Fiction | Short Story

Our Future Is Mars!

On Mars, there would be no coupling off, no cliques. People couldn’t leave you behind. That’s what Libby had been counting on.

Libby Fitzpatrick wanted to live on Mars.

Her obsession with Mars began in the fourth grade when her Uncle Allen gave her a telescope. Even then, she knew it was unoriginal for a nine-year-old from suburban DC to dream of being an astronaut. They had all sucked down powdered space ice cream at the Air and Space Museum and claimed a future in space. How many of them would make it to NASA?

Now Mars missions for civilians were real. Libby attended a massive Our Future Is Mars! recruitment meeting for Future Martians—as they were told to call themselves—and learned that Mars would indeed be colonized. She now had a plan. Her parents thought her gap year, complete with a boring retail job, would make her embrace her deferred enrollment at Mary Washington. They didn’t understand.

“Libby,” her father said. “This is irrational. What will you do for the rest of your life up there?”

“Read, listen to music. It will all be streamed,” she said.

“What if the technology fails,” he said.

“There’s no coming back,” Uncle Allen said.

“How will you have children,” her mother said.

None of these were ever really questions.

“It will be a better life,” Libby told her boss at the Yo-Go Yogurt & Yurt Shop in Arlington. It was a frozen yogurt and expedition store in one. It wasn’t doing well.

“Who will give you your paycheck,” he said. He ran the yogurt side. His ex-wife ran the yurts-and-expeditions side.

“What do you think sex on Mars is like,” her coworker Sean said. She ignored him.

The Future Martians were used to these sorts of queries. They all agreed that no one understood visionaries. The regional leaders—or Phobos, as they were called in honor of the inner moon that revolves around Mars—had warned the new Future Martians that they might have to cut off the naysayers in their lives.

“I have what it takes,” Libby told herself in the mirror.

She was short, and the application requirements set a minimum of sixty-two inches. She practiced yoga every morning after reading it helped you gain up to an inch; she only needed a half inch. She also cut her red hair into a low-maintenance bob that she could trim herself.

“What will you do with your used menstrual pads and tampons,” her coworker Allie said. “And where would you get new ones.”

Libby bought a set of menstrual cups from the Our Future Is Mars! online store and added them to the box labeled “Mars Necessities.”

She went through the Our Future Is Mars! Personality Requirements Checklist, page five on the fifty-page application. Resilience: yes. Adaptability: yes. Curiosity: yes. Ability to trust others: yes. Creativity was a difficult one, but when it came to resourcefulness, well, living off her Yo-Go pay had trained her to live on a tight budget.

“What good will a budget do you on Mars,” her father said.

“I’ve designed my whole studio apartment out of things from the dumpster,” Libby said.

“Where are you going to find a dumpster on Mars,” he said.

“You live in our garage,” her mother said.

In addition to the regional meetings of Our Future Is Mars! held up in DC, which drew thousands of people, there was an online network where you could watch videos made by your local Phobos—Libby’s was a middle-aged man named Pete who wore white collared shirts and nodded a lot—and find your hyper-local pod, i.e. nearby Future Martians. That was how Libby met Bruce, Art, and Miley.

Miley was only fifteen, and she was determined to make the mission.

“How can I live on this planet with a name like mine,” she said the first time they met.

“You can change your name,” Bruce said. “You just go to court.”

Miley shrugged. “The university system as we know it is going to be obsolete in five to seven years anyway, so if I can’t have the genuine college experience, why not go to Mars?”

She was tall, skinny, and raven haired. She liked to wear a red cloak instead of a jacket, and she always wore her 1993 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers watch she bought on eBay.

“I must resist the conformity of my generation,” she said.

“See what happens when people get homeschooled,” Bruce said.

Bruce worked in an office and was training to be a dental assistant.

“They’ll need dentists on Mars,” Bruce said.

“Why not go to dental school?” Miley asked.

“Dentists have the highest suicide rate,” Bruce said. “I don’t want to be depressed in space.”

The four of them met on Saturdays at Karma Café, where they drank yerba maté. The café was sugar-free, but Libby often snuck in vegan oatmeal cookies. Art needed to eat more oatmeal. He was working on lowering his cholesterol.

“They’ll never let you go,” Libby said when she first saw Art’s medical report.

She didn’t understand his numbers. Art was a perfect specimen: six feet tall, toned, and only twenty-one years old. He was a physics major at American University and the smartest person Libby had encountered besides her uncle. He was also getting a second degree at night through a small art college, where he focused on making sculptures from found objects. Libby had one in her apartment that he had made for her out of found rubber bands and bread-bag tags.

