Akeyo Ochenge skittered to a stop atop the crater rim. In the distance, blue-tinted dunes stretched away to the horizon. Below him, he could see the cluster of domed buildings that made up this agricultural station clinging to the edge of the crater wall. This station, his home, was named Herschel-AG2, the second station built along the crater wall. There were now 38 of these stations all around the rim of Herschel, a station every 25 kilometers. Here, as at each of these stations, the ever-shifting dunes had been tamed, leveled off, and built up with organic material over time, first with lichens and mosses, then grasses and now crops, row upon row of legumes — fields of splendor in the blue light of the sun. Akeyo sat back in the seat of his electric AT and adjusted his rebreather, a small device on his belt, loaded with oxygen tablets and culminating in a small plastic tube clipped to his nose, not unlike a patient on oxygen might wear in a hospital. The Martian atmosphere wasn’t quite breathable without this little enrichment. He might survive without it for some hours, but eventually, the thin air would kill him through oxygen deprivation. Tesla The Green Mars Project has been plugging along for more than two centuries now, creating great change on the surface of the no longer Red Planet. Even so, much of the Martian landscape continued to look like a bleak war zone. The population of Mars now hovered around 2.5 billion souls, while Earth teetered under the load of 14 billion. Barring the ever-present possibility of total collapse, the population on Earth could be more, but for the constant and numerous inter-planetary projects which served to offload much of the surplus population. Akeyo himself was sterile, as were all colonists. Gone was the ancient mandate to populate. The only growth on any of the planets, planetoids, moons and asteroids, as well as the man-made stations dotted here and there across the system, was the constant flow of expats from Earth. Mother Earth, the womb of the solar system. Every other place, foster homes for her unwanted children. At 22 years of age(42 Earth Years or EY), Akeyo had seen so much change. There were always the idiots that fomented for Martian independence, a complete pipe dream. Martian food production could only provide a small portion of its caloric requirements, and most of that came from pea proteins, which were used by the food printers. Despite the sheer volume of 2.5 billion mouths to feed, they could not catch up with the number, because Earth pumped more and more people into the population, in part to keep Mars dependent on the only planet in the solar system that could produce food in adequate volume. It helped that mankind had shed animal proteins over a century ago. Agriculture these days was as different from that of our ancestors as cars were to horses. Most food production concentrated on protein sources and then secondarily on spices, carbs and sugars. The best cooks in the system these days were food programmers, the coders who created new recipes with lines of code. The food printers did the rest. As the sun slipped below the horizon, Deimos hung low in the sky, itself about to set, while Phoebes had just begun her third trip around for the day. In the dying light of the always dim sun, the sky faded from blue to deep purple. Earth shone as just another star among many others in the sky. Low on the horizon, one particular star caught his eye. The Exodus, the largest spaceship ever constructed by humankind, so large it appeared as a bright and steady star even from Earth. From Mars, you couldn’t miss it. Akeyo looked at that portentous star with mixed feelings as he shifted the Tesla back into drive mode and turned her back onto the rim road where he could pick up the switchback home. Home for now, he thought. For he had just heard back from the Exodus Project. For the last 50 years, the massive spacecraft has been under construction. Nothing like this had ever been attempted. It was to be a generation ship, designed to travel to distant stars over a timeframe that required several human lifetimes. As advanced as humans had become, no one had successfully frozen a human and brought them back again. So without deep sleep hibernation, a generation ship was the only solution, until someone came up with faster-than-light capabilities or the ability to fold space. All good theories, but all as far away as ever. Exodus was being built just outside the asteroid belt, the source of all of the metal going into her construction. There the ores were extracted, smelted, and formed into whatever the ship’s design required. One vast improvement going into its design was the use of a new metal called dennite, named for Rebecca Denning, the woman who discovered the properties of this new ore found, so far, only in the asteroid belts. A metallurgist, Denning also developed the process by which this metal, 10 times stronger than steel and 20 times lighter, could be worked and formed. This reduction in weight, while at the same time providing improvements in structural integrity, proved integral to moving the Exodus Project forward. The ship now approached completion and selections were being made for the colonists and crew. Akeyo had applied a decade ago and had just received a notification of his acceptance if he passed all the physical requirements and stringent training. He was to report to the recruiting office in Muskville in 42 hours, where he would hop on a jumper to the Lunar Colonies. Many emotions jostled one another inside his chest as he descended down to Herschel’s floor — the excitement for the adventure, the fear of the unknown, the sorrow for loss, and the dread of what would no doubt prove to be a monotonous life aboard the massive interstellar spaceship which would never arrive at its destination in his lifetime. His role aboard the Exodus would be that of keeping plant stock alive, seeds viable, and training others to do the same. He would be classified as crew, as he could not produce an heir to carry the project forward. His job, while alive, was to make sure everything he knew was understood by those who would take his place. Pausing before he turned into the garage, Akeyo surveyed the station one last time. Tonight would be his last night here. In the morning he would be heading to Muskville and he would never see this place again. He might see Mars from the lunar surface, or while in transport to the Exodus, but his boots would never again tread this Martian soil, his planet, his home. With this evening’s blue sunset and the view of Herschel-AG2 half hidden in purple shadows, Akeyo pulled into the garage and went inside. His past made him what he was, a man born an Earthling, and raised on Martian soil. Now he faced the future, where he would be an interstellar explorer, a citizen of a city in space, hurtling toward an unknown, yet hopeful future. He said goodbye and closed the airlock. Lead photo by Angel Luciano on Unsplash

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