From Regolith

Two bright orbs glitter on the skyline, and I can’t help but think of you. You’re the most visible during the winter season here, when the mother planet and her moon directly oppose the sun. It’s then when our worlds are in closest proximity to one another. Though my native cognition is now 30% supplemented with an artificial intellect chip, I am still a visual being. 70% of me is still unaltered human. Seeing you allows me to grasp, in part, that we still exist in the same solar system.

I just wish I had something of you I could touch.

I sigh, watching my breath fog the polycarbonate of my state-of-the-art visor. It’s only a matter of months before your Starship arrives. Soon, I’ll get to hold you again.

You.

My hands pause in the regolith. I’ve been out here for hours, kneeled on the rust-colored surface. Imagining what your face might look like, I close my eyes. I feel I could sculpt you from air at this point—though there’s still not enough of that here.

Yet.

I gaze out at the red world before me. It’s been six years since I’ve created something. It’s been 72 Earth trips around the sun since you were born. I can still feel your newborn skin against my damp chest. The parts of my brain that are still human—my piriform cortex and my limbic system—still cling to the sweet scent of your scalp.

Will the pediatric memory implant work? I wonder. Will you remember me?

Back on the blue and green planet, you’re already in first grade. I’ve missed so much of your life at this point: your first smile, your first steps, your first day of school.

“Mars means hope,” Eugene Markes had assured me. He was—still is—a foreign-born industrial engineer. I knew of him mainly for his CEO role with an elitist electric car company. I never followed the busywork of billionaires much until one bought his way into the government. At that point, even the most anti-capitalist of us were forced to watch, helpless.

I stared at him blankly, still trembling in the aftermath of your birth. How had he gotten in my room? I didn’t remember authorizing any visitors. The labor and delivery droids tried to grab you away from me, attempting to cut our skin-to-skin contact short. I couldn’t understand why they’d been programmed to think a big-shot businessman's presence was more important than human-to-human bonding time. Your birth was the 74th that had occurred on a worldwide scale that year—only the 17th to derive from a homo sapien mother. The other 57 infants had been harvested from the bellies of cyborgs. You were a miracle. I was a miracle. The date was December 21st, 2044.

I pulled you closer, batting the metallic claws away from us like a lioness.

“How does it mean ‘hope’ if I have to give her up?” I snarled.

Markes only stared at me. The texture of his skin was like raw poultry under the hospital’s harsh lighting.

“Join us, Moira. Help us grow a better, safer world for her. For all of our children. Your skills are needed on the settlement mission.”

He was referring to my globally acclaimed achievements as a top botanist with UC Berkeley—to my award-winning thesis on astrobotany and my leading role with the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.

I scoffed, then told him to go to hell. The world had turned to shit, sure, and I feared for your future, of course—but there were plenty of other esteemed plant pathologists who would jump at the opportunity. There were specialists whose children were grown and who wouldn’t need to leave infants in the care of newly commercialized nanny-bots. There was no way I could ever abandon you.

“There’s no way I could ever abandon you,” I whisper, staring up at the stars. I’m still kneeling here on the red landscape—the red landscape that will soon be your home. Taking a breath, I concentrate again on the sensation of my hands molding shapes in the regolith. The misplaced energy between you and I must be expressed, I’ve decided. I just haven’t figured out how.

Pressing my fingers into the powdery fragments, I repeat to you: “There’s no way I could ever abandon you.”

Speaking to you from such a distance like this, my voice is a goldfish. It swims around in my space helmet, trapped. It seems pointless. Then again, there’s a part of me that believes specks of my words break space barriers. A sliver of me subscribes to the thought you can hear me.

I must remember, too, that the pieces left behind—the words trapped along with my breath in my helmet—aren’t for nothing. They’re being stored by the quantum computing microchip on my right temple, from where they’ll be transferred to your pediatric memory implant. The memory implants are how Markes promises the time we’ve lost with you will be worth it.

“She’ll have no memory of growing up without you,” Markes had said, “Speak to her. The device will interpret a mutually shared past from which it will train your memory centers. The hippocampus is moldable, Moira.”

