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In the distance, hangs Mars. Even though I know none of this is real, I pretend, just for a little while, that I am twelve years old and dreaming of that red planet. I am in my garden on State Street—cool grass under my feet, skin goose-bumped by the fresh night air. The hum of the world has quieted and all that is left is the swelling chorus of insects. It is dark except for the stripe of light that spills from my bedroom where the curtains hang askew. I shift so that the light doesn’t interfere with my view of the stars.
The pungent smell of the nearby Yesterday-Today-and-Tomorrow flowers stirs my memories—of childhood, first love, night swims in a humid summer. I feel the vibrations of the pool pump and listen to the lap-lap of the water as the creepy-crawly works just under the surface.
The sound of muffled laughter drifts from next door—someone is watching a sitcom or having a dinner party.
I am not distracted by any of it. Mars has my attention. I cannot take my eyes off that small, twinkling planet. A familiar longing settles in; romantic and desperate. It is a longing to be free of this garden, to see space for myself, to walk the empty red hills of Mars. I smile at the irony, considering where I am outside this simulation.
‘You’ll do well up there,’ says my step-father, Dumza. His voice is as rich as I remember it.
He puts an arm around my shoulders and gives me a squeeze. He smells like soap and sweat. I smile.
‘You think so?’ I ask.
He laughs. It’s that barrel-belly laugh that I love so much. ‘Of course.’
When I turn my head, he is gone. There’s just the garden and the night, and it is no longer easy to pretend.
I emerge from the simulation with tears on my cheeks. I wipe them away and take a breath, like I was taught. One, two, three, place yourself back in reality. One, two, three, orient yourself. One, two, three, be mindful of your breath. I close my eyes, taking mental notes of how I feel so I can log it later. The garden is gone, the metal shell is back.
I look out the portal window, into space. Eleven days in, eighteen to go. We’re in limbo now—that dead space between things where we cannot see where we’ve come from or where we’re going. Earth is gone, Mars is nowhere in sight yet. We are wholly alone.
I place my feet on the ground. The cold seeps through the rubber mats, through my socks, and into my bones. How is it that they’ve mastered solar sail travel, but they haven’t figured out a way to keep this place warm I wonder.
Otar is leaning against the frame. He looks exhausted, his blonde hair mussed and unwashed—he’s not sleeping well, none of us are. It’s hard to schedule a body clock that is so accustomed to the sun and moon ordering our days and nights, even with the programmed light sequence that tries to mimic it.
‘You done?’ he asks.
I nod. ‘Just give me a minute.’
‘Don’t be long.’ He slips back down the corridor, disinterested in small talk. I’d love to say it’s because he’s a loner but it’s just me he’d rather not be around.
I bend down, resting my hands on my knees. Dumza has never been in my simulations. I don’t know how he got in there—I didn’t add him to my memory bank. His presence has thrown me. I miss him all over again.
And of course, the feeling is quickly drowned by a deep, unsettling anxiety.
They told us to keep people out of the sims—too difficult to distance yourself from Earth if you’re clinging to relationships. Instead, they framed the questions to help us remember places. I guess the garden I chose was too closely linked to my time with Dumza. I take another deep breath. Maybe it was my subconscious kicking in and adding to the mix. Maybe I’m so tired I started dreaming while in the sim. I wipe away another tear, take another deep breath. There is no space in all this vastness for things that bind us to Earth.
#
Chapter two of Wendel Nkomo’s philosophical tome, Native in Space, begins with this sentence:
“In space we all become alien. And yet, in space—travelling between stars—the only thing we have is our humanity. Perhaps it will be here that humans finally let go of their prejudices and embrace true Ubuntu.”
I wonder if that’s what he found on Mars. Eleven days in space and I’m thinking prejudices are all we bring with us.
#
The first week in training we were each asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement that legally bound us not to share what we were about to learn. I don’t think any of us hesitated to sign it. We were hungry enough for Mars to dismiss the usual legal jargon.
It was then we realised to what extent the MarsCasts were censored and monitored.
The African Space Alliance must maintain the hope of colonisation, the dream, the great vision. Fear might lead to a cut in funding, and we can’t have that—the recent plethora of economic crashes and wars have ensured that financial backing is meagre enough as it is.
