when he tells him that it’s pointless. I don’t want to admit it, but I know it’s likely everyone is dead there if they haven’t responded yet. He’s been trying for half an hour now and keeps saying “just five more minutes of trying.” We let him be, knowing full well that no voice is going to come out of that radio; Hugo’s words are falling into the void of a one-sided conversation.

There are two probable causes for why they’re all gone. One is a regional dust storm hit, which is typically one or two thousand miles in diameter. The other, the more likely one, is laziness. Many colonies didn’t take food production seriously and thought they could rely solely on shipments from Earth, but when Mission Control disappeared, people panicked because they didn’t have enough food to keep everyone alive. Some people resorted to raiding, but the majority did what they could within their own colony and peacefully disappeared without taking another colony with it. It’s rumored some people locked themselves in hibernation pods in a desperate attempt to spare themselves and to be found someday. However, in order to hibernate, there needs to be a slow and steady flow of nutrition into their bodies. With the lack of food, they could only survive for a few years – a decade at most.

We started chatting again. Thomas just left to check on the engine, batteries, and the other mechanical parts on the rover.

“Think we could terraform Mars someday?” Kyle asks.

“Lot of people don’t realize how difficult that actually is,” Finn replied.

“How’s that?”

“Mars’ magnetic field is too weak to protect the atmosphere from being blasted away by the sun’s solar winds. If we want to establish an atmosphere, we would also need to establish an artificial magnetic field. I know we have some advanced technology, but that is way beyond our time, especially with how unstable we are as a race right now.”

“Please, you guys! Can we stop being so depressing?” I burst out.

“What? We’re just talking about how hopeless this is,” Finn says sarcastically.

“You need to grow up. I don’t mean to be rude, but you seriously need to tone down the despairing attitude.”

He glances at me with resentment. I instantly regret it. I did the exact thing I said I hated. Everyone goes silent after that. I want to be a leader here; I’ve always wanted to be a leader. Sometimes I wonder if I’m too stiff to be a respected leader or if it’s just that I have a different mindset than most others. I make a note of what I’ve done so I can hopefully make it up to them. There must be something we can do to brighten the mood.

Thomas comes back and says everything is working as it should. That seems to lift everyone’s faces a little.

A few hours later, we started to prepare supper. We had been gifted with some of the backup food, like freshly grown pork, some of the best stuff you can get in the colonies. Our meat is for rare occasions since it takes so long to grow, and I notice everyone brightened up a bit more. Additionally, we were given some corn and potatoes. We hardly have enough of these three items for more than a few meals, but eating something different than the NutriGel is so refreshing. When we finish, the co-pilot eats and the pilot takes over again. Thomas and Kylie stay at the table to keep Kyle company.

As I sit near a window and watch the passing dust dunes, I remember why we’re here. In less than forty-eight hours, we will know if we have found humanity’s salvation.

The bright white lights of the rover have just turned on and the yellow beacons on the roof come to life. In just an hour or so, everything will be pitch black. Josephine is asleep and Kyle is driving the rover. I have been on watch duty for large rocks, craters, and other drops in the landscape. That paired with my poor sleep quality last night on a new bed is making me exhausted. It’s hard to keep my eyes open, and I’m nowhere near alert. Thankfully, we’ll be stopping soon for a break. We’re just eighty miles away now and everyone is getting antsy.

“Dust storm,” Kyle calls out. “It’s twenty-five miles east of us and will intercept us in about thirty minutes.”

I have no idea how he is so calm as he says that. A dust storm could end any mission at any moment. During a dust storm, we are at the full mercy of nature. If nature chooses, we will either be hit or swept away, never to be heard from again.

“Stars help us,” Thomas mumbles.

“Hey, at least it’s a local storm and not regional,” Kyle replies.

“Well, a storm is a storm, but I suppose you’re right.”

“If we sit still, it’ll take about six hours, which is perfect if we stay stationary for the night. We’ll keep moving forward for another twenty minutes, then we’ll lock down.”

“So, does anyone know how long Earth has left? Or if it even exists?” Thomas asks.

“Well, the last we heard from Mission Control was a decade,” Finn answered.

“Yeah, but that was eight years ago.”

“Do you really think this can work?” Kaylie added while seated, looking down at the ground as she swung her feet.

“I mean, it is a desperate act, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. We have to try, right?” I offer.

“I guess…” She almost sounds like she’s longing for something or someone she hasn’t seen in a long time. I would guess it’s family, but I don’t know much about her.

