[:]
The rovers, which we normally left outside the habitat, disappeared the night of the big sandstorm. During the storm, the sand hitting against the habitat’s metal roof had sounded like rain. Would we be able to find them beneath the huge piles of dust? We searched for hours without stopping, but we didn’t find any trace of them. Don José, who was in charge of the station, said the rovers had probably sought shelter with another crew—some gringos who had a base several kilometers away. The claim struck me as odd. Weren’t the rovers connected to the mission control of each station? I was sure I had heard their motors in my dreams, like a story in a song that you can only remember vaguely, that leaves you feeling uneasy. Why was I so afraid now that their meddling presence was gone?
We had arrived the night before, after a long journey across the immensity of space, across both terrestrial and Martian geographies, real and imaginary. We had traversed diverse expanses, mountains, valleys, canyons, desires, expectations, prejudices, and fears, before disembarking in that land that was at once familiar and unknown. A starry night awaited us and we could feel the frozen wind in spite of our space suits.
Ever since humans began visiting Mars more frequently, they brought with them their earthly concerns. At first, science and space exploration distracted from the big discoveries. Amid the rocks, there remained innumerable mysteries yet to be solved: signs of past life, the geologic history of the planet. But little by little, curiosity started to give way to greed. The discovery of rare minerals—lithium, gold, and other raw materials used to support life on Earth as well as on Mars—led to the establishment of mines. We needed an industry that would make further expansion into space sustainable. Stations transformed into cities with a growing demand for humans. Now there were migratory caravans of people, dazzled by the false dreams of utopia that billionaires propagated on social media, looking for a better future in this new land.
Many, if not the vast majority, had no idea of the deadly journey they would face, nor the extreme, unforgiving, and hostile cold that awaited them on Mars. Those who were able to survive all of these difficulties could, in theory, obtain papers to live on the planet, providing they could adapt themselves to the harsh labor conditions in the mines and the space stations. Fortunately, our expedition wasn’t looking to establish roots on Mars; our objective was to study it, to understand it as well as our limited senses and our social and mental constructions would allow.
Don José received us with a smile that obscured the wariness he felt about our presence. Would we be able to handle it, or would we flee at the first opportunity? He had witnessed many enthusiasts who couldn’t even bear the first night. He was the guardian of the Tharsis Station, an enclave of particular interest for its proximity to the volcanoes and the entrance to an area sacred to one of the first human nomadic groups on Mars, known today as the Sons of the Desert. They were the only people who had been able to adapt themselves to the planet’s inhospitable conditions and make it their home.
We were a motley group of Earthlings: we all had different professions and came from widespread locations on planet Earth. Only one of us had visited Mars before, and it was he who issued the mission guidelines and decided what we could and could not do with our time, food, energy, and communications with our home planet, which lagged twenty minutes behind us. The idea was, first of all, to survive, and then to achieve our philosophical and artistic objectives and their symbolic and sensorial transmission to our co-planetaries. The advanced techniques in hibernation that had facilitated our comfortable arrival to the red planet also allowed us to avoid the early friction that was beginning to flourish in the cold and the dark of the habitat. Was it clashing personalities or simply a result of the process of mentally adapting to so many new things? Only time would tell.
The first day, the rovers took us to the safest spots so we could practice walking with three times less gravity. The exploratory outing coincided with a solar eclipse on Phobos [1], and although visually there was no comparison to the spectacularity of what happens on Earth, the light, the wind, and the general feeling got to you in a strange way. They provoked thoughts that were difficult to explain, a kind of delirium that at first I thought only I was experiencing until I found out others were too. The rocks, the forms, the geology, and the geometry of the landscape seemed to blend together before our eyes in indecipherable messages like pieces of a puzzle whose final arrangement we were still very far from understanding.
In the dining hall when we got back, I decided to share my experience as we ate our highly nutritious—but unappetizing—dehydrated products. Somewhat shyly, I admitted that at one point I had felt something booming in my head and thought I might have to make an emergency return to Earth. But everyone admitted that they found themselves in a semiconscious state. All the while, Don José listened to us from the corner, a stiff smile on his face. That night, I barely slept; when I closed my eyes, shapes danced across my vision, changing color and size. I felt like I was losing myself in them; a labyrinthine enigma, a mineral weaving that was multiplying microscopically, expanding beyond the blue horizon of the Martian sunsets. I woke up drenched in icy sweat. Did dreams mean something on Mars too? I put on some thermal layers and joined my companions, hoping to calm my anxiety with the directives from mission control. The playful rovers were with us, collecting information, inserting themselves into our research photographs, happy for some human companionship. And even though we returned to the same spot as the day before, the feeling didn’t come back with the same intensity.
