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At seven o’clock in the morning, a musical voice chirped just beyond the plexi-carbon windows of the Tube’s third floor. “Good morning, pioneers. Today is another beautiful day to produce, produce, produce!” the intercom said in her pre-recorded shrill. Margo always disliked the way the Morning Belle had stretched every s; it was as if she had aimed to smile as much as humanly possible while recording “produce, produce, produce” with her straight white teeth, even though her voice was nothing but a pictureless recording. Margot had woken up to Morning Belle’s voice every morning of her life. She wasn’t the only colonist to conjure up her own caricature of the woman. In Margot’s mind, Morning Belle was a red-lipped woman with a round face and small hips. She was stuck up, unhappy, and unnaturally laborious over her professional visage. In short, Margot did not see Morning Belle as a colonist.
There were only twenty above-ground floors of the Tube, which acted as residence halls. After the twentieth floor, as the pioneers denoted the top floor as zero, and the lowest floor some larger number, Morning Belle sang no more. Her voice was only the faintest small thing beyond ground level, which was reduced to a grainy chorus of echoes.
Margot had three more Good morning, pioneers. Today is another beautiful day to produce, produce, produce!’s to go before she was mandated to rise from her bed. Jeremy, the lawful, gracious, honorable man he was, had risen after Morning Belle’s first chime. Maybe he thought her to be a voluptuous woman with wide hips and a slim waist. Where she had thought Morning Belle to be only slightly beautiful, he might’ve thought her to be stunning and worth the early awakening. Ugh, men, she thought, although it probably wasn’t true. Her husband spent most of his early mornings looking out of the tinted bedroom window into the red abyss. He was usually sight-seeing by the second Good morning.
For Margot, however, it had just been one of those days where she looked in the mirror and saw the gray in her heather-black hair, and the gaping pores in her nose. She noticed the wrinkles around her lips, smile lines, and her fattening eye bags. Her face was too flat, bones too thinly formed around her nose and cheeks. She’d looked out the bedroom window to see a Martian plain, and wished that it was a prairie or a forest, or some harbinger of life, although she’d never seen such a thing. Why Jeremy ever concerned himself with the same orange dust steppes was a wonder.
Since Simon’s suicide, Allen’s thought of retirement, and an upcoming presidential election, Margot had been stuck in a tragic state of melodrama. In her wishing for unreasonable things like magical oases on Mars, in her wading through grief, she only searched for something nice.
Niceness soon came in the form of a sweet smell wafted through the doorway arch from the kitchen into their bedroom. Her chemist in the kitchen was cooking her a loving breakfast. Basil, bluebud, oregano, tunglip. Jeremy always used as many of the spices she propagated to make things “nice,” as he’d say. As Margot was born and raised into understanding, everything was nice, nothing was great–except her research, but she hardly cared about that especially when everything great fell short, and everything nice seemed to wither.
“Good morning, baby,” she said. Her solemnity appeared to be sleepiness. Jeremy flipped her omelet.
“Good morning, baby,” he parroted, with a practiced intonation of cheer.
“Meds?” she asked, taking a seat at the end of the counter. “Yes,” he said.
“Check-in?” He said yes again. “Summary report? Communications received?" He said yes to each successive thing she rattled off of their morning list. He’d occasionally forget, as did she.
She opened her little pink ten-day pill container on its ninth day, Noven, swallowing her oxygenation pill, multi-vitamin, vitamin D tablet, Gravacial, iodine supplement, calcium tab, and Neuroline in one practiced mouthful chased down with sips of yellow cucumber-melon juice and a bit of Jeremy’s omelet.
She flipped open the tablet beside her plate, wiping a dab of sauce from the corner where Jeremy had used it moments before, and checked in:
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Citizen 580813229B
Lu, Margret Sang-Mi
Occupation: Entomologist, Genetic Engineer
Status: Alive
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She tapped Confirm, prompting the tablet to celebrate in a small confetti icon. Summary report: Sabbatical. Communications: None, besides the day's mandatory affirmations. Yes, she thought, I will find beauty in the little things. Thanks Belle.
“What was your affirmation?” Jeremy asked. He collected his affirmations everyday, storing them in a computer file somewhere in his data cabinet along with the other trinkets he collected. He’d type up each phrase he’d received in bold Baskerville, the lines of sentences reminiscent of a poem.