His doctor tried to put him on medication, but Art refused.

“I have to do this the natural way,” he said. “No one goes to Mars who needs special meds.”

Libby’s mother was concerned about Libby’s access to health care on Mars. She worked for a large insurance agency, and she knew all the bad things that could happen.

“What if you get cancer while you’re there,” she said.

“What if your appendix bursts,” she said.

“What if you get pregnant,” she said.

Libby wondered if NASA had done much research, or any, about pregnancy in space. What if a woman were pregnant and on a mission? What would that do to an embryo? How would childbirth go without gravity? She didn’t tell her mother she planned to be sterilized. Or that she was still a virgin.

“Mom,” she said. “We’ll have our own approach to healthcare. It starts with staying healthy and living free of all the germs and viruses on Earth.”

One of Phobos Peter’s recent videos covered how life on Mars would be disease-free. You were living away from carcinogens, pathogens, parasites. Libby couldn’t expect her mother to understand the science.

The Mars mission was set for the year 2026. The required astronaut training would take many years, and the first-round applications were due soon. The four of them had to be prepared, had to be able to prove they were serious and that they could pass Truth Seeker level, the round in which a series of interviews established if you were able to push past your limiting beliefs.

“I can survive and thrive on Mars,” Libby repeated to herself three times in the mornings and in the evenings, just like Phobos Peter recommended.

“Won’t you miss this?” Libby asked Art as they walked through the National Gallery after a regional Our Future Is Mars! meeting, where speakers had talked about in-pod gardening, zero-waste living, and fundraising for the two thousand-dollar initial application fee.

“Mars itself will be the art,” Art said. “Right outside our windows.”

“True,” Libby said. “Plus, maybe you can make something for my pod.” When she practiced her visualizations, Art was always in the pod next to her.

“Paintings are the past,” Art said. “We’ll be able to have digital projections of the greatest artworks on our walls. And NFTs are the future.”

“Cool,” Libby said. She didn’t ask him what an NFT was.

Libby knew Art would never go out with her on Earth, but she had much more in common with him than any of the girls at art school. Girls who laced purple streaks in their hair and rode refurbished bicycles with their portfolios balanced on their baskets. They wore lots of rings and blue nail polish, which was usually chipped. On Mars, they wouldn’t be around.

At meetings, the leader of Our Future Is Mars! asked them all to repeat “No more masks! No more masks!” Libby was sure that included no makeup and all of the other accoutrements of femininity that made life on Earth unbearable. Men on Mars would have to learn to respond to women in their natural state.

Phobos Peter posted another video, one about how the mission would eradicate sexism and racism.

“No people of color even come to the meetings,” Miley said.

“We can make a new future,” Libby said. “An equal one. Maybe we need to recruit?”

Miley reminded her of what had happened when she brought her best friend Chloe to the café.

“Chloe thinks you guys are weird,” Miley had told them. “You didn’t help the face of the mission, Bruce.”

“All I did was talk about making dirt on Mars edible,” Bruce said. “That’s the miracle of life that happens every day here.”

“Yes, but we’ve got photosynthesis,” Libby said. “We don’t need to eat dirt with sauce.”

“Since when are you the smarty pants, Libby,” Bruce said.

“Libby’s smart,” Art said. “She’s people smart.”

“Wow,” Miley said. “You do realize you both just called her stupid, right?”

Phobos Peter posted another video, one about how the mission would eradicate sexism and racism. “No people of color even come to the meetings,” Miley said.

Libby wondered what Art saw when he looked at her. The first time she met him in person, at the café, Art walked right up to her and stuck out his hand, saying, “You must be Libby. I’d recognize those gorgeous red curls from your profile anywhere.”

“And Bruce, right?” he said. “Wow, you’ve been working out. I’m going to have to get in shape if I want to keep up with the competition!”

“Your name is Art and you’re in art school?” Miley said when he turned to her. “For real?” Art laughed and put up his hand to fist-bump her, then laughed again when she rolled her eyes instead. He was, Libby noted in her journal that night, the nicest guy she had ever met.

Their small group attempted a week on the flight diet Phobos Peter posted. No meat or dairy was allowed. They all failed. Libby cheated once, when she smelled her mother’s lasagna. After her parents went to bed, she snuck into the house kitchen from the garage and ate the leftovers cold, right out of the pan.