We had to turn back earlier than planned after mission control warned us of an imminent storm that was going to cover the entire planet with a coffee-colored layer of sand in a matter of minutes. The sand was so fine that it managed to penetrate the tiniest cracks in our suits. We arrived in time to take shelter and enjoy some of the liquor that someone had been able to sneak past the planetary protection customs. In the festive atmosphere, we started singing songs out of tune and sharing stories from our homes.
“Do any of you believe in Martians?” Don José suddenly asked us. Half of the crew started talking about the big advancements that had been made in detecting life on Mars, and how they had existed but didn’t have the same composition as us, which was a big mystery.
“But what do you think?” a crew member asked.
“That I’m one of them,” Don José replied to our laughter. The time came; the combination of the alcohol, the experiences of the day, and the stories of extraterrestrial contact took me straight to my bed, where I fell asleep immediately, lulled by the sound of the sand on the habitat’s roof, which still sounded like light rain. Outside, the engines of the rovers purred quietly.
The next day, I couldn’t shake off a feeling of uneasiness. Where were the rovers? Why did Don José think it was normal for his robotic aids from mission control to go to a neighboring settlement? Why hadn’t we sheltered them somewhere? An unexpected visit interrupted my thoughts. Someone was outside the habitat, watching us incredulously.
“Is this some kind of horror movie?” exclaimed one of my crew members. I shook my head, acting like everything was normal, even though my stomach was starting to hurt. After a few minutes, a luminous figure appeared in the doorway to the habitat. I have no words to describe her. Sounds were emanating from her into the air, materializing in written words in our respective languages: I know that your rovers disappeared. We’re here to help you. Welcome to Mars.
_ _
[1] Phobos (Greek for “fear”) is the largest of Mars’s satellite moons and the closest to Earth.
The rovers, which we normally left outside the habitat, disappeared the night of the big sandstorm. During the storm, the sand hitting against the habitat’s metal roof had sounded like rain. Would we be able to find them beneath the huge piles of dust? We searched for hours without stopping, but we didn’t find any trace of them. Don José, who was in charge of the station, said the rovers had probably sought shelter with another crew—some gringos who had a base several kilometers away. The claim struck me as odd. Weren’t the rovers connected to the mission control of each station? I was sure I had heard their motors in my dreams, like a story in a song that you can only remember vaguely, that leaves you feeling uneasy. Why was I so afraid now that their meddling presence was gone?
We had arrived the night before, after a long journey across the immensity of space, across both terrestrial and Martian geographies, real and imaginary. We had traversed diverse expanses, mountains, valleys, canyons, desires, expectations, prejudices, and fears, before disembarking in that land that was at once familiar and unknown. A starry night awaited us and we could feel the frozen wind in spite of our space suits.
Ever since humans began visiting Mars more frequently, they brought with them their earthly concerns. At first, science and space exploration distracted from the big discoveries. Amid the rocks, there remained innumerable mysteries yet to be solved: signs of past life, the geologic history of the planet. But little by little, curiosity started to give way to greed. The discovery of rare minerals—lithium, gold, and other raw materials used to support life on Earth as well as on Mars—led to the establishment of mines. We needed an industry that would make further expansion into space sustainable. Stations transformed into cities with a growing demand for humans. Now there were migratory caravans of people, dazzled by the false dreams of utopia that billionaires propagated on social media, looking for a better future in this new land.
Many, if not the vast majority, had no idea of the deadly journey they would face, nor the extreme, unforgiving, and hostile cold that awaited them on Mars. Those who were able to survive all of these difficulties could, in theory, obtain papers to live on the planet, providing they could adapt themselves to the harsh labor conditions in the mines and the space stations. Fortunately, our expedition wasn’t looking to establish roots on Mars; our objective was to study it, to understand it as well as our limited senses and our social and mental constructions would allow.