“It’s not like the fate of humanity depends on it,” Finn adds jokingly. It seems to give a few people a small smile, including me. He’s cheering up a bit and isn’t as upset as he usually is.

“…I guess it is worth it, no matter how small the chances are. This is our best option,” she finishes.

We sat in silence for a while. We’re all clearly tired from the gravity of this mission. Though I do admit, it is quite pleasant to listen to just the soft sounds of the rover wheels marching along the landscape and the light hum of the onboard electronics.

By now the storm is just ten minutes out and the rover comes to a halt. Hugo goes to retrieve Josephine and updates her on the situation. Kyle begins instructing us for lockdown.

“Parking brake is engaged. Softening suspension; steady yourself.”

The rover drifts lower towards the Martian sand so we have a lower center of gravity and don’t get blown over on first contact with the storm. Then the exterior lights come fully on and we hear the sound of the stabilizers lowering. Everyone except Kyle spreads out to deadbolt all the doors and windows. Hugo and Thomas tackle the hangar door, a monster of a lock.

“Sealing windows; don’t stick your fingers in unless you don’t like them,” Kyle calls. With a push of a button, he electronically lowers metal shields over our larger windows, mostly the front driving ones. The sound of the antenna retracting and solar panel covers moving can also be heard.

We left one door open for the exterior inspection to check for any new cuts, dents, loose bolts, and so on. I am one of three volunteers to go out, and I breathed a sigh of relief when nothing notable was found.

The last door is locked and the interior lights are dimmed to reduce power consumption as much as possible. Josephine, Kyle, Finn, Kaylie, and I start getting ready for bed. Hugo and Thomas volunteer to stay up for half the night to watch the storm.

As I walk to my bed, the rover briefly squeaks and tilts a few degrees. It soon settles again and the only noise is the sound of the wind. I crawl into bed, trusting Hugo and Thomas to protect us. I have to, after all. I’d rather catch sleep for tomorrow than remain awake as an anxious mess. By tomorrow morning, we should be on our way once again, only hours away from our saving grace.

I wake up to us already moving. The sun is just over the horizon and we’re progressing steadily. As I dress, I hear some commotion coming from outside my room. When I emerge, the building is right there, only a few miles away.

The building is a bit bigger than our colony. From here I’d guess it’s two hundred feet across and a little under one hundred feet at its highest point.

As we approach the front, rust can be seen everywhere on the exterior. It’s likely that rust built up over a period of at least five years. The wind turbines are unmoved despite the blowing wind. A rover is flipped and dented near the base of the structure; I’d guess it’s from a storm.

That could have been us, I think to myself.

The rover comes to a gentle stop. As Josephine and Kyle prepare the rover, the rest of us begin to put on our expedition gear. I finally have an excuse to use a Rover Companion since we’re on a long mission like this. I’ve always found them cute; they’re only eighteen inches long and about ten inches wide. It’s amazing that something so small can be so capable. For instance, it’s equipped with motion and temperature systems to detect unidentified movement, which was a result of the raids those years ago.

As we walk through our airlock door, my excitement rises once again. We might be able to finally go home. The rover races ahead to scout the area and report the information to a virtual map on our Wrist Radios. We only have a quarter mile or so to walk, but safety can’t be overdone here.

We soon arrive at the main door. Finn tries the keypad to unlock the doors, but the buttons don’t even press in.

“Rust,” he says. “Thomas, can you hardwire it?”

“Well yeah, that’s my whole job.”

He leverages the panel open using an old crowbar we had on the rover and begins working the wires. I don’t understand how people comprehend that many circuits in one spot and how they can know exactly what goes where.

After a minute, the door creaks open but locks up about halfway.

As I duck under, I point out, “At least we know the base has some power.”

“It’s just emergency batteries. The only lights on are dimmed,” Thomas replies.

Hugo, the Rover Companion, and I split off in one direction, and Thomas, Finn, and Kaylie go the other way.

This time, the robot stays close to us so it can make noise at the sight of danger instead of risking a delay of information through our Wrist Radios, and I’m glad it’s close. Everything here is so eerie. Maybe because people died here, or maybe it’s just how dark it is, but something is making the hair on my neck stand up. We wander into a few rooms; most are sleeping quarters, and some are storages and small kitchens. We’re clearly in the wrong section, but we don’t know what lies ahead of us, so we continue on. Eventually, we reach one of the hangars, and right as we enter, we get a call from our radios. Kaylie tells us they found the control room, so we march our way there the second the route appears on our maps.