“My father took me for hamburgers,” Miley confessed. “He said my mother was going to make me live with her if he didn’t feed me something real.”

“We’ve got to take things further,” Libby said, thinking of the official training that would include a period of close quarters for ten astronauts. “We’ve got to have an edge. How will we know we can do this if we don’t stick to it? How will we prove we are serious?”

“We need Utah,” Bruce said. “But that would take a lot of dough.”

Our Future Is Mars! was offering stays at a mock space station in Utah where you could experience life in a pod for two weeks for seven thousand dollars. They even provided space suits for going outside. The rumor was that a trip to Utah gave you an edge in the application process. None of them had that kind of money.

“Let’s make our own practice pod,” Libby said. “We can do it at my place.”

She bought a bucket and curtained off an area for them to use as the bathroom, and she asked Bruce to bring her his Star Wars Stormtrooper helmet for them to use as a space suit for going outside. He was from the original Star Wars generation.

“Rad,” Art said when he saw the helmet at their weekly meeting.

“I’m claustrophobic,” Miley said.

“And you want to travel in a space shuttle to a space pod?” Bruce said.

“I want tested equipment,” Miley said.

Libby read the NASA fact sheet on “Cosmic Cuisine” carefully. On real missions, they would grow lettuce, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, green onions, radishes, bell peppers, strawberries, fresh herbs, and cabbages in transit. But she didn’t have a space kitchen—or a kitchen at all, for that matter—so she stocked up at the Yo-Go with freeze-dried peaches and bananas and three-course emergency meal packs: one night was beef stew, corn sides, and chocolate pudding; another chicken à la king with peas. She ordered freeze-dried astronaut Neapolitan ice cream online.

Miley was in charge of entertainment.

“Here’s my list: cards,” she said.

“We can play strip poker,” Bruce said.

“Gross, Bruce. Don’t even joke. Miley is underage,” Libby said.

“God, no wonder I can’t tell my mother that a bunch of adults want to have a sleepover with me,” Miley said.

“Do you have Wi-Fi?” Art asked. “And can we keep our phones? Cecily might need me.”

“No internet,” Libby said. Cecily was Art’s new girlfriend. “No phones. We’re doing this the frontier way.”

Libby bought a set of crank lanterns from Yo-Go Yurt and covered the garage’s windows in black paper and various space scenes she clipped from a NASA wall calendar. She also washed her sheets. She and Miley would sleep in the loft bed, Bruce would crash on the sagging couch, and Art agreed to bring his camping pad.

“I love sleeping on the ground,” Art said. “It’s real. Imagine the ground on Mars!”

“Well, you’d be sleeping in one of those space suits if you were outside,” Libby said.

“I hope we get real beds on Mars,” Bruce said. “Humans have spines.”

“No sleepovers on a school night,” Miley said. “I’ll tell my parents it’s just me and Libby.”

Libby made sure her parents and the neighbors knew not to disturb them.

“The Roberts think you are insane, and by association, so are we,” her father said. “Did you have to tell them you were to be left undisturbed for a Mars simulation?”

“You all are welcome to use the bathroom and the kitchen,” her mother said.

“Mom, we can’t do that on Mars,” Libby said.

“The offer stands,” her mother said. “Just in case. Also, uncover the windows. I want to be able to check that you girls are alright. And keep the baby monitor on.”

Miley’s father dropped her off at 5:00 p.m. on the night of the simulation, and a few minutes later Bruce pulled up on his Vespa. He liked to say it was the one soul he would miss on Mars. They all agreed that it would be pretty cool to ride a scooter across Mars.

They were sitting on the floor, well into a game of Go Fish, when the last knock on the door came. When Libby opened the door, Art was not alone. A tall blonde girl in yoga pants and thick black glasses stood beside him, hugging a pillow.

“Hey, Libs,” he said. “This is my girl Cecily.”

Cecily waved and Libby stared.

“Woman, not girl, Art,” Miley said.

“What’s she doing on the mission?” Libby said.

“Well, you said I couldn’t bring my phone,” Art said. “She’s got a sleeping bag.”

“We won’t have enough food,” Libby said.

Cecily smiled. “We’ve got provisions in the car. I bought stuff for s’mores!”

“We won’t have those on Mars,” Libby said. Phobos Peter’s latest video stressed that Future Martians needed to “eat pure, be pure.”

“You better enjoy it all now!” Cecily said and she squeezed past Libby into the room. She smelled like lavender. “Art, go get the food box!”

Libby looked back at Miley and Bruce. They said nothing.