I must be honest, watching the truth, there were moments when I almost turned my back on Mars—but the promise of something new, something so pregnant with possibility left me unable to resist.
Not even after I learned the truth:
The first team to call Mars home are all on heavy medication for mental breakdowns. The second had two suicides in transit. The third was uniquely lacking in drama, while the fourth only had one incident: the brutal beating of Jon McKnamara for constantly making lewd comments about his fellow female officer. He almost died but instead, gets to live on Mars as a paraplegic, with his attackers—because no one, no one, comes back from Mars. Not victims, not perpetrators. Colonisation can be hell.
Every crew is battered with psychological tests and thrown into a hab in the middle of the Sahara for six months before we go anywhere near space. Then it’s another six months on the New International Space Station. We are monitored and assessed and counselled but none of these well-educated people really knows what it’s like to live on another planet; to live in space entirely divorced from Earth. Now that there are a few more scientists Mars-side, everyone’s hoping they’ll be able to figure out how to better prepare the crews. Hoping. It’s the word that encapsulates this endeavour because, really, no one has ever colonised another planet before. Our colonisation is still in its infancy and mistakes are likely to be made.
It’s not all bad news though, it wasn’t that Mars had become some sort of arena for the worst of mankind, in fact, once the medication kicked in and the newer teams arrived, a kind of stability began to form. The incidents became less frequent as the crews settled in. And it seems that, for now, things are going well. As wars and famines and natural catastrophes monopolise news headlines here on Earth, Mars really is a colony of hope.
The trainers at the African Space Agency made it very clear that stability is a fragile tension that we must do our utmost to uphold. It would be hard work—both psychologically and physically.
But even with the uncertainty of the state of Mars, and our place in it, I still wanted in. Or was it Earth that I wanted out of?
Nkomo has a premise for this and says, ‘Only those who have nothing to lose will risk uncertainty—even the threat of death—and call it exploration.’
He’s right about one thing: I have nothing to lose even if Mars has little to offer.
#
The cafeteria is a microcosm of our various nations. Our flags are hung around the room and when we enter, we are greeted by the comms in our native language. Outside the portal windows, we can see the counter-weight arch that helps create our artificial gravity. And beyond that, black dotted with pinpricks of light. I’m always thrown by the basic human need for food, and the alien vista of space being so near each other. The mundane beside the extraordinary. I wonder if that will ever feel normal.
Greta, a Hungarian biologist, sits eating something resembling scrambled eggs. She looks up, startled when she realises it’s me. She glances at the exit and then, realising I’m standing in the only way out, reluctantly nods hello.
‘Hungry?’ she asks, overly polite, concentrating on pushing the yellow-grey eggs around.
I’m so tired of everyone being polite when their insincerity is obvious. ‘Not really,’ I say. My stomach still hasn’t settled.
‘It’s horrible.’ She pokes her egg substitute glumly. ‘Think it will be better over there?’ she asks.
‘I doubt it. Would be nice though—to arrive there and have them lay on a nice braai or roast?’
‘Braai?’
‘Barbeque?’
‘Ah yes. Outside cooking,’ she says and looks pointedly at me.
I see the problem. No outdoor cooking on Mars. I’m hit with an inconsolable moment of grief for sishanyama. My stomach rumbles.
‘Hungry,’ she says again, frowning.
‘I guess I should eat.’ I sit down next to her and she stands, collecting her plate.
‘Adventure, they say,’ she laughs awkwardly as she walks away, throwing her half-eaten eggs in the garbage disposal. ‘Adventure tastes like shit.’
#
There are ten of us on this crew. They’re hoping the next trip—in twelve months’ time—will carry double that. Gradually, they’re exporting a colony to Mars.
Most people think we’re foolish for sending so many. They think we’re wasting our energy and efforts on the wrong things. Earth needs us. Our dying planet needs our ideas, ingenuity, and more importantly our funding. But in the thousands of years it takes for Earth to properly die, we could be forging our way into the galaxy and making a new home. We hope.
I sit in the cockpit, taking my turn, watching the ship fly itself, watching for incoming messages from Earth and ASA. There are never any messages other than software updates and course adjustments. I’m fixated instead on the star-filled blackness outside. Somehow, closer to these heavenly bodies, they feel even further away.