The hippocampus is moldable, Moira. His words echo in the part of my mind that still questions authority. I have no choice but to believe him at this point, however. Science and technology are now my religion.

So, I speak to you.

“Mars means hope” has become the motto here. For the most part, it’s a blessing. Falling into the abyss of pessimism—of being eaten alive by the fear our children won’t know us when they arrive—would be the death of the mission. The better, safer world we’ve worked so hard to build would be worthless.

So, I speak to you.

“There’s no way I could ever abandon you,” I repeat, “Mommy loves you—I’ve always loved you. You’ll be safe with me, just as you’ve always been. I’ve always been a part of your life.”

I say these words with unwavering optimism, just as I’ve been trained to. But the 70% of me that’s unaltered knows they’re just words. There’s nothing tangible for me to hold onto while I rehearse them. I feel I could write our story more convincingly if I had something to reference outside all the science, technology, and stone-cold practicality of this place. To be inspired, I need something holdable. I need something soft. To recreate an early childhood for you—one that’s warm and loving—I need something beautiful.

What could possibly be allowed to be beautiful here? I wonder.

I squeeze the small clump of regolith in my hand. I stare at it, wishing the answer would come to me. Some fragments crumble away to the ground. Some stay in the palm of my smart glove, waiting.

“Come on,” I say to my hands, “do what I brought you here for.”

When they do nothing, I sigh. Something is brewing within me. For the past four nights, I’ve come out here in secret to dream of you—to give the thought of you substance. I’ve come out here despite the risk.

Nervous, I glance back at the bubbles. They’re tiny dew drops in the red, barren desert. I’m not sure anyone’s noticed I’m missing. I pray they forget all about me. I plea to God they don’t discover what I’m up to.

Do I even know what I’m up to? I wonder. I’m not convinced that I do. One thing’s certain—I’m breaking the colony’s code of ordinances by being here. My business is in the greenhouse, overseeing the settlement’s food and oxygen source. My life is now harvesting carrots, onions, and sweet potatoes 140 million miles away from you.

But something else begs to be cultivated here. I can feel it. Something else is worthy of existence. And it requires artistry—not expertise.

I stare at my gloves. Removing them outside the bubbles is dangerous, I know. The low atmospheric pressure of Mars could cause frostbite—even death.

But I yearn to immerse an unshielded part of myself into this esurient energy. I can’t resist the thought that by offering a small piece of my soul, something extraordinary might blossom here—that I could fill this desolate world with beauty for you.

Because you, my love, are deserving of beauty.

I decide I have nothing to lose. Grabbing the wrist of my right glove, I take a deep breath. I then pull the protective barrier from my skin. The freezing temperature is a dragon bite—sharp and menacing. I wince before burying my flesh into the planet.

There’s an instantaneous surge through my veins. The chemical energy derived from the perchlorate salts is electrifying. Absorbing it, a smile widens my cheekbones. It feels like sand after the waves, I think.

Nostalgia washes over me. I’m overcome with the phantasmagorical memory of digging for sand crabs—of the tickling sensation of life scattering from my grasp. I must call that life back somehow. I must capture it.

“You and I are on the beach,” I say. I pray that somewhere on a playground in the sunset, you’re being filled with images of the two of us on the shoreline. We’re laughing and jumping in the waves. We’re building great, tall sandcastles. We’re together.

“Do you see it, sweet girl?” I ask you, “Can you imagine our story?”

A tear rolls down my face. Words still aren't enough. How can I convey this love that I have for you?

I concentrate on the dust in my glove-free hand. God, the particles of nontronite and saponite have so much potential out here in the open. I’ve worked with the regolith plenty as a botanist, sure, but I’m used to handling it in the greenhouse. There, it’s been irradiated. Tamed. In their wild state, these minerals have promise. C’mon, Moira, what can you make here? I prod myself.