“See the beauty in the little things.”
“That’s a nice affirmation.” He ate his own omelet. He had mushrooms, diced tomato-pear, sheep cheese, and imported Spam. He’d only used cheese, spice, and synthetic ham on hers, which is how she liked it. She didn’t care for all of the high-cuisine ingredients. She’d never gotten used to the flavors of Earth.
“Yeah, honey, I suppose it is,” she said.
“Mine was, ‘Find the will to go on’”
“Nice.”
“Yeah, I thought it was great.”
The day passed without much disturbance to routine. The only significant alteration in her typical activities was her weeks-long sabbatical. Most citizens would’ve only gotten two, but due to her contributions as an excellent researcher, she’d graciously been allowed four.
Jeremy packaged his computer, folders, and papers into his sidepack, which he slumped over his shoulder. As he pulled on his white coat which had Dr. Lopez embroidered on the left side over his heart, his wife kissed him goodbye and he was off to the Aries Nuclear Facility, a few train stops North of the Tube, fifty clicks away.
While her husband was away, Margot finished her book, cooked two meals, and did laundry. She browsed through art on her television, and watched a program about different types of Martian soil. She walked throughout the Tube’s varying levels, finding herself more often than not in the greenspaces, which resembled forests. The greenspaces were apartment-sized cutouts that served as hyper-realistic Earth settings. She loved the insects, and loved how they hovered near her head when she was walking about the implanted forests, prairies, jungles, and marshes. She especially adored bees, and wished that her work involved more of them. Ladybugs were, however, a sufficient species.
She had never been past the fiftieth level of the Tube–there was no real reason to. Most people had never been past the forty-fifth, but there were small shops Margot adored just beyond the forty-eighth. Even as she approached forty-ninth where the Farmer’s Market, florist, and Asian Mart were, she couldn’t see the bottom of the Tube as she peered over the railing. It was an endless illuminated shaft that dropped into nothing. Below her on the fifty-fifth level, there were only the faintest sounds of civilization, beyond that, she couldn’t think of a single reason a person would want to travel there. Beyond the fifty-fifth, she saw nothing but empty floors.
“Don’t jump.” A voice called to her from behind.
“Allen.”
“Or do.” His arms swayed weightlessly at his side as his head lolled about its neck, his eyes wandering the walls like two lost children. “It’s just a simulation. I hear they keep the real people down there.” The pitch of his voice wavered from high to low as if following the throughline of a dream–or a nightmare. Allen looked horrible. He was never a trim man, even from when Margot knew him as a teenager forty years ago, but he was nearing the concerning side of large. It wasn’t strength and health that gave him size, it was wasted carbon and excess cells in his body from overconsumption of the wrong things. He had approached her without his usual strut, his feet planted in the metal floor, dragging at the toe. What he used to take pride in had been lost: his finger nails were overgrown and dirty, his hair was unkempt and thin, his stubble was sharp and far too multi-directional to be styled, and his clothes were stained and odorous. Allen was typically a very handsome man, but as he stood in front of Margot, he looked to be a beast.
A pioneer who did not spend their entire life studying the discipline of biology and life sciences would have recognized his degradation as overpowering grief. To them, Allen was reduced to an agonized widower, but Margot understood. Neuroline has stopped working on Allen. His body has adapted to the Low-Gravity Adaptive Syndrome that had impacted every colonist on Mars. His heart no longer cares to circulate through his body. His muscles don't need to push and pull. His bones have lost the willpower to stand. Neuroline affects the mind, and that, too, has gone, and now she must monitor symptoms and guide her friend into his retirement.
“Allen–” she’d just said his name softly, for she didn’t know what else to say. People didn’t often come to her for emotional support–that was Jeremy’s role, but she tried.
“And I hear they torture the real people.” He continued, ignoring her. “I’m retiring, you know; I’ve gone Ad, but you can probably tell already. They’ll put me down there. With the real people, like a bug. And I’ll be all alone, but thank goodness, you know, for Jeremy. He’s retiring soon, no?” He lingered for a moment, not for Margot to interject, but to realign his eyes with hers as his head had lulled sadly to one side. Yes, she thought, we are that age.
