Capturing Mars - Let the imagination run free...

clark · 2005-02-21 11:00:08

For those who tire of politics, of science, or religion and the characters that play their part within, a different thread for all to try.

For one reason or another, you find yourself in front of a screen, endless geography unites disparate and distance to a focal point of ideas and hope. In some places, they argue, in others they dissect, but here, here we dream.

I'm talking about Mars, a planet none have visited, but all have touched. One way or another, by reading, by watching, by talking, by listening, or by trying. We each find our own way to bridge that void filled divide, and we each succeed in capturing Mars.

Or, perhaps, Mars has captured us. Sometimes there are laws of attraction greater than physics, and more persuasive than gravity.

clark · 2005-02-21 11:01:29

The delicious feel of crunching red dust through booted sole. Not the first, but my first, for all the worlds and the people on them, it might as well have been. No book or video or recounted anecdote captures that first step. Or the next one. Or this one underneath a wide expanse of salmon sky, no wisps of clouds but a hanging sun dimly shining midday twilight noon across barren desolation. Oh, but it is a desolate promise through a windowed pane visor running across my face.

Ancient dust filled craters waiting to drink in lakes, to spring forth blue green plants and the fish to swim and jump within. Or barren mountain-scape, through squinting eyes one can imagine the blankets of new snow that will fall, a billion year respite awoken by beating hearts and mad desires. “No wall is forever,” how old is that wisdom, how new is this experience?

With gloved hand I scattered some fine Martian rocks and dust, in an idle thoughtless moment moving what eternity and wind could not. Mars was remade the moment mankind looked to the heavens and dreamed and hoped, there’s no point anymore staying the hand. Water will flow, air will be made, and this land will live as it has always lived- by the sheer force of imagination and will. Our will, my will.

One day we will touch Mars, as it touches us now. With each step, it gets closer. With each moved rock, I am closer.

No wall is forever, so with each step, let us make this world one where we need no walls.

clark · 2005-02-21 11:39:34

Sweet un-warming sunshine through crystal dome, and I, a solitary witness. A thousand miles stretch in all directions, broken by the cragged and jutting imposition of multi-colored uniformity of red, brown, pink, black ancient lava flows and mountains that no longer grow. Everywhere is the slow dissolution of form into dust by tireless invisible wind as volcano peaks wither, and billion year craters fill. In the distance dance dust devils, skating on the thin carbon air and writing unknown words with their tails into the land of this planet, the words melting as quickly as shooting stars into a distant black evening sky. These are the Martian rainbows of wind and dust, always out of reach, always beckoning the wayward soul ever towards, ever forward.

Touching the crystal pane window of the dome, I can feel the cold frozen wasteland of a place where I am the alien. Where alien hope has led me to crave the touch of an unknown and uncaring land, to write my words in the shifting sands, like a dancing dust devil.

A soft reflection of my form casts itself outside the dome. Envious and jealous, I can see my mirror image, bare to the Martian world, staring in towards me. Mars looks back through my reflected eyes, inviting and mocking, teasing me with this senseless and immediate need to be bare skinned in a thin-aired red world of dust. “So close,” whispers my reflected mirage as I breathe. So close to where human hands have never written in unrecorded clay. Where history lies unmade outside, and inside, time records eternity waiting. All of our history is as ephemeral as the Martian rainbows now dissolving, their words sinking into dust, waiting to be written new.

Ian Flint · 2005-02-21 12:45:59

At long last, the final epidermal implant is in place. Finally, a chance to walk barefoot upon the red sand.

Too many years have I waited, confined like a prisoner away from the world that I love. Like a ship in a bottle floating on a blue sea, so close to the waves and yet unable to touch them. No more shall a thin plastic bubble control my destiny. No more will the thing that gives me life demand my freedom in return. No more shall I be a ship in a bottle.

clark · 2005-02-21 12:56:58

In colors long forgotten here, upon bare rock cave, hollowed by empty wind and sanded smooth by a countless age of dust, I paint. This form is ancient, as old as the pieces within my bone formed on a distant blue planet millions of miles from here and now. An urge just as ancient, bequeathed by my unknown progenitors who huddled against the dark danger of that world to record the fleeting moments of their life and planet. These shapes I color, unknown to first man, are primal images of this new man, this new world.

