In which there’s a third installment. (Back to chapter 2.)

13.

Every single day I cursed my wretched, useless public school education.

Why didn’t I know basic chemistry? Why didn’t I know how to test melted Martian ice for drinkability? Why didn’t I know what was poisonous and what wasn’t?

Why did I need a fucking calculator to find out how many years worth of water I had left?

Why didn’t I have better reference materials? I had my wiki copy, of course, but it was too broad to be an in-depth learning tool.

Why, if I was so damned smart, hadn’t I known to bring proper reference materials to a hostile goddamned planet? I had ten years worth of movies, but no basic chemistry classes. Typical idiot American, I thought, and gunned my little forklift as I made my daily commute to the dome.

14.

Not that it really mattered.

I had a lifetime’s worth of food and power and no way to have children. The settlement, such as it was, had already failed. I might see another human being eventually, but it wouldn’t be for years. Landing sites were spread out all over the planet, and only one had been equipped with vehicles capable of going long distances.

I turned away from my sustainability issues and focused on communications. Hours of research revealed instructions for blowing the comm right off the ship; when I armed the sequence and retreated the regulation ninety meters, there was a synchronized series of tiny explosions and a whole chunk of the ship fell off and landed on airbags on the regolith.

Pretty trick.

A day and a half of removing panels and airbags and I had the comm – a big rack filled with computer components. I built it a shelter between the ship and the dome, stocked with everything a data center would need: screens, boards and pointers, speakers, chairs with wheels, and a hot beverage dispenser.

It took the better part of a week to get all the dishes and antennas mounted on the roof of the stupid shelter; luckily by then I had the core up and it was talking to me, directing me at my labors with the infuriating patience of a special needs teacher.

My hands hurt, but late Friday night (I still used Earth day names) I had my first conversation with another colony.

15.

“You’re what?” the wonderfully gruffy, competent voice asked again.

“The only survivor from ship IMM-1541. I was asleep in my suit, everyone else was in the primary temp dome at a meeting. They’re all dead. I have no idea what happened.”

“Eight hundred and ninety-nine fucking people died? At once?”

“Yes. Something airborn, I guess; they were all breathing the same air.”

“Can’t you go visual?” he asked.

“Oh, sure,” I replied, and turned on the cam. “Sorry.”

There was a big military guy in front of me, dark, unshaven, broad-chested. Shrewd light-colored eyes. His beard was fantastic.

“Your beard is fantastic,” I said.

He actually pinked a little. “Thanks. To be honest, it’s why I came here. I was sick of shaving.”

I might have giggled at him, but it was hard to tell. I hadn’t talked to anybody for five months.

“So,” he said, blowing out a breath and squinting at me. “You’ve been alone since 1541’s planetfall?”

“Two days after planetfall,” I said. “But yes.”

“We wondered why your rig wasn’t on the net. All our sats deployed beautifully, you know, so everyone’s got comm and internet, except 1541 wasn’t responding to ping. I was excited to see it come up last night, even if it was a highly latent pig.”

“It turns out that I’m something of an idiot when it comes to installing satellite dishes. Took me awhile to align them.”

“Well, you did it, Ms Yrio. Welcome back to the net.”

My brain responded with, It’s good to be here! but I didn’t say it.

“1549 has been up for months,” he continued. “They brought the ubergeek science contingent, of course, so they’ve been testing water and soil samples and populating the Mars wiki. You can find it all here.” My screen launched a browser as soon as I tapped the address he’d sent.

“Thanks. I didn’t know how to test melted ice to see if it’s drinkable.”

“It’s not!” he replied quickly. “Don’t drink it. It has to be filtered. Info in the wiki.”

“Acknowledged.” I said, scanning an article about shielding, and remembering that Mars didn’t have a nice thick atmosphere to protect things. “I have plenty of earth water, but it’s outside, not under proper shelter. I guess I’ll move it all back into what’s left of the ship.”

“Good idea, that,” he said, smiling, eyes crinkling.