When you’re a kid and you’re in a dark room, you feel like the room is made smaller by the dark. All that black presses in on you, making you far too close to all the things that might devour you. But out here, in space, the black has an infinite quality about it. All that dark is a detached endlessness which seems as though it could never touch you, and yet, it has found its way inside you.
Once, I spent the Christmas holidays with a friend at her parents’ beach house in the Transkei. Like only white people could then, they’d amassed themselves a little paradise where they could stroll down a grassy hill and be on the beach in seconds. We lived on the beach that summer, and once, even though I’m not that enthusiastic about the sea, we went diving. I remember sticking my head under the surface, staring through goggles, and seeing where the water turned murky and went on forever. I had this sudden panic attack thinking how big that sea was. It was a giant expanse and I was small and powerless in it. And yet, I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to know what was beyond where I could see.
Space feels like that to me sometimes. I think that’s why I chose my small garden for my sim.
#
When I go back into the sim they’ve inserted music.
We were asked to choose music that helps us relax. I chose a few ancient tracks by Abdullah Ibrahim because Dumza and I used to listen to him while we gazed through the telescope. It wasn’t the usual stuff kids my age were listening to—like Four-Fifty Indigo, Shwe-Shwe Rebellion, and Tokx—but then, I wasn’t much of a normal kid. Normal kids didn’t happily spend time in their garden with their step-father, staring at Mars. To hear that piano now, I can almost conjure Dumza and that garden without the sim. I recognise the song; Unfettered Muken, one of my favourites.
The fact that Dumza is there—dressed in his slippers and persistent lecturing uniform of khaki trousers and vintage Star Wars t-shirt—makes me realise, with a sense of irony, that I built the perfect environment for him to show up: the garden, the music, it’s all inextricably linked to him.
‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ I say to him.
He shrugs, nonchalant. ‘I didn’t ask to be here.’
I bend down to look through the telescope, wondering if I should log this in my journal. It’s important for the developers to keep the sim safe and useful but I don’t know what they’re going to do with me if I tell them I’m hallucinating inside the sim.
‘It’s not like they can send you home,’ Dumza says, reading my mind.
‘I have no home,’ I say. The words slip out before I can stop myself. I laugh, and the sound comes out vaguely hysterical. ‘I mean, you know, Earth isn’t really an option... and Mars, well, she’s not home yet. You know?’ I rub my forehead. He knows what I mean. And it’s not the same as what I’d just said.
I focus on the grass between my toes, the subtle scent of summer on the air, the clear notes of the piano. And then I tell myself, insistently, that I am in space, far away from Earth and this garden. I don’t want it to feel too real because it makes waking too hard.
‘She’s close now,’ says Dumza. He’s staring up at the sky where Mars is unrealistically close and large as the moon. The curves of her desert plains are stained orange, her naked mountain ranges discernible. I feel like I can reach out and touch her. I wonder if the sim is supposed to act against the laws of physics. I thought it was supposed to be realistic, not dreamlike.
I frown at him. ‘Why did you do it?’ I ask. I’m safe here, I remind myself. He’s not even real. This is the Dumza I loved, the step-father I cherished. This is not the murderer he became.
He looks up at me as though he were expecting the question. ‘You know why,’ he says. There is no remorse. There never was. I can’t seem to reconcile that with the man I knew and loved.
Emotions swell and swirl inside me.
‘Then you don’t need to be here,’ I say.
‘I didn’t bring myself here,’ he says. ‘You did.’
‘Then I can get you to leave. Go.’
He stands there, unmoving, hands pocketed, staring between me and Mars. ‘Was it so bad you had to leave the planet?’
‘Yes.’ Unfortunately, the heart is an organ you need to be alive, so I couldn’t leave my broken one on Earth, I had to bring it with me. My on-board luggage. And it seems no matter how far away from Earth I am, the grief—the horror—follows thick and heavy.
‘You aren’t going to leave, are you?’ I ask.
He shakes his head.
‘Then I will.’ I turn my back on him and go.
#
‘Your fitness stats are exemplary,’ says Lucky. Lucky is an androgynous android, with a human face. A Caucasian face, of course. No one has thought to make a black skinned robot—because technology and blacks are not synonymous, even after Wendel Nkomo and Skyward. I don’t know how many more intrepid blacks we need before that changes.