Rocket fire yellow-gold, with silver men beneath new constellations of stars sprinkled upon a skyline undreamt. In black ocher, the rising monstrous volcano Olympus Mon’s casts a shadow encompassing pale blue and vivid green domes, where copper tree autumn is frozen on the red rock cave wall. Turquoise shades of waiting pools, rivers, and forming seas glimmer in the faint phosphorescent lamplight, chrome sketched children wading in their shores. A thousand colors and shades of green seep into the natural orange painted walls of Martian lands, this new earth of solitary color.

New images spring forth, alive with combinations of native color and alien shades. Purple pink and blue clouds enveloped in an endless expanse of crimson sky, while silver leafed flowers unfold petals to capture translucent diamond colored teardrops from falling sky. Animals long and lean dance ahead of their shadows, flying on colored drafts of air, running in light leaps through cratered fields filled with looming rocks. Everywhere is the splash of life colored, while the bare Martian cave rock bears only the colored imprint of my hand.

Cobra Commander · 2005-02-21 13:35:09

A world unfinished, waiting for the hand of lesser gods to mold it and bring life from the heavens. We came, filled with hope and determination for a better world than the one we'd left behind. Odd that we would abandon a world of oceans and life for a barren frozen rock and call it "hope", yet promise has a warmth all its own.

As does solitude. We insulated ourselves from humanity just as surely as from the cold wind. Our grey and shining structures standing in defiant contrast to the pure and brutal nature of the planet we chose to make home, every effort to survive here moving us further from our own humanity. Living in caves of our own making, even when walking the barren fields enshrouded in a prison that sustained us. Food grown in long corridors, proxy hands building on the desolation, watching a world of pristine artificiality grow around us while our descendents grew below in shielded centrifuges, buried deeper than the dead that they might labor a lifetime before joining them. Every effort to replace the planet's cold deadness with the warmth of life resulted in a converse effect in ourselves, a necessary transformation to survive.

And more came, taking what we had taught them while arrogantly thinking themselves better. They will learn, in time Mars will remake them as well. One day our descendents will walk from the caves and feel the sun on their face for the first time, a breeze not from a fan touching their skin. They will fulfill the dream that brought us, the promise of the future will be fulfilled. Until that day, we embrace the cold and accept that Mars is a god of ill-temper. There will be sacrifices.

clark · 2005-02-21 14:14:35

Here I am, at the bottom of a planet, far from home, no friend’s, family long gone, just this place and me. Miles stretch in vertical forever on all sides, leaving me in a perpetual twilight of shadow. Untold millions of years lie bare to discern a geological past of creation, destruction, evaporation, deluge, and other countless cycles that end here, now, with me standing and gawking at secrets kept for millennia.

A single line of mineral formation marks the date of life’s first beginnings on a blue planet far from here. Another higher up, beyond my sight, records the first birth of people who would one day travel millions of miles to visit this place, this now, and record what is recorded in stone. Colored lines of strata mark ages, the void between is filled with countless voices, loves, hates, crimes, justice, death, and life reborn again and again. All while the dust blows, the sediments accumulate, and ages pass.

“Where am I,” I wonder. Infinitesimal as my being is in comparison, vanity takes hold. Where among the countless mineral lines am I, where is my record? I see, feel, taste, touch- can remember all these things, that should be enough. Yet it all slips away one day. It all becomes dust to accumulate in a rock vein, to be looked at and remarked upon by someone in some future date. Or perhaps forgotten completely and buried with other secrets till the end of the world.

For now, I scratch a line on the rough-hewn surface of the rock wall. This is my mark, my line. The point where I stood on the bottom of the planet Mars, where one part of me ended, and another part began.

clark · 2005-02-22 08:12:57

There are those who come for adventure, some for curiosity, and some to find new gods, or unmake old ones. I journeyed for this, for this moment, this place, now. With each revolution it changes. With each passing sol, another set of footprints mar the pristine beauty of untouched mystery. One more secret unlocked, one more question answered, until everything and every place is catalogued, surveyed, and recorded. This planet of imagination, undone by mechanical and mathematical precision until all parts succumb to a death by factoid and trivia. How long will this blank canvas exist to engender mythical kingdoms or the legendary canals childhood fantasy thrives on?

I didn’t come to find life, or even to bring it. No, I wished to play only a small part and witness the littered fields of ancient solar system beginnings. To be here and appreciate the grandeur of my body against the relief of sky piercing mountains. What does a parameter of a dream mean in contrast to the dream itself? There is no hope here, just two minuscule moons arcing overhead while the distant sun crosses a smaller horizon. Yet I feel lighter, because of gravity I am told, still that explains nothing of the actual feeling of stepping lightly and adding my own set of prints to the dusty rusted soil.