Don José received us with a smile that obscured the wariness he felt about our presence. Would we be able to handle it, or would we flee at the first opportunity? He had witnessed many enthusiasts who couldn’t even bear the first night. He was the guardian of the Tharsis Station, an enclave of particular interest for its proximity to the volcanoes and the entrance to an area sacred to one of the first human nomadic groups on Mars, known today as the Sons of the Desert. They were the only people who had been able to adapt themselves to the planet’s inhospitable conditions and make it their home.
We were a motley group of Earthlings: we all had different professions and came from widespread locations on planet Earth. Only one of us had visited Mars before, and it was he who issued the mission guidelines and decided what we could and could not do with our time, food, energy, and communications with our home planet, which lagged twenty minutes behind us. The idea was, first of all, to survive, and then to achieve our philosophical and artistic objectives and their symbolic and sensorial transmission to our co-planetaries. The advanced techniques in hibernation that had facilitated our comfortable arrival to the red planet also allowed us to avoid the early friction that was beginning to flourish in the cold and the dark of the habitat. Was it clashing personalities or simply a result of the process of mentally adapting to so many new things? Only time would tell.
The first day, the rovers took us to the safest spots so we could practice walking with three times less gravity. The exploratory outing coincided with a solar eclipse on Phobos [1], and although visually there was no comparison to the spectacularity of what happens on Earth, the light, the wind, and the general feeling got to you in a strange way. They provoked thoughts that were difficult to explain, a kind of delirium that at first I thought only I was experiencing until I found out others were too. The rocks, the forms, the geology, and the geometry of the landscape seemed to blend together before our eyes in indecipherable messages like pieces of a puzzle whose final arrangement we were still very far from understanding.
In the dining hall when we got back, I decided to share my experience as we ate our highly nutritious—but unappetizing—dehydrated products. Somewhat shyly, I admitted that at one point I had felt something booming in my head and thought I might have to make an emergency return to Earth. But everyone admitted that they found themselves in a semiconscious state. All the while, Don José listened to us from the corner, a stiff smile on his face. That night, I barely slept; when I closed my eyes, shapes danced across my vision, changing color and size. I felt like I was losing myself in them; a labyrinthine enigma, a mineral weaving that was multiplying microscopically, expanding beyond the blue horizon of the Martian sunsets. I woke up drenched in icy sweat. Did dreams mean something on Mars too? I put on some thermal layers and joined my companions, hoping to calm my anxiety with the directives from mission control. The playful rovers were with us, collecting information, inserting themselves into our research photographs, happy for some human companionship. And even though we returned to the same spot as the day before, the feeling didn’t come back with the same intensity.
We had to turn back earlier than planned after mission control warned us of an imminent storm that was going to cover the entire planet with a coffee-colored layer of sand in a matter of minutes. The sand was so fine that it managed to penetrate the tiniest cracks in our suits. We arrived in time to take shelter and enjoy some of the liquor that someone had been able to sneak past the planetary protection customs. In the festive atmosphere, we started singing songs out of tune and sharing stories from our homes.
“Do any of you believe in Martians?” Don José suddenly asked us. Half of the crew started talking about the big advancements that had been made in detecting life on Mars, and how they had existed but didn’t have the same composition as us, which was a big mystery.
“But what do you think?” a crew member asked.
“That I’m one of them,” Don José replied to our laughter. The time came; the combination of the alcohol, the experiences of the day, and the stories of extraterrestrial contact took me straight to my bed, where I fell asleep immediately, lulled by the sound of the sand on the habitat’s roof, which still sounded like light rain. Outside, the engines of the rovers purred quietly.
The next day, I couldn’t shake off a feeling of uneasiness. Where were the rovers? Why did Don José think it was normal for his robotic aids from mission control to go to a neighboring settlement? Why hadn’t we sheltered them somewhere? An unexpected visit interrupted my thoughts. Someone was outside the habitat, watching us incredulously.
“Is this some kind of horror movie?” exclaimed one of my crew members. I shook my head, acting like everything was normal, even though my stomach was starting to hurt. After a few minutes, a luminous figure appeared in the doorway to the habitat. I have no words to describe her. Sounds were emanating from her into the air, materializing in written words in our respective languages: I know that your rovers disappeared. We’re here to help you. Welcome to Mars.
_ _
[1] Phobos (Greek for “fear”) is the largest of Mars’s satellite moons and the closest to Earth.