‘Are you alright? You are staring,’ says Lucky. It tips it’s head in too human a way and smiles.
‘Fine. Daydreaming.’
‘Do you do this a lot?’ It holds up the clipboard before it, pen poised to write some gleaned information.
‘I guess. As a child, I spent a lot of time staring at the sky and now I’m in it, so...’ I don’t know why I say it.
‘I see,’ says Lucky.
‘Do you?’
Lucky looks at me expectantly and when I don’t respond it says, ‘I noticed your sim logs have been much shorter the last few cycles. The language is sparse. Are you experiencing any anxiety about the simulations?’
‘Anxiety? They’re supposed to relax us, aren’t they?’
‘Theoretically but experiencing such life-like scenarios and finding yourself back in space can be disorienting. There can be a period of mourning. Have you experienced this? Your heart rate seems elevated in the sims.’
‘Mourning?’ I echo the word. How appropriate it is.
‘Mourning life on Earth. A life you will never return to.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘It is entirely normal.’
‘Is it?’ Normal to mourn so damn hard that you leave your wailing aunts and uncles to move to a different planet?
‘Does that word make you uncomfortable?’
‘Which word?’
‘Mourning.’
‘It’s just... my mother... well, my step-father...’
‘Yes, I have your file in my database. I know what you have experienced. Psyche evaluation tests proclaimed you fit and healthy for duty. Are you finding this to be a problem?’
I take a deep breath. One, two, three, place yourself back in reality. One, two, three, orient yourself. One, two, three, be mindful of your breath.
I am fine, okay, alright, coping, fit for duty.
And Dumza has found his way into my sim.
‘No problem at all. Listen, it’s my slot in the gym, so would you mind if I go? I don’t want to miss it again. Got to keep these muscles ready for Mars gravity, you know?’ I keep my tone light.
‘You may go. Make an appointment if you are experiencing any concerning symptoms.’
‘Sure.’
I slip off the gurney and leave the small health cube. The corridor is windowless and stifling—the metal and resin and perspex all too inorganic, the air smelling faintly like recycled sweat. I take another deep breath. Mars is what I have always wanted. Always. No memory, or amount of grief, is going to stop me from getting there whole and sane.
So, I go back to the garden.
#
Dumza killed my mother because of the man she was having an affair with.
In my contract with the ASA one thing they stressed was that I could not be affiliated to anyone with questionable politics. They were very specific about this: any politician with shady dealings, criminal records, or even simple lawsuits against them, could not hold company with me or my family. Any connections or ties to such political personalities would result in my immediate dismissal from the program. My tarnishing would be ASA’s tarnishing, and in a climate where funding is extremely difficult to come by, ASA was taking no chances.
The man Dumza found passionately kissing my half-clothed mother was a notorious, extremist politician with fundamentalist fans. Any link to him and my career would be done for. Besides the fact that she was married, my mother knew what this would mean for me and she kept kissing him anyway.
It broke Dumza’s heart. Of all the men she had loved, he was least deserving of betrayal.
When I found him, he was standing in the middle of the twilight-hazed living room, staring at the two bodies half-dressed and tangled on the floor. There was so much blood. The knife was still in his hand and he seemed surprised when I mentioned it.
‘What did you do, Baba?’ I asked him, turning away from the blood, trying to keep my tears and bile inside so I could get the knife, not sure who I was dealing with. He looked like Dumza, but Dumza would not do this.
‘He’s Jared Hlope,’ said Dumza, as if that explained everything.
‘The old finance minister?’ I asked, not looking at the bodies. I knew who he was, but I needed Dumza to keep talking.
He nodded, tears streaming silently down his face. ‘I thought he was hurting her but... he wasn’t. I didn’t want him—them—to ruin your chances. I didn’t want you to miss Mars because of this.’ He looked down at them, then looked at his hands. ‘Will you miss Mars anyway, because of me?’ He looked up at me in horror, then back at my mother. ‘Oh God, what have I done?’
I think that’s when it hit him because he dropped to his knees and started screaming and wailing. Nothing I said calmed him down.