“I don’t want to be…” he paused. To Margot, I don’t want to be, was complete in itself and she understood. “...alone”, but he would never be alone. Allen jabbered about real people in the Tube. He murmured about Simon, and something about The Great Manifesto. He was clearly aimlessly wandering down the levels, and she had just so happened to stumble upon her sad friend.
She grabbed him by the forearm, and lifted him to be on his feet more securely. “Let’s get you home.” By the time they had reached the fifteenth floor (Allen and, formerly, Simon had lived on the second floor), he found himself standing upright, and in a fit of agony, he grabbed Margot by the shoulders and shook her until her eyes rattled and her black hair undid itself. His great spasm startled her and she retracted her two delicate hands to free herself, but she could not pry the man off her. This was not a symptom of the Ad.
He launched into a deep grumbling voice, very uncharacteristic of his typical tone, which was usually full of whimsical joy. “Think not of jumping into the pits, for it is a bottomless pit where man finds nothing but other men in the trough. One must walk towards his end for death by exhaustion of life is far better than the death of a Viking at war.” His voice was a thunderous growl that was low and rolled out of his breath like tidal waves crashing on cavernous stone. He let her go, and she almost fell to the ground before her buckling knees righted themselves.
“I don’t think Simon really meant what he wrote, hon,” she said in a quivering voice. Her mother had died of LGAS twenty years ago at the age of forty-five, and the only thing that brought the poor woman any joy was to be soothed.
Margot had grown up on the myth that they live above a forbidden people in the Tube, she’d listened to Simon’s tall tales and philosophical theses since childhood. Of course people made up stories about angels or lost civilizations in the Tube. People had made up, for centuries, stories about people in the sky, in the ground, in the ocean. It was not unheard of.
“You can’t say that he didn’t mean what he wrote.” Allen breathed. He was faint and weak, potentially from physical muscle degradation, but more likely from emotional exhaustion. She would not be able to carry him up the stairs even if she had tried. She didn’t know he she’d even be able to drag him by the collar across a smooth floor. The weak gravity made Allen a light load, but it had also left her weak, stumbling, and also impacted by the Ad. Gravacial and calcium were not sufficient in building the muscle and bone strength required to live a physical life on Mars, but they hadn’t quite failed her yet.
“We need to get to your apartment, hon,” she traded Allen’s forearm for his entire bloated limb, which she slumped over her shoulder. His wedding band carved itself into his sausage finger. She had a hard time wrapping her small fingers over his, but she did, and she held tightly.
“Hold my hand, Allen.” He got to his feet, but didn’t look up. He held her hand as a child afraid to fall.
“He died for it, Margot.” He cried as she lifted him up the stairs. Tear marks left trails of clarity amongst his soot-ridden face on his cheeks.
“Climb.” She drove his body upwards with all the might she had.
“He died, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Climb.” She pushed again.
“He’s gone and now I’m alone.”
“Climb.” Her legs buckled and shook. “Please.”
“I must join my people.” He looked beyond the rail, and Margot gripped his hand so tight, she bent the gold band round his finger into the shape of an ellipse. He hadn’t seemed to notice.
“No, Allen. One more.” She breathed, feeling her heart face beneath her chest, hoping that he would not escape her weak grasp and hurl himself over the near railing. “Climb.”
“I just can’t.” He was sobbing, and she lifted him once more and stopped. She dropped his hand in exhaustion, and he withdrew it to his eyes, weeping into the palms of his hands. If he wanted to run and leap off the balcony, she wouldn’t be able to stop him, but he didn’t. He too was exhausted and sat beside her leg in tears. She also saw something in him. He was not ready to go, but it wasn’t quite that. The man who wept had some incomplete mission binding him to this Mars.
“Don’t cry, love. We’re here. You’re home.” She crouched beside him in front of his front door. The textured floor mat with the word love was ajar, so she righted it with her foot. Allen didn’t appear to notice, but in her mind he wished that Simon had. She held his head in her arms, and dug her nose behind his ear, letting him weep solemnly into her shoulder. She swore not to let him go until he was done.