We reach the room and I gasp. There are still some bodies left here. The sight makes me completely uncomfortable.

“Don’t worry. They haven’t come back to life yet,” Finn said once he saw my reaction.

“How morbid,” Kaylie replies.

“What? Am I not allowed to tease?”

“You are, but those are the remains of people. Probably not the best thing to joke about.”

“Anyway,” Thomas begins, a little annoyed, “we found the old communication controls.”

“That’s a good start. Thomas, come with me; we’ll go find the generator,” I say.

“Understood,” he says firmly.

“Hugo, Kaylie, you two could go find the labs,” I continue.

“Gladly,” says Hugo.

“Sure,” Kaylie says.

“Finn, you can join one of us or stay here,” I offer.

“I’ll stay. I’d like to understand this room a little better.”

I nod and begin my departure. Thomas follows close behind and takes the lead once we round the corner; he knows these structures far better than I do. I ask him what a generator here could run on. He tells me that since gasoline is too heavy and expensive and coal is difficult to start up, important buildings like this one always have a tiny nuclear reactor.

“And why don’t we use those for normal use?” I ask.

“It’s because uranium is almost impossible to get with Earth’s conditions. I’m amazed they even let these buildings have it.”

The rover beeps softly twice and then takes off, just like it did as we approached the building. Since then, Thomas frequently checks his radio as we wander to see if it found anything.

“Hey!” Thomas exclaims after a few minutes. “It found the room.”

We arrive and Thomas starts working like he’s done this a hundred times before. He flips a switch which he says draws all the building’s power to here for start-up. He then types away at a console and eventually, noises begin one by one indicating power production is beginning.

“Alright, that’s it. The rest is done automatically,” Thomas says as he stands up from the computer.

I command the robot to follow us once again and we depart for the control room. Just before we arrive, the lights flash on. I have to cover my eyes for a moment since they were adjusted to the helmet headlights. My eyes recover and we enter.

“Did you find it?” Finn asks sarcastically.

“No, we stopped at a cafeteria instead,” Thomas retorted.

“Very funny.”

“I take it you two found the power. We’re starting the machines for analysis. It should only take a few minutes once it’s set up,” says Hugo over the radio.

“You ready for this, buddy?” I say half to the rover, half to myself. It beeps and twists in return as if to say it understands.

For some reason, we haven’t heard back from the specialists in a while. I hope disappointment didn’t kill them.

Right then Kaylie bursts through the door smiling childishly and runs over to hug me.

“This is it!” she says. “We found it! We can go home! We can save the Earth!”

Tears begin to well up in my eyes as I hug her back tightly. We can finally go home. After all these years of depressing work, we can finally go home.

Finn looks like a weight was just lifted off of him and Thomas is smiling and clearly relieved. Sensing our excitement, even the robot does a twirl and makes some noise.

At that moment, I remember Josephine and Kyle.

“Hey, you two! We’ve done it!” I call on the radio. All that’s heard back is joyful screaming.

“Start preparing the rover. We’ll be out as soon as we make contact with Earth.” Then a pain shoots through my side. What if we’re too late?

We first broadcast a looping message that our mission on Mars may be complete. We then try to make contact off-planet. As moments, minutes, hours go by, we begin to lose hope again. We’ve said “one more try” at least twenty times now.

For a second, I thought I heard something, but it stopped immediately.

No, there’s definitely something.

“You guys hear that too?” I ask.

“Hear what?” Kaylie asked.

“Listen.”

We wait a few seconds as more static comes through; then a different sound is revealed. I recognize it instantly as a voice.

“This…control… you copy?” the voice says.

“We hear you!” several of us exclaim.

“Likewise…you calling? This… abandoned years ago.”

“Um… we have a code green here,” Kaylie says, still not quite believing her own words.

“What? You… code green?” The connection is slowly getting stronger.

“Yes! Are we too late?” Hugo says.

“No, but not… much. Most of us here… the mission years ago. Only a few of us remained. We couldn’t afford to… resources. Despite that, we will… a rocket in a month or so. I will notify the Administer immediately.”

That’s it. We did it. In just ten months, we can load everything up and go home after almost a decade. And in nine months after that, we can start fixing everything. It will take work, but we now have what we need to move forward. Earth, along with the rest of humanity, will be saved for at least another few centuries.