“I’ll shuffle and re-deal,” Bruce said. “Welcome, Cecily.”

Libby didn’t take any of the Doritos that Cecily passed around, and she kicked Miley when she saw her take a handful.

“I’m hungry,” Miley said. “I’m still growing.”

Libby prepared the rations over the camp stove and served them.

“This looks great!” Art said, scooping up globs with his spork. Libby had ordered a different color spork for each of them. Cecily got a regular spoon.

“I’ve got hot sauce,” Cecily said.

Bruce reached for the bottle she offered, then stopped when Libby raised her eyebrows. She had been practicing raising one, but the other one still came along for the ride.

“You’ve got plenty of time ahead to eat bland food,” Cecily said. Bruce grabbed the bottle.

Libby had ordered a different color spork for each of them. Cecily got a regular spoon.

“She’s undermining our mission,” Libby whispered to Miley as they washed the bowls and sporks. “She clearly thinks this is a joke.”

“We’re going to have to school her,” Miley said.

“What do we do?” Libby asked. “She’s ruining everything.”

“Leave it to me,” Miley said.

When Cecily stood up and said that she was going to visit the ladies’, Miley pointed to the curtain. Cecily peeked behind the curtain and returned.

“Where’s the bathroom?”

“The bucket,” Miley said.

“What?”

“There’s a bucket to pee in. Otherwise, it’s the space suit and space station,” Miley said.

“Space suit? Space station?”

“The house,” Art said.

“Oh.” Cecily smiled. “There’s a bathroom in there?”

Cecily started to put back on the Uggs she had tossed to the floor, and she waved away the helmet Bruce held out to her.

“It’s unauthorized,” Libby said. “All Martians are supposed to stay inside. You can’t just go to the bathroom every time you have to pee.”

“Well, what if I have to do something more?” Cecily said.

“Do you?” Miley asked.

“Look, I just have to pee. I won’t interrupt your little game,” Cecily said.

“Game?” Libby said.

“Cecily, can’t you just use the bucket for now?” Art smiled up at her.

“Fine,” Cecily said. When she disappeared behind the curtain, Miley stood up and flipped off the lights.

“Can you turn the lights on?” Cecily shouted.

“The power goes out in the pods at 8:00 p.m.,” Miley said. “No exceptions.”

“I don’t remember that,” Art said.

“You have to read the manual more closely,” Libby said. “I emailed it. You know we follow the Future Is Mars! rules. We’ve got to take this seriously.”

“Adventure requires flexibility,” Art said. He turned the crank on each of the lanterns and the room brightened.

Cecily returned to the room and settled onto Art’s lap.

“Will they have Wipe-Its in space?” she asked.

“We can switch to reusable cloths,” Miley said. “More authentic.”

“Play something,” Art said to Bruce, who picked up his ukulele and began to strum.

Miley started to wail along, something between a yodel and a hyena. Libby joined in.

Art started laughing, then howled like a wolf. Cecily slid off his lap. The four Future Martians were all at full racket when there was pounding on the door.

“Keep it down!” Libby’s father shouted. “The neighbor just called to complain.”

“Who’s that?” Cecily asked.

“The landlord,” Libby said.

“Her dad,” Bruce said.

“Her dad?” Cecily said.

“I think it’s time for s’mores,” Art said.

“S’mores aren’t pure,” Libby said.

“Pure?” Cecily said.

“I’ll just take some marshmallows,” Bruce said.

“I’ll miss chocolate,” Miley said.

“Well, Earth will still be here with chocolate galore when you return,” Cecily said.

Three of the Future Martians looked at her.

“Dude,” Miley said. “There’s no coming back.”

Cecily laughed. “What, you’re all going to just launch yourselves into space for eternity?”

No one said anything.

“You’re kidding, right?” Cecily said.

“It’s not like that,” Art said. “I mean, it is, but it’s a choice.”

“It’s a commitment,” Libby said.

“It’s a life,” Bruce said.

“I want to go to bed,” Cecily said. She got up and unrolled her sleeping bag in the middle of their small space.

Libby had a hard time falling asleep. She could hear Cecily and Art whispering down below the loft. She was just dozing off when another set of loud knocks shook the studio.

“Miley! Are you in there?”

“Crap,” Miley said. It’s my mom.” She made her way down the loft ladder. She was wearing her Smurf pajamas from Goodwill. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how she found out.”

“It’s okay, Mi,” Libby said. “We’ll do it again. Maybe in Utah.”

It didn’t take long to pack Miley up. Libby gave her some freeze-dried ice cream to take with her.