Encased in machine and science, the touch of this world is subdued. Still my soul trembles as I set out where none have walked before, where the journals have yet to record, out into the wild Martian desert where imagination still waits to live.

clark · 2005-02-22 12:42:27

The first rocket brought me, and the last one will take me. How many sunrises’ have I been blessed with on these desert shores? Not enough. Not enough sanguine colored rose orange sunsets melting the gray shadows of the ending Martian day away. I thought I would look forward to this day, the return to the familiar, away from the alien uniqueness of this other world. But now, at the cusp of retreating, I falter with doubt, my conviction wavering.

For so long, too long some say, I made this strange place a home. From the red rock I carved shelter, and found a place my own. This is familiar now; a distant speck of blue light seems further than ever, to far from here. To far from the silent waves of dust that sweep across endless dunes migrating inexplicably towards the distant horizon. I’ve watched faces come and go, different questions asked and answered, satiated in one way or another, to leave and never return. I stayed, lingering in the absence of smells and touch, voices and the people who brought them. Yet in the quiet solitude of machines and rock and lifeless planet, I discovered a belonging. The red rusted sand seeped into me, and I into it.

There is another world waiting for me, just like this world has waited for me. The last rocket is waiting now, and when I go, I will watch it go.

clark · 2005-02-23 08:17:03

Everywhere is the red-orange rock face of mother Mars. Spiraling canyons sweeping along in mighty torrents to the waiting boulder strewn sea, while blackened monolithic mountain ranges keep eternal vigil over the wind swept course. An entire world frozen in the last moments of ending, waiting patiently for some new beginning, or some imagine. Others come with dreams in hand, often without realizing the dream that thrives, living and breathing from pole to pole, beneath and above the frozen wasteland of Mars.

The truth is, my world never ended. Like Earth, it too continues to evolve. Winds roll, multiply, disperse along the million faceted cracks and crevices of new and old craters, creating new beauty, morphing ancient statue forms into living rock beings. Movement measured by eons, perceptible only to patience and the long appreciation of generations. It stills the soul, quiets passion, creating a cathedral the size of a world. Of the many that make this journey, too few stay to experience what waits here. Among the red blooming desert lies peace unknown anywhere else. Here, the days are longer, the weight of the world lighter, and importance of fellowship greater.

Upon this world, buried deep, are seeds of our own humanity. They wait for the transplanted roots to blossom like the red desert, adding their own piece to the never ending Mars. This Martian dream is but the garden of all our dreams.

clark · 2005-02-23 10:19:16

She is beautiful, and her arms were home. Her laughter like a gentle spring rain, and fury wild as raging sea, each moment filled with a turbulent weather of emotions. Ocean blue-green eyes held a world captivated, held me. Yet I turned away. I broke my gaze from home, and beheld infinity. Somewhere between the edges of sight and there, I found here. A place of naked beauty, beautiful and stark in comparison to what I had always known. Instead of parading seasons and burning colors, there is only a flame colored season, alive and dead in unending march with each revolution. Places without name, without history, without words to describe subtle shades and emotions that glitter with first light.

Bittersweet is this taste, this new lover who greets each even before they come. Calling out from the beyond with intoxicating promises, delighting each in offering pieces of what never could be found in that place we first called home. Even this close, upon her body, her embrace is at arms length, love given one-way. Still the sweet kiss and touch of a land not of my birth, but of my choice, is far more nourishing than the sustenance of mother Earth.

Mars without tears, I will cry for you. Mars, without blood, I will bleed for you. Mars, without love, I will love for you, and bring the sheen of life to glow on your shores.

Ian Flint · 2005-03-01 12:06:01

A monster they call me. Shunned from society, I live alone.

Though men may hate me, Mars does not. I have changed for Her, for She is unchangeable. Her cold heart and stark countenance, though they make lesser men tremble, endear Her to me.

I, firstborn upon Mars, forever have been an outcast among men. As Her own offspring She has made me to Her liking -- larger, stronger, smarter, oh yes, much smarter. The lesser men never understood -- NEVER!

