TERRAFORM MARS NOW

Selections from unpublished science fiction piece (2014-15).

1.0
Prior to a terraformed, and thus habitable, Mars, artists capitalize on low gravity and the resulting ability to build to terrifying heights. Tall, spindly, white structures are built upwards in lace like patterns, patterns reminiscent of the toothpick and marshmallow structures of youth. Starting at numerous numbers focal points over the surface of mars, spires grow up, out, and together until Mars, seen from a distance, resembles a doily from all angles. Or an orange stuck timidly with cloves at Christmas time.

Overtime, in response to government-accelerated Martian terraforming programs, artists rearrange the spire-like structures into bulbous skeletal frames draped in alternating shrouds of black and red: black, a nod to the mourning planet, red a celebration of terra-opportunity. Seen from a distance, black obscures the planet, making it all but invisible; red gives a new, ghastly silhouette to a well-remembered form. Were it not for the troops of terraformers, these structures would stand in permanent salute, fooling and confounding potential explorers as to how a planet, with gravity, could possibly have such expressive and wildly un-spherical terrain. 

1.3
Government artists, newly deposited on mars, in space suits, still breathing earthen air, trail liquid from holes in bags attached at hips. Liquid composed of earthen air and secrets. Liquid tracing each of the first steps on red soil. 

Government rovers had brought back samples of martian rock, and, in a preemptive strike against cloth flags bleached by the elements (The embarrassment of the now white flags! Bleached by space! On the moon!), earth learned to dye martian soil a permanent rubied green. Our government artists pace in practiced lines, tattooing the surface with the feeling of their flag. These flags - burned in soil - can be seen from earthen telescopes (only the finest), and, again, comfort with the foreign is engendered. 

2.1
In the streets the dust is so thick, being so disturbed by the arrival of settlers and the repeated pounding of new human feet and the attempts at cultivation and the eventual removal of watering techniques, that it (the dust) shrouds cars in a garish red.

But the red has nuance! Look closer! Different weights of iron reflecting different colors in the Martian sun. With the movements of the wind, the several inches of dust are often blown into dunes and ridges and escarpments.

When the winds lay low the dust settles slowly. Aretés form on rearview mirrors and constant, tragic landslides spill off cars and roofs and onto the ground into billowing piles. The varied weights and grains of dust particles partition dunes into waves of color as well as shape: deep cinnabar, alizarin, vermillion, burgundy to bright orange, brown and sometimes wisps of purple. Fine, slippery purple only settles at the end of a week long  stretch without wind, and so takes on the status of a royal color, the color of hope and happiness.

3.1

There is no celebration of the distance the holds the two worlds apart, the distance abrades the mortar that holds the feelings of love and attachment between the two worlds in place, pilfers mass from the ballast, wears holes in the mortar of bricks laid, bricks laid by governments, by artists, by citizens, bricks laid in plays and in laws and in love letters sent between Earth and Mars. Distance threads ideas and love and compassion through narrow holes of air (or lack of air) and through the dark. Ideas, love and compassion that arrive on the other end; arrive battered, molested, dessicated.

Magnets.

The public mind is focused on them. Centered on the idea of magnets. The idea sprints out of mouths, streams off of tongues. It slinks around corners and between bricks.

Magnets. 

Strong. The size of houses, the size of planets. Humming with intensity and power. The power to move cars, houses. The power to move planets. The ideas humming in people, across people, martians and earthlings alike. Humming until its all that can be heard over the din of the wind and the water on these two planets separated by space. 

Magnets. 

Huge magnets are built. Massive more massive than imagined possible. Magnets the size of planets (when told by scientists and parents) or half the size of solar systems (when whispered by children).

Huge magnets are built to draw Mars closer. To pull, persistent, on the ferrous core as a lover might pull on the heartstrings of a sweetheart. The slow drawing together of planets keeps souls, keeps generations, in an exhausting state of anticipation; souls stretched thin, cloth on the tenter. 

Huge magnets pulling slowly, imperceptibly, a planet toward the other, two planets towards each other. There were people who said it couldn’t be done, that it would fail for myriad reasons, motley doubts. Jupiter is too strong, the Sun reigns the skies, a collision is inevitable. And there were people who said it was unethical. Who are we to deprive Mars of it’s two Moons (which will surely be lost, orphaned by a kidnapped parent)? 

But what is this force? Where is it, and can it even exist? Isn’t this just the way? The way when hearts love each other, hearts feel such longing and need to be together, isn’t this the way to bring completion and balance, fulfillment even, to an open, unfriendly solar system? A cruel unwavering universe?