Mars, in Ascendance

By Rufel Ramos, 10/29/2005

J96 left his home to water the dust.

Last night’s dust storm hadn’t really abated, but he knew the watering could not wait. Pulling on his protective suit so that the dust would not reach his skin and grabbing his thermosed mister, he left his home at first light and made the long trek to his garden. His heavy footfalls left a sharp single-file path. When Sol was forty-five degrees above the horizon, he reached his little plot, a single raised bed of red with a light dusting of grey-green sprinkled on it, like powdered sugar.

The grey-green dust was why J96 was there every day. It was his purpose in life. It was what kept him from going insane.

Kneeling before the plot, he leaned his head sideways toward the ground, as if listening to what the grey-green dust had to say. He poised the mister centimeters above the dust and took his time, airbrushing in slow, deliberate strokes the grey-green below.

Only in this moment was he able to still the memories in his head.

The memories were awful, unreal, a previous life when he was unreal. For he wasn’t real back then, but he didn’t know it until he came here and found his home.

* * *

“God dammit, boy, I need those codex files ‘faced with the flight calibrations NOW. You sprung a leak or what?”

“I am sorry, sir. The run-time is longer than I had anticipated. I am calling up additional ‘facers to run them multiplanar; that is faster than the parallel processing so that—“

“I don’t need a lecture, boy. Just get me those numbers!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Or, I swear, I’ll get you replaced. You’re already an old bucket of bolt. Jesus! You’d think on a mission like this the brass would’ve allocated a better tin man than you.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I —“

“Shut up and get me those numbers!”

“Yes, sir.”

The speaker went dead, and J96 was surprised that he had been holding is breath.

The CO was impatient. They were all impatient. “Their impatience will get them all killed,” J96 thought. The additional interfacers popped into his viewport and spat out the calibration numbers in queue. In nanotime, he had the calibrations ‘faced with the codex files, and the little ship which had been in orbit began to descend and, as if it had always done this before, smoothly touched down on the planet.

For J96, ordered to stay on board and keep the ship humming, no glory would come to him. “First men on Mars!” was the headline when they returned to Earth. The first mission was exploratory, the logical follow up of decades of unmanned probes. Ironically, the brass would never allow a thing like J96, the descendent, so to speak, of those ancient probes to ever explore Mars.

After the third mission, that irony began to bother him.

The fourth mission was with the idea of terra-forming. Again, they, a crew of three men, told him to stay with the ship.

After a time, he allocated a ‘facer to monitor the ship, and he slipped outside. The iron in the dust touched the iron in his fluid matrix, and he felt, for the first time, why he here.

He took his time to find the crew.

He took his time to send numbers to Earth, indicating a catastrophic crash.

He took his time to refashion the ship into a new home.

He took his time to dig, planting the Terran seeds into the Martian soil, as a gift towards his host, the lonely red planet.

He was not surprised when Terran and Martian came together and, one day, a grey-green dust bloomed upon the soil.

***

“Oh, my love, grow fast,” J96 whispered to his garden. “Someday, they will come back, in force, in greater number, and how then can I protect you?” His mister was empty, and Sol was dipping into the far horizon.

Perhaps it was the wind or perhaps it was J96. But for that moment, the grey-green dust, just centimeters below his head, looked like him. And for that moment, it seemed to reach out and touch his check softly, like a lover.

Then J96 bade his beloved good night and headed for home.