Its been 1,243 days since I’ve splashed water onto my face. It was the last morning before takeoff. My last day on Earth. I’ll never forget it, I didn’t know how magical it was. The feeling of cool water splashing against my skin. It seems so wasteful now, all of that water lost, dirtied, and discarded. I knew we would have hydro-rationing for the journey to Mars, and that it would remain in limited supply once we got here. But I never thought I would miss it this much. Sitting here in my control room monitoring subterranean probes, dreaming of the kind of luxury that swimming really was. I move my hand over a button to acknowledge an alert from one of the probes, it has reached the edge of its communications range and needs to be directed to return. A pale blue light warms as my hand approaches and with a soft ding I can see as the probe begins its return journey on the display screen.
Of course, there is enough water for all of the colonists to survive. All three hundred of us. But only just. It had been expected that once we arrived on the red planet it wouldn’t take us long to find a suitable source of water to expand our stores with. But now in our fourth year on the mission and the planet is still a desert to us. There were contingencies of course. Water is preserved, recycled, and none of it goes to waste. Not even through evaporation. We keep our skin coated in a transparent layer of petroleum like jelly which keeps us from perspiring and creates a watertight barrier to prevent any loss of fluid. Even drinking is considered inefficient use of water. Instead we have permanent intravenous ports which provide the exactly specified nutrients, water, and material for metabolic function and sustenance. The probe is almost back, the return trip is always faster, moving backwards through the small tunnels it created on its way out.
I haven’t completely forgotten what it is to be wet. We have immersive visual and auditory headsets. Its clear that the management who contracted us had thought ahead about how much we would miss the water. The VisAu Masks are programmed with very detailed reproductions of dozens of beachscapes, winding rivers, and undersea reefs. When I am immersed in one, I can lose myself, forget that its been years since I have actually seen a beach. I can almost smell it, the salty air heavy with moisture. But its still tinged with the metallic and slightly burned taste of the recycled air in the habitat here. Getting up from my seat I head over to the laboratory controls. Every probe that returns has soil samples in need of a more in depth analysis than the probe’s on board systems are capable. Rolling into the sealed miniature laboratory I extend my hands out, and a pair of mechanical appendages on the other side of the plastic window mimic my motions perfectly.
Of course, there is enough water for all of the colonists to survive. All three hundred of us. But only just. It had been expected that once we arrived on the red planet it wouldn’t take us long to find a suitable source of water to expand our stores with. But now in our fourth year on the mission and the planet is still a desert to us. There were contingencies of course. Water is preserved, recycled, and none of it goes to waste. Not even through evaporation. We keep our skin coated in a transparent layer of petroleum like jelly which keeps us from perspiring and creates a watertight barrier to prevent any loss of fluid. Even drinking is considered inefficient use of water. Instead we have permanent intravenous ports which provide the exactly specified nutrients, water, and material for metabolic function and sustenance. The probe is almost back, the return trip is always faster, moving backwards through the small tunnels it created on its way out.
I haven’t completely forgotten what it is to be wet. We have immersive visual and auditory headsets. Its clear that the management who contracted us had thought ahead about how much we would miss the water. The VisAu Masks are programmed with very detailed reproductions of dozens of beachscapes, winding rivers, and undersea reefs. When I am immersed in one, I can lose myself, forget that its been years since I have actually seen a beach. I can almost smell it, the salty air heavy with moisture. But its still tinged with the metallic and slightly burned taste of the recycled air in the habitat here. Getting up from my seat I head over to the laboratory controls. Every probe that returns has soil samples in need of a more in depth analysis than the probe’s on board systems are capable. Rolling into the sealed miniature laboratory I extend my hands out, and a pair of mechanical appendages on the other side of the plastic window mimic my motions perfectly.
Maybe we shouldn’t have come. Maybe we really do belong in the seas and not the skies. Who knows, maybe that first tetrapod that flopped onto land on its lobed fins and decided to try walking made a mistake. Took us down the wrong course. And now here I am, following the path it laid out for us 530 million years ago. Proof that one of the worst decisions life ever made was to leave the oceans, I can’t get much further from the sea than I am now. With a sigh I tap out the minute contents of the probe’s sample bay. Just dirt, Martian dirt (which was exciting the first few hundred times). But something is different. There is just a slight glimmer in the dusty detritus. Leaning closer, I squint and slowly increase the temperature in the miniature lab, bringing the temperature above freezing. The glimmer fades softly and the particulate dust appears to moisten. Releasing my control on the mechanical gauntlets my hand hovers over a panel, shaking. With a soft hum a radio turns on. “I think. We might have something.”
In a breach of protocol, I waste one drop of water. It trails down my cheek, hangs on my chin for a fraction of a second and leaps to the floor. The first splash I’ve seen in months, but maybe not the last.
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