“It’s nice to talk to somebody,” I offered, but I wasn’t sure that I really meant it. I’d gotten used to my quiet and my routine.

“My pleasure. I’ve already notified higher; they’ll want to chat at you later about… your situation.”

“Yeah, no problem. I vented the dome, but beyond that nothing’s been disturbed. When the cops get here, if they ever do, the scene will be preserved.”

Lt Hobson made a complicated expression, mixed distaste and pity. “Yeah. I’m sorry about what’s happened to you.”

“Shit happens. I have plenty of supplies. I’m sure someone will come out here eventually, if only for those.”

“Quite possibly. Well, nice meeting you, Ms Yrio.” I could see him keying at the bottom of the screen.

“You too, Lieutenant.” The session ended with the mission’s logo, a typically human animation of a cartoon Mars opening up to reveal a lush green vegetable garden. I sat back in my chair and gazed at my little data center without really seeing it. I now had access to the Mars wiki, and I could communicate with Earth again for the first time in nine months.

I sent my step-mom an email that was a paragraph long. Being back online had a surreal, mundane quality. Here I am on Mars, alone, but I can still send fucking Christmas emails and read celebrity gossip.

16.

The next day I started moving some of my food and water back into the ship. I don’t know why I’d thought it was a good idea to leave it outside; I guess I’d just left it outside because that’s where it was when everybody died.

Other pallets went into the restaurant shelter; still others were stored in the settlement shelters. It had occurred to me, finally, that it was prudent to keep my eggs in several baskets. I had a lot of the stuff, but it was utterly irreplaceable.

At the end of the day I drove a pallet of water home and stuffed it into my garage as full dark descended. The forklift barely fit in there now, but I’d decided to take a long, hot, decadent shower after I filled my cistern.

That night I queued a bunch of downloads; my stylebot knew what I liked and had been collecting movies and music since I’d cleaned it out before leaving. I also requested a series of math, chemistry, and biology lessons. The system told me I’d have it all in a few weeks, and made me click through the “science has bandwidth priority” screens three times for each download request.

17.

“Higher” turned out to be two women and a man in different buildings so I had three panels open. I didn’t really pay attention to their ranks or titles because they were thousands of miles away I was never good with people I didn’t know in real life.

They interviewed me thoroughly, queried my ship’s core for all the communications and video it had in storage, and said they’d get back to me after everything had been analyzed.

They offered their condolences, and I accepted them while feeling inwardly irritated. Randy, the dumb pud, was dead in that dome, slumped over a picnic table with his forehead on his arms like he’d been napping. He’d wanted to be a Martian cowboy.

When the conference was over I stopped by my restaurant shelter. I filled a potable container with raw booze, grabbed a powdered juice mix, and then sped my forklift home to get drunk.

18.

“Ms Yrio, we’d like you to power the dome back up so we can have visuals.” Lady #2 from higher had great bedhead this morning, really kind of structurally spectacular. “Cop-type personalities need visual. You know. They’re not aural people, really.”

“No problem,” I replied. “I’ll turn it on when I get to town.”

“Town?”

“Well, my homestead’s a couple klicks southeast of the landing site. I drive one of the forklifts back and forth. The ship and the supplies – and the dome – are the town.” I chuckled. “And I live in the ‘burbs.”

“Ah,”Lady #2 smiled. “That’s cute! Well, get it powered up so the guys can use the cameras. I don’t think it will need to be on for long. We’ll call you when you can shut it down, good?”

“Like I said, not a problem. I just woke up, so give me an hour and you’ll have your power.”

“An hour, check.”

“Thanks.”

“Have a nice day.”

Have a nice day? Really?

While I was in the restaurant shelter during my lunch break, I got a call on my suit. It sounded tinny because I wasn’t in my suit at the time, but was instead masticating some abomination of Chinese food. “Ms Yrio?” the man from Higher said. “Ms Yrio! What in the seven depths of hell is going on inside that fucking dome of yours!?”

(Go to chapter 4.)