They think they have trapped me in their little prison. They think I will die without one of their little plastic bubbles. FOOLS! Know they not that I am the son of Mars, the beloved firstborn? Know they not that I already walk naked upon Her skin. Know they not that She protects me.

Now, I must show them. Soon, they will all come to know the power She has given me. THEY WILL KNOW!!

clark · 2005-03-31 08:14:28

We waited in anticipation, looking beyond the next horizon of time and place towards some future unknown. In the light of absence we built form and color, naming the nameless, filling a perceived void with an aspect of ourselves, and the hope that brought us to dream. Legends became stories, stories became desire, and desire discovered a waiting truth, stark and beautiful in a desert wrapped world that could be anything our hearts desired. Mars became an Eden lying fallow. An empty garden of possibility, waiting to flourish as our ideas and hands tilled the silent land.

That is the horizon we sighted, the place beyond which we sought. To few pondered the stretching forever that was, and is. A million miles journey, plodding head long towards the flame of hope like captured moths, only enflamed the burning desire to reach this mirage of possibility. Endless are the deserts of Mars, as too the will of Man. Yet our eternal hunger to remake and reshape and reform will cause this un-blooming planet to bend to our cravings.

And when that future horizon of dream and desire is found, when the blood colored landscape bleeds green and blue, flowering with wet rain, evaporating ancient deserts away, what then? Will future eyes and hope look back, towards a receding horizon that was, filled with that first innocent hope engendered by an empty promise of possibility, hungering for what was lost? The last frontier greets us, those who dreamt first, choosing what would be. All those who wait beyond with waiting dream, will wonder at what was, as we now wait with wonder, at what will be.

clark · 2005-03-31 11:32:28

This place has a name, a hundred different ones in fact. Countless ages past, and histories forgotten all baptized this distant speck of light, all in the vain attempt to contain its mystery. Some worshiped it, as some still do, while others counted the long passages through space and time to help understand the cosmic dance of the heavens. A named pinprick point of light, upon which greater mysteries could all be explained away. Those names shaped the formless mystery of red cold dawn and unseen night. In each word given to it, expectations built, and Mars became the embodiment of every name, waiting.

Waiting for the day, these days, this day when our feet tread lightly and heavily through virgin fields of hills or cratered valley. An entire world breathless in anticipation of speaking the name it will be. God of war and might, dead world full of light, civilization on the wane, or a new border men come to tame- perhaps just a frozen statue whose countenance contains the inscriptions of every name ever bequeathed to it, or one day will.

What name might it give itself, I wonder in those silent places filled with an eerie stillness. What word can capture this planet? Not one, not even the hundred other names that have been uttered since man first learned to speak.

My journey here began with a name of a planet, and all I understood it to mean, yet here I find that the planet Mars has more meaning than any single name.

clark · 2005-04-05 09:34:21

“You could stay,” the voice spoke with searching eyes. It was the same conversation, replayed again in new form. The words were never the same, but the meaning always floated just below the surface, lingering in the unsaid, in the quiet looks and small asides, between the everyday exchanges that preceded today.

“You could come,” I replied with soft smile to hide the pain of choices already long made. To go or stay was no longer an option for either of us. We both stood at the brink of a precipice, staring at one another over a chasm that divided us, pulling asunder the moments we shared. Empty words were all that was left. “It isn’t to late to change your mind.”

A wan smile crept upon that waiting face, “I’ve said the same before.” Silence floated between us again, filled with the memory of what was being left, all blame and hope long since forgotten. “I always thought- no wished. I wished that when the time came, you would change your mind.”

“Me too,” I whispered, aching to have the words convey how conflicted my emotions had become. Everything waited beyond that final door, and I never once looked behind me to see what was being left. Then it happened. I faltered, I stumbled and beheld the things and beauty that kept me lingering. To me, I was making time; never fully realizing that it was excuses I was making.

After that, I couldn’t stop anymore, I couldn’t hold back. I had to go. “Everything I ever wanted is there. I can’t pretend it’s otherwise,” my voice faltered with the hopeless passion that brought us here.

Dark and cold came the final question, “have you tried?”

Silence again engulfed us, tears forming as we both cut the final strings binding us. The waiting face and intent stare made me realize it was my turn to speak. To find the words that would soothe and heal, or rip apart the last piece of us. “Everything I ever wanted is there, but you. But-“

“It isn’t enough,” came the cold voiced cutoff that once finished my every thought.