I left him there—left the bodies, the blood, the iron stink of the house—and stood on our front lawn to phone the cops. I was trembling, too afraid to stay in the same room with whoever that was. Because whoever he was, he wasn’t my sweet Dumza.
I waited on the grass for seventeen minutes and thirty-two seconds before I heard the sirens, reciting flight procedures in my head to anchor myself. Chaos broke out on my lawn where I was questioned and man-handled into a police vehicle for my own protection. Someone recognised me from the latest promotional vids ASA had released one month ago, and soon the lawn was encircled by reporters and cameras.
Eventually Dumza was dragged from the house, cuffed and screaming something about my mother being a whore. He did not look at me. He pled guilty and was found dead in his cell two months later. Never once did he show a moment’s remorse, but I still remember that look on his face when he realised what he had done. I remember the regret.
There were more hearings after that—mine. It had to be decided whether I had breached my contract by being affiliated with a murderer. In the end, no one was willing to waste the money they’d spent training me, nor the resources setting things up for me on Mars, not so close to the launch. I had to go—it was too late now—so they spun it as a second chance for a girl hard-done by.
An orphan in space. I wonder what Wendel Nkomo would say about that.
#
Our ship is only one-third living space—including the med-bay, gymnasium, and sim annex. The rest is mail, supplies for the Martian, and the engine. The ship is aesthetically minimalist—not like some of the first mission ships with their convoluted passages and visible mechanics. All the white should be clinical but somehow it isn’t. I think it must be the darkness of space and our strange human inclination towards light. They’ve been very conscious of this in their designs of future missions, citing that pleasant surroundings help the space farers acclimatise better to space. I think they did it because it gives the impression of spaciousness to our tight quarters. After only eleven days, I wish I could thank the person who considered that.
But even in a ship this small, I am alienated. The crew meets up once a day for reports and general notes, meaning they are forced to be in the same room as me, but I sense the others are waiting for me to break down. They avoid me, like I’m contagious, dealing with me only on the most practical level. Sending a newly bereaved black woman into space is a terrible risk as far as they’re concerned. I won’t pretend it doesn’t hurt; after all those months of being stuck with them, learning to love them and create a coherent team, they found it so easy to stop believing in me. Or maybe they’re just scared I’ll jeopardise their one shot. Maybe we all are.
#
Seven days to go and we will be in orbit. So far, the voyage has been uneventful. Not counting Dumza’s appearance in my sim. No one has lost their minds, hurt anyone else, or tried to leave the ship—not even me, though they’re waiting for it. Maybe I’m just the excuse but on some level, we’re all on the edge, waiting for things to go wrong.
The world we left was so messed up—personal issues aside—so why aren’t we taking better care of each other? Where is the Ubuntu that Wendel Nkomo wrote about?
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, contemplating this journey and our abysmal lack of care for one another when Grey appears beside me. Grey is a Spatial Sociologist from the UK, a swarthy reed of a man with a nice smile. He doesn’t talk much about his personal life but get him started on the possible societies that might develop in a space colony and he will talk for hours. He stares out the window along with me for a moment, his hands gripping the back of the bench. It’s an awkward silence, and I’m keenly aware of the space between us and the space outside and the space within. I wonder why he isn’t speaking because he keeps taking breaths like he’s about to, but no words come out. I wait, patiently, because he is one of the few on the crew who has gone out of his way to make conversation with me in the last two months. I wait a long time.
Finally, he jerks his head towards me. His eyes are bloodshot, the same as mine, and his brown knuckles are pale from holding on to the bench so tight.
‘You okay?’ I ask. I watch his neck, looking for a throbbing pulse but find nothing.
‘Sure. You? I’m tired, you know. Nothing major. All of us are tired, right? Can’t remember when I last slept. My log could tell me, probably. I think it can. That’s what it’s for, right? I’m just...’
He grabs my hand and squeezes painfully. ‘Does that hurt?’ he asks, eyes wide.
‘Yes,’ I say, yanking my hand away. I move sideways on the bench, but he follows, shadow-like, too close.
‘Tell me something, Amahle. Are we real? Is this real? I’m not sure if this is happening. Are you? Sure?’
‘Pretty sure,’ I say. ‘Maybe you just need to sleep. Lucky could give you something...’
