Originally published in Ripples in Space [11/22/2018]. Full PDF
Doug Kessler looked around his cabin.
He lay in bed, covers up to his chin. His pillows were soft and, try as he might, he could not get them to raise his head more than four inches, no matter how he fluffed them.
There wasn’t much to see: to his right, a small end table with his clock, and his phone resting on the clock; ahead, the funky comforter puffing up over his straight form, and beyond that, his open, messy closet and the closed door to the hall. And to his left, a lamp, a chair buried in laundry, and the window looking across a hundred miles of cold, rusty Mars.
He was late again. He didn’t want to get up. He was trying to remember the feeling of his body weighing a deep imprint against the springs of his mattress, with the pleasant crush of a heavy, comfy comforter across his chest, but the Martian gravity made that impossible and he was disappointed at how the memory was fading.
He turned on his side, away from the view and the bright orange morning, feeling some grit against his elbow as he turned; the damned dust got into everything. He’d been told it wasn’t as sharp as moondust, which never had an atmosphere or water to wear down the edges, but it was bad enough; he remembered the time he’d slid off a path hiking in Colorado, and this was
grittier.
He got up.
He fixed himself a bowl. The pot took the edge off. He knew he didn’t need it, but there wasn’t much he did need up here. The colonists had enough to eat, nice quarters, a good view, and Doug had made some friends, all of whom had been blessed with the same idea to sneak some seeds up here. When they commandeered a small patch of the garden, the other colonists
were cool about it.
It was a one-way trip to get here, and they all tolerated each other’s individualism.