“We must be strong. Today is the most important day of your life, Allen.” She paused, not knowing where her wisdom was taking her. She didn’t know why she had said that, and found that she had nowhere to go. She didn’t know what to say, so she stayed silent, breathing heavy air until he was ready to enter his home himself.
When he was, she helped him through the door (although he stood unassisted), entering the apartment herself. It was the exact same complex as hers with the same countertops, cabinets, windows, and lighting, except slightly bigger and with a fantasy uniquely Simon: turquoise couches with creamy tasseled pillows, paper lamps, and giant Andy Warhol reprints colored their space. It was greatly maximalist and fingerprinted compared to her quarters which she often found to be almost too sterile.
The final, and most drastic difference, however, was a new upbringing. She and Jeremy took great pride in neat spaces, so their walls were correctly white and orange as Allen had designed them to be. The floors were shining and the rug was kept soft and fresh, and colors were kept calm and questionless. Simon and Allen were well known as a clean couple. However, Allen’s chamber had become an unusual mess.
In fact, it was so drastically changed from when Margot had last seen it (two weeks prior to the funeral) that her breath caught between the vocal cords in her neck. The lights flickered, leaving the room in white illumination for a half click and then in scarce natural light for another. It looked as if a madman resided there. Stains lined every fabric surface in the room, while papers littered the rest. Each sheet had writing and scribbles and drawings that resembled monsters, poems, and even voids of nothing. Books were torn and shredded, haphazardly strewn about all the space, becoming soiled in the dirt that crusted the floor from the felled housetree vases. Every breakable piece of art, personal memento, or technology was shattered and exploded into every corner of the space. As far as she could see, the color of the floor was undetectable.
Eyes peered from the corners of the room at Margot, who still didn’t enter. She watched as Allen retreated to the bedroom in a trance, unbothered by the state of his disaster. He walked past a rounded shadow in the corner. Her eyes glazed past the object, but her instincts did not deceive her. There was a form. Her eyes failed to adjust to the darkness as every few seconds, she was blinded by a penetrating bright flashing light, but she could see it. Its four limbs were sharp and strong, possibly a large dog, which began to crawl towards the light, to Margot, illuminated by the hallway lamps. Its black eyes were that of a canine. The form crawled closer, its back legs inching fourth before its front and Margot saw that it was no dog, but was a fleshy thing ridden with filth and stench. It was not a layer of blonde fur which covered the thing, but pale–no silver–skin that draped over contorted shapes and bulbs Margot had never seen. In the darkness they were pustules, and in the light, they were muscles, squeezed tight under flesh. Its hunched form concealed any identifying anatomy of the creature. A low grumble erupted from its throat like the scraping of the trachea on the vocal cords. Margot stood and watched as it approached.
She had never seen an animal such as that one. She wanted to touch it, but stood motionless at the doorway, her thin fleshless limbs casting a stick-like silhouette against the frame of the door. Run she thought, but her feet were planted with fear and sublime. Run, but she couldn’t, for something deep within her called. Run, she urged, but I can’t.
It reached with its great wide hand, a palm delicately facing upwards, looking up. Its five fingers splayed outwards and reached towards the light, towards Margot’s shadow. They stopped, hovering, waiting. Its fingers quivered as if a hand was never used in such a way, reaching, outstretched like the picture of Adam. Margot looked on, still, her body inches to the tips of the creature's fingers. They were not the hands of an animal. They were the hands of a human. She paused, suddenly stricken with fear. Her shoulders began to tremble and her mouth dried up, her tongue pasted so strongly to the roof of her mouth, she was unable to speak, or breathe. She couldn’t scream. The form jolted upwards, Margot’s eyes watching for her body did nothing but wait. That silver hand grabbed her wrist and violently began to pull.
There was a rhythm to the form’s forcefulness. A vice of nails, flesh, and bone, sending and receiving reciprocal jolts of pull from into the doorway to out of it. With a great panicked shake of her arm causing a pop of her shoulder, Margot slipped beyond the long fingers which clawed just beyond the doorway too far away to see a face. But she saw the eyes. They were black as night, spheres of a deep understanding black. And understand they did, as they watched Margot Lu run away until they saw her no more.
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"To invite strangeness into life is the most liberating thing one can do for one's own soul."16Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHMMxnnhFq5
~ Simon Herman, The Great Manifesto
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