‘Medical sleep is never good. It’s dreamless. That’s not good. Or maybe it is. Would it be better?’
‘Just this once,’ I say, urging him. My hand still hurts where he gripped it, and my heart is pounding. ‘Or maybe you could go into the sim?’
He barks out a panicked laugh. ‘The sim? Want to make it worse?’
Silence falls again so I stand, ready to get out of there. I feel like I should call someone, but I don’t want to be melodramatic. Everyone is expecting that of me and I’m not eager to give them ammunition.
Grey grabs my arm, his fingers biting painfully into my skin. ‘Can you feel that?’ he asks me desperately. ‘You know about pain, right? Better than any of us. Is this real pain? You know about pain. Is this real?’
My blood slows, and I am atrophied in place for a moment. ‘Grey, you’re hurting me. I don’t understand what you’re asking.’
‘Pain! Can you feel it? You should know—pain is closer to you. It’s what makes us alive. I think. I can’t remember. I can’t feel anything, you know, and I’m thinking maybe it’s because I’m still in the Sim but I’m not sure. So, I’m asking you—are we real? Is this real?’
‘Yes. It’s real.’
He leans in close, breath stale, and puts his fingers around my neck, squeezing very slowly. ‘You sure? Because I’ve been having dreams—are they dreams, I don’t know—about the code of the sims and they’re growing legs and arms and hands and they’re reaching out to strangle me while I sleep. Except I can’t sleep so how am I dreaming. Maybe I’m not.’
I try to swallow but his hand is tight on my throat. I glance up at the tiny camera in the corner of the room and plead with whoever’s watching to send someone to get him. My breathing is short and sharp, the anxiety clasping down on me as tight as Grey’s hands.
I’ve never been this close to breaking and I’m angry because so much has been lost for me to be here. So much. And now this guy wants to kill me in space to prove that he’s alive?
Grey’s fingers loosen from my neck and he steps backwards. ‘Are you real?’ he asks me again. ‘Is any of this real?’
Lucky appears at the doorway, syringe in hand. ‘Hello, Grey. Could I be of assistance?’
Grey grimaces at the android and then backs into the corner, whimpering. ‘Am I real?’ he repeats over and over while I retreat and walk-run down the corridor to my bunk where I collapse. I ignore the hands shaking me, asking if I’m alright, and instead, I cry myself to sleep.
#
At dinner, none of us are hungry but we linger in the cafeteria—all of us except Grey. His absence is glaring. Down the passage, he lies sedated where he’ll stay for the remainder of the journey. Flight risk, Lucky called him. Even flight risks still make it to Mars.
‘First breakdown in two tours,’ says Otar. ‘I didn’t think it’d be him.’
No one looks at me. I resist an ironic smile.
‘You’d think they’d have worked out the meds by now. I mean, two clean tours...’ Otar stares out the portal window and I swear I see tears in his eyes, like this is his failure somehow.
Greta snorts. ‘You realise the people making the med cocktails have never been to space?’
‘It’s just science,’ says Elizabeth.
‘It’s psychiatry actually,’ says Rajesh, rubbing his hands together in a habitual way, like he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it. ‘Psychiatry and science. The science is easy—the rules are obvious—but the psychiatry? It’s unpredictable, you know? Too many variables...’
‘Someone in the psych department needs to be fired. How can they put us on a spaceship with a crazy? Aren’t those tests supposed to weed them out?’
‘They let Amahle on,’ says Otar, nodding at me. ‘I don’t think weeding out crazies is part of their M.O.’
An awkward silence descends, and no one looks me in the eye.
‘Okay, can we just get this out there?’ I say. I’m so tired of this bullshit. This is my crew. I have no family left but them. ‘My stepfather killed my mother and her lover—who happened to be a shitty politician. My step father went to jail. He died. I am not my stepfather. I am not a murderer. I am not the one who broke down, Grey is. So now that we’ve established that I’m not the flight risk, can we get on with our mission and get to Mars together. Please.’
I see Greta hiding a smile.
Maybe I can’t win them all, but I think I may have made at least one friend.
