2 minute read
OPPORTUNITY COST PART II
OPPORTUNITY COST PART II
short story Theron Camp // 12
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Meridiani Planum, 2036
Her ship had arrived less than ‘cause of my back, and I guess you’ve three months ago, bringing the heard the farm hasn’t had a good year total number of colonists in the overall ‘cause of the blight, but we’re Robinson colony to over sixty. Today, doing the best we can, and Andrea’s she’d been repairing a troublesome got that new high-paying job in habitation module on the far side Billings, I don’t recall what ‘xactly, but of the settlement. After dinner, she they’ve been sending some money up had around seven hours to sleep regular like, so, um. Don’t you worry before she’d be on duty again. Annie about us is what I’m saying. Zimmermann felt justified in wanting “Hello, Annie. How’re you doing?” to go straight to bed tonight, but (This was her mother’s voice) “We it was Sunday back on Earth, and really miss you here, and I know that her weekly video message from her Peter does too, but he’s working right parents would already be in her now, so I’ll say it for him. Take care of inbox. yourself now. We pray for you every
“Good afternoon, Annie, or, day. Hope to hear from you soon.” uh, whatever time it is for you. It’s (Her father again) “Yes, reply soon. afternoon here, and we went down See you later, Annie.” by the river for a picnic after church End of message. Annie stared at today, me and your mother and Peter the screen for a while, mindlessly, and and his family because, um, Peter and slowly realized that a great sorrow had Andrea just drove up from Billings, so descended upon her as she sat there. they got up here last night. Why had she gone away to Mars? “Anyway, we’re back “Why had she gone away to Mars? Mars, where she breathed at the house now, and Mars, where she breathed tinned air tinned air and everyone else and fixed houses for a living.” ate tinned food and is outside in fixed houses for a the yard, except Peter, he’s taking a living. Mars, the endless rust-colored look at the combine. It broke, you plain littered with rust-colored rocks know, and I couldn’t fix it myself distortion beneath a rust-colored sky. Mars,
the cold and desolate. Mars, where she still felt trapped beneath the sky, beneath the bubbles of plastic and plexiglass because, well, she was trapped. She’d thought she could be a pioneer, an explorer in space, but there were no pioneers in space-- there were no true pioneers at all anymore. She was a tool of empire; it’d rewarded her yearning for freedom by making a slave of her, trapping her in the menial existence she sought to flee.
Her parents had been right; she never should have left Earth. Now the land, the sky, the people were all as dead to her, existing only in her memory, and each sensation could only be recalled, never felt again, much like her grandparents when they had died. She had let her parents down, scorned all they had done for her, and now she couldn’t go back.
Annie Zimmermann left her tablet on the floor-- her reply could wait until tomorrow-- and drifted off to sleep, silently bemoaning what she had lost.
