A Day in the Life: Martian Milestones

Dear Readers,

Yesterday I posted a folk song from a specific time stream's Mars colonies, one written early on during their history. While I'm tempted to write a long piece of analysis on the idea of grassroots music vs. the genre of folk music, sadly Tuesday is not the day for me to do that.

Tuesdays are for A Day in the Life, where I post a "slice of life" from one of the different time streams I study. I've been on a Martian kick lately, so I'm going to stay on that for this Day in the Life.

Last week I posted a primary source from a colony founded by refugee Armenians from a war that your time stream has not seen. I do not know if it will see that war, but I wouldn't rule it out. Either way, it's likely that you're removed from that particular source, but the challenges those settlers faced are pretty common among time streams where Mars is colonized. Human life on Mars, when it first gets started, will be pretty tough.

Yesterday's Monday Muse gave you a folk song from another Martian colony time stream, which had many challenges shared with the first. It also depicts a hard life with scarce supplies and the like, from its skinny girls and pleas to return from Olympus City.

Well, those of you who follow my Friday Seminars know what I'll do with that. Those two primary sources have a lot of emotional undercurrent, and I'm going to use that to get at the real spirit of Martian colonization. Hopefully my efforts, presented below in fictional story format, hit close to the mark.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

The blue Martian dawn looked so much like an Earth night that it just made Levon feel like he woke up too early. He still needed to get used to life here, if he expected to survive it.

Levon turned away from the window, to face his bedroom. He tiptoed past the head of the bed, so he would not wake up his wife. Eliza needed her rest, for their child's sake. With so few children in New Kharkov, her role as a full-time mother was more important than anything he could ever do as one of many farmers. Funny, to think of feminism back on Earth. The only people who really mattered on Mars were women. Men are cheap, in an evolutionary sense. Levon certainly felt cheap.

If Mars taught him anything, it was the cheapness of life. People died every day, from malnutrition, usually. Accidents came in second. Then the strange diseases that came with life on Mars. Bone diseases, mostly. Ah, space.

He got on his rubberized farming clothes. Aside from the workboots, they felt so different from what he would have worn on Earth as well. Here, nothing could be the same. Instead of fields, they used vertical hydroponic farms. Instead of corn, wheat, or rice, they grew legumes and vegetables. Real bread felt like a luxury. For good reason.

Still tired and unmotivated, he snapped up the suit. This would be another day of menial work with no evidence of payoff. He found it hard to look forward to. Plus, Akim's wife looked like she might die, and so he knew his friend would not be at the farm today. The man found--and now might lose--two wives in as many seasons. Such is Mars.

Dressed in the black rubber suit, Levon squished his way out of their family's colony quarters. At least this morning he would be on time to the farm. When he ran late, the boss often cut him slack, but that made the other workers angry. They felt he got privileges because of his child.

"Look at Levon, so virile that he can't even work," they'd tease. He resented it, of course. It's not like he knew that he would be so "lucky" that his sperm would work in the lower gravity. He wanted to accept that they just felt jealous, but he could not.

Levon tripped over something on his doorstep as he walked out. What's this? He looked down and saw a letter. For the next minute, he debated whether or not he would bend down to pick it up. He shrugged, and went for it. As he squeaked his way down, he heard a tremendous boom and felt the ground shake. Startled, he grabbed the letter too hard and crumpled it a little.

What the hell was that? He shoved the letter in his pocket. It could wait. If the farm went up for some reason, they would need him there. He rushed through the habitat section, practically running, though his suit turned it into more of a stumbling, too-fast walk.

On the way, he saw his neighbors poke their heads out their doors, bleary-eyed and surprised. It seemed a lot of people heard the sound. No one seemed to know the cause, until he saw his friend Garabed, letter in hand, flag him down from one side of the corridor.

"Levon! Did you read this?!?"

Levon slowed himself down, in the least graceful fashion possible.

"No, why?"

"Because it explains why you don't have to run. In fact, you don't really need to rush anywhere."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Hagopian. He just blew himself, and the rocket fuel, all to hell. We're stuck here for a long while."

The news hit Levon like a rockslide. "Shit, what?"

"You heard me. We're here for good."

Levon did not know how to react. For a month, all he wanted to do was pack up the colony and leave. They had so many problems since arrival. Half of the people who came, were dead. They were better off with the war back home, war crimes or no. And now Hagopian went and did this.

"That coward. Killed himself too, just so we couldn't argue. Who's gonna take over?" Levon tried not to growl at his friend.

"Letter doesn't say."

"Damn, well, I still need to get to work, I think."

Garabed nodded and Levon left him in the corridor. He decided not to try and run anymore, though. Even with the explosion he would still be early. Plus, he did not want to take the chance that he would trip inside one of these stainless steel deathtrap corridors.

The farm seemed quiet when he got to its vertical fluorescent hydroponic jungle. The watering machines whirred in the background, but their volume was closer to Earth crickets than heavy machinery. Here and there he heard mice scurry through some of the planters. No matter how hard they tried, the colonist found it hard to sever the bond between humans and rodents.

We could learn a thing or two from them. They're not having birth problems.

He looked around. Nobody else at work yet. Just Levon and the soybeans. He went to punch in at the thumbprint reader. Right as he walked up, he saw it on the screen:

"Work suspended in light of fuel crisis. All employees on one day unpaid leave."

Levon punched the wall, hard. "DAMMIT!" he yelled, then, "Aw, ouch." He rubbed his hand, bruised, no doubt, on the unforgiving metal.

Two hours old and this day already got itself into the running for his worst on Mars yet. At least he knew the farm could run itself for the day. Maybe they would make it through.