#
Mars is close now, larger than the moon from Earth. I shouldn’t be glad, but Grey’s breakdown has had an interesting effect on the crew. The incident has acted as a shift, loosening our tightly wound psyches. A comradery is growing again. Maybe it is because we have passed the halfway mark and Earth is forever behind us. Maybe we feel drawn to each other now that we are the only touchstones of Earth that exist out here. Is this finally Wendel Nkomo’s Ubuntu in space? It seems a weak shadow of the concept but this far from home, I’ll take it.
Dumza is a constant feature in my garden now, always pruning things and chatting incessantly as I watch Mars growing ever closer through the telescope. I think I keep him there because I want to remember this version of him. I don’t want to keep seeing the bloodied Dumza with horror in his eyes—I want my dad. I want this version of him to come with me to Mars.
Today, Mars is so large it fills up the sky. Even my subconscious is reminding me I don’t have much longer in this garden.
‘What will be the first thing you do there?’ asks Dumza.
‘Kiss the ground,’ I say, smiling. This is something we always talked about. Somewhere in the intricate tunnels under the surface of Mars, where we’ll all live, is a room called ‘The First’. Inside it are the first soil samples, the first comms, the first habitat suits, a first edition of Wendel Nkomo’s A Native in Space—a museum of sorts as we establish a new culture on Mars. And inside this room is a bowl of Mars soil, from the surface, that you can touch with your bare hands—because someone was smart enough to know how important it is to literally ground yourself in a new land. Dumza and I always talked about that room and the miracle of touching the soil of another planet.
‘Kiss the ground,’ chuckles Dumza. ‘Tell it I say hello.’ He turns back to the nasturtiums he’s pruning. I watch him, how he clips methodically and peacefully, like he’s alive.
‘Why did you do it?’ I ask him, knowing the answer will be my own, from my own mind, and not his at all. Knowing that I will never get the truth from him but needing an answer somehow.
‘You’re here. Isn’t that enough?’
‘No,’ I say. Grief rises high tide in my chest. ‘You shouldn’t have done it. You loved her, didn’t you?’
‘Of course, I loved her,’ says Dumza.
‘But you killed her. Violently. Just because you wanted me to go to Mars. I don’t know if I can believe that,’ I say. I look down to the shears Dumza is holding and see the tips of them are dripping with blood.
‘What else could I tell myself? Tell you? I didn’t want to be a man capable of killing someone just because I was jealous. How could I be that kind of man?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say but I’m relieved. The deaths are not on me. They are not my fault. I did not make Dumza do what he did, though, I realise now that this is the idea I’ve been carrying around.
‘You lied,’ I say.
Dumza drops the shears, they clatter and dissolve into the grass. Mars swells in the sky behind him, filling the sky entirely. ‘Yes. I suppose I did. To protect my own sanity. It didn’t work though, did it.’
I’m not surprised when he fades and leaves me alone in the garden. The music of crickets and bats rises in the sim again, the air cooling. I take a deep breath of the garden scent I remember so well—the scent I will never smell on Mars.
I will not return to the Sim again, so I say goodbye to the grass and the trees and the breeze. I say my final goodbye to Earth.
#
The entire crew gathers in the viewing room once we achieve orbit. The curved horizon of Mars stretches out towards us, so close.
We are quiet, as we stand there, the gravity of what we’ve done settling on our almost Martian skins. Are we still human when we are no longer of Earth? I wonder to myself.
My favourite paragraph from Native in Space says this: “Humanity is not simply a state of ‘being human’. Humanity is the benevolence we carry within us. It is who we are and what we do when we are fully human—it is community, Ubuntu, unable to be manifested alone. Even in space, detached from the soil of our beings, we can exercise humanity. In fact, I am of the opinion that space may be the very place we learn how intrinsic our humanity is to our survival.”
Lucky broadcasts the message from Hector Damenzes, one of the captains from three missions ago. ‘Welcome Cosmos 8! We’ve got your habitat ready and waiting. Skies will be clear in four hours and you can come join us. We know it’s been a long few weeks, but home is waiting for you.’
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Cristy Zinn is the author of two fantasy novels, The Dreamer’s Tears and Of Magic and Memory and has published various short stories. She is enthralled by stories involving the fantastic—technological and magical. She works as a graphic designer and illustrator. Cristy lives in Durban with her husband and two teenagers who graciously endure her obsession with stories. Find her online: cristyzinn.com