For six years, I’ve worked tirelessly to become one with this world. We all have. After 72 months of struggling to survive, we’ve done it: we’ve established a sustainable way of life on the red planet. Other specialists and I—a handpicked team of world-renowned engineers, medical researchers, scientists, doctors, and inventors—have accomplished the goal of meeting the basic needs for human survival. Food, water, oxygen, and shelter have all been streamlined. The Martian Society operates like a flawless machine. The year is now 2050. Mars is now ready for our children.

For you.

But I’m having a difficult time comprehending how we’ll welcome our children here. Now that we’re no longer fueled by adrenaline—by the pure determination to stay alive—society’s come to a standstill. Our purpose has grown stagnant. What now?

I know what, I think to myself, I know exactly what.

I must plant a new type of garden. I’ve given every ounce of myself to cultivating crops and medicinal herbs here. Now I must grow—and let bloom—something different. My body is nourished and healed. Now I must nourish and heal my spirit.

And I must do it for you.

I can’t be the only one that feels this way. But I’d be a fool to believe anyone would support my desire to do something about it. Markes makes it clear that practicality is to be prioritized in the colony—that creativity is a distraction.

“Mars is too dangerous for diversions,” he reminds us. His words are now integrated into our morning routine. They swirl into our coffee and follow us to our workstations. “Art could destroy our focus. We must always stay disciplined.”

The result is a cold, emotionless culture—one devoid of a medium through which our human values and experiences can be fully expressed.

We have words, of course. We have the words we speak into the stars for our children—those being stored by the microchips on our temples. And in the beginning, those words were almost enough. Our spirits feasted on them. Our souls were fueled by the promise of your arrival—by the belief this was all for you.

Now that we’ve succeeded, however, I wonder: who are we really doing this for? What is a society without free emotional and spiritual fulfillment? Do we want to raise our children in a cultureless culture?

I’m not sure I want to know the answers. And I’ll die before I let anyone dictate the way I express my love for you—the way I let it manifest itself into the universe. I will not let you grow up in a cold, emotionless world. Because words are meaningless. They speak to our 30% upgraded intellect yet harden our hearts. I must keep my heart tender for you.

I bury my hand deeper in the regolith. I’m so fixated on the sensation, I’m trembling.

“Words aren’t enough,” I say to you, knowing the statement to be true. “Words aren’t enough because you’re only six, and you won’t understand everything I have to say when you get here. Words aren’t enough because you’re too young to hold significance to the sacrifices I’ve made, even though they’ve all been for you. Words aren’t enough because I don’t have anything of us you can see, sweet girl. For you, I must do more.”

I must do more, I think. I imagine two hands reaching into the depths of me. There, the answer awaits.

Think, Moira.

For the last four nights, I’ve dreamt about sculpting something beautiful. I’ve felt my hands leading a renaissance. But the vision’s been fragmented.

Focus. What is it?

I can’t take it. The glove on my left hand goes flying to the ground. I immerse my bare hands—the same hands I’ve used to sprout green, leafy life from a barren, red planet—into the unaltered soil. The 70% of me that’s human awakens. My skin tingles, becoming one with the regolith. This soil’s been waiting for me. It’s always been waiting for me.

And finally, my hands begin to work—to create something magnificent. As if guided by the universe, they mold the sediment back and forth, making soft, delicate movements—giving shape to this love that I have for you. They give form to our spirits, united. They construct something that isn’t just basic survival necessities. It’s something much more. It’s warm. It’s alive.

And it’s tangible.

“Where’s Moira?” A voice chirps over the Relay System.

My nerves light on fire. I don’t have much time.

I work quickly, first shaping our hearts—then our arms—from regolith. Pieces of static pop from the radio, but I avoid losing focus. Every piece of me is now present.

I move to our necks and our faces. Each fragment of us is connected. I carve my hands—every crevice of them—embracing you with a hug that transcends galaxies, sweet pea. You’re snuggled into my chest. You’re safe and protected. My chin rests on your small forehead. I plant kisses there—and there, from regolith, they bloom into a garden that makes up for the time.

“Mars means hope,” I whisper to you, and smile.

Beholding my creation, I finally believe that it’s true.