“You should be ashamed!” Miley’s mother said, pointing at each of them. They were all in their pajamas. Cecily was wearing a skimpy tank top and Art had on plaid pajama bottoms.

“Art,” Bruce said. “What the hell? Put on your shirt.”

“Mom,” Miley said. “I didn’t even see any skin until you made us all get out of bed.”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Strand. My parents are listening in on the baby monitor!” Libby said. Everyone turned to look at her.

“Get in the car,” Miley’s mother said. When her daughter passed through the door, she whispered to them, “Shame on you for filling a fifteen-year-old’s head with this crap. Mars? Over my dead body. And what sick adults do a sleepover with a child?”

“Jesus,” Cecily said.

“I know,” Bruce said. “Nobody actually says ‘over my dead body.’”

“No, you idiots,” Cecily said. “She’s only fifteen?”

“She’s still a person with her own mind,” Libby said.

“In some counties she’d be married and having babies by now,” Bruce said.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Cecily said, and she rolled up her sleeping bag.

Libby climbed back up into the loft.

“Libs?”

Art peeked up over the railing. He pulled himself up and sprawled next to her on the bed.

“Libs,” he said. “This was great.”

“It’s wild to think of really going,” Libby said. “This training is essential.”

“Yeah, it’ll be cool. The thing is,” Art said. “Cecily wants to go home.”

“You’ll come back, right?” Libby asked. “After you take her home?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Art said.

“If you leave, the mission fails,” Libby said. “Fifty percent attrition.”

“Bruce is still here,” Art said.

“I thought you were the real Martian,” Libby said. Art was the only other one of them that had watched all of Phobos Peter’s weekly videos.

Art grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

“Don’t tell anyone, but Cecily thinks she’s pregnant,” he said. “Mars is going on hold.”

Libby pulled her hand away and closed her eyes.

“I’ll drop out of school,” he said. “Move out of my folks’ place and do this dad thing right. But Mars is going to be dope. You’ll send me pics. You’re not mad, right, that I’m leaving the team?”

“Go!” Libby said, and she buried herself under the covers.

Moments later, the door opened and closed. Libby was now alone with Bruce, who was snoring from the couch below. He had confided in her months ago that he was gay, but he had asked her not to tell anyone.

“What if the Mars mission becomes ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’?” he said. “You gotta be careful who you trust with the truth.”

Libby had only told her parents, so they would approve the test mission, and Miley, so she wouldn’t be creeped out.

“Even the pope knows Bruce is gay,” Miley said.

There would be no cafeteria on Mars, no coupling off, no cliques. Just the gang, together, surviving. That’s what Libby had been counting on. People couldn’t move on to new friends, couldn’t leave you behind for college or have families. She knew she didn’t ever want to be a parent, she’d always known, from the first time she saw her neighbor’s new baby mewling like a tiny red monster. Weren’t all the other Future Martians on board with that? Wasn’t that part of what brought them together? Why had she let herself keep picturing the four of them together forever? Phobos Peter had told them they needed to work together as a pod, and that he could come in person to their meetings for a modest fee. Why hadn’t she found the money and invited him? If she had, maybe they would all still be together.

There would be no cafeteria on Mars, no coupling off, no cliques. Just the gang, together, surviving.

Libby pictured the barren Mars landscape out her window, a computer screen her only contact. What if none of the other Future Martians liked her? Could she have a pet on Mars? They’d sent dogs to space before. Libby fell asleep dreaming of space dogs.

When Libby woke up, Bruce was standing at the window drinking coffee from a thermos cup.

“Your mom slipped us a note,” he said. “And some coffee. There are pancakes inside the space station. What do you think?”

“We’ve got oatmeal bars,” she said.

“They’ve got blueberry pancakes,” he said.

They looked at one another.

“This wasn’t authentic anyway,” Libby said, picking up an empty marshmallow bag and Doritos bag and throwing them into the still-full box of food that Cecily and Art left behind.

“Let’s go,” Bruce said, looping his arm around her shoulders.

“Don’t tell my parents it was only us in here,” Libby said. “They’ll think we can’t sustain the mission.”

“I think they already know,” Bruce said, pointing to the baby monitor’s blinking light.

“Hi, Mom,” Libby said.

They slipped on their shoes and stepped out the door into the sun with no space suits. The air smelled like honeysuckle and sausage and a dove cooed from some unmarkable distance. Libby thought maybe she’d stick around. Earth still had a few things to show for itself.