“No,” I replied. “It isn’t enough. Just as me going isn’t enough for you.” There it was, the final piece of our dance. Not enough to go, not enough to stay, just enough to wait for this final ending, another beginning.

With our final kiss, we made our promises and goodbyes. I would write and they would visit- little lies to make it easier. To make this old journey, to a new world, easier.

dicktice · 2005-04-05 11:26:21

I can't wait to get out of here, and strap on my wings to play "airball" with the other kids until supper. Then I'll do my assignment in Mars Lit 101 before bed. I hope we're havin' Kraft Dinner tonight.

clark · 2005-04-06 10:30:16

Right of Passage.

I followed Benny out the airlock, our com link was on a private channel to keep our conversation, well, private. “You sure this is a good idea, Benny?” I asked hesitantly as I took my first step outside.

“Come on guppy, you’re not going stiff on me now. Just follow me.” Benny turned and waved me on, a sly grin showing through his helmets visor. I didn’t see the harm, even if our venture outside was against regs. Still, I couldn’t believe he had talked me into this. ‘You gunna be an air-breather all your life,’ his goad still playing over in my mind as it had done for the last few sols.

We were outside the hab, heading about a dozen clicks beyond the habs sensor perimeter. There was a nearby rock cropping that shielded one from the inside dome view. With a private channel, and the rock, it was about as private as you could get on Mars.

I had never ventured here, as most Mars walks were strictly regulated and supervised. Most of my experiences had involved trundling in a rover to some anonymous crater or rock-strewn valley to collect samples for the research teams. ‘Educational Field-Trips’ they called them, ‘slave-labor’ we called them. Maybe it was the taunts from the older kids that made me want to break out, but even then, ridicule and ignorant jokes seemed like a stupid reason for all this trouble.

Benny’s voice broke through my silent considerations, “We’re almost there. Now I don’t want you going soft on me. No running to the nurse or docs when it all goes black and blue.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. But it still seems stupid,” I replied with false bravado.

“That’s what everyone says, their first time,” Benny laughed. “But don’t worry guppy, when you’re a Martian, you’ll see things a little different.”

We turned the corner of the rock out-cropping, walking towards an area that was cleared of the small rocks that so characterized just about every other place on Mars. Dusty footprints littered the clearing. I noticed a small hammer and chisel, the kind used for taking rock samples, hanging on a nylon cord from a smooth surface of the rock. “What’s with the gear?” I asked, curiously pointing at the scientific tools in a supposedly ‘secret’ place.

“Oh that, yeah, it’s for the wall,” he shrugged, pointing to the smooth surface of the rock.

I looked closer and noticed that the rock was chiseled with names. Names of kids, and even some of the adults from the hab. “I thought it was against regs to graffiti on rock!” I exclaimed. “The Admin would blow his head if he saw this!”

“The Admiral? Nah, look up top there,” Benny pointed, “those are his initials. Old man Admiral was one of the first.”

I was shocked. The Admin, Admiral we called him, even though he wasn’t military, ran the hab and had over-arching jurisdiction in running the science and personnel for our zone. He was a stickler for regulations, and he constantly harped and lectured about not defacing Mars, lest we ruin the scientific value. “I never would have guessed. That explains the eye-rolls of the older kids when he gets into speech mode,” I laughed.

“Well, if you know what’s good for ya, you won’t say nothing more than an eye-roll about knowing. We keep quiet, and he looks the other way. Got it, guppy.” Benny commanded more than asked.

“Got it, don’t worry.” I shrugged, getting impatient with Benny’s blustering. “Look, let’s get on with it, it’s getting dark, and the temps are fallin fast.” The truth was that it would be light for another hour yet, but all this waiting and talking was allowing some of my fears to get the better of me. Besides, the longer we were out, the greater the chance of us getting caught.

“Alright guppy, I can see you’re in a hurry, and I don’t blame ya. I was anxious my first time too,” Benny grinned, and the slight malice of playing on my fears ebbed in his voice.

“First time? How many times you done this?” I asked, not wanting Benny to realize that he was getting to me.

“Just the once, but this will be my second time.” Benny paused, glorying in his triumph over me. Even if I went through with this, he at least would still have something to look down on me. “I got the mark on my right wrist, and now I’m going to do it to my left one.”

The ‘marks’ were the circular bruise bands from exposing the wrists to Martian vacuum. All the kids said this is what separated air-breathers from actual Martians, those who taste Mars. They all said it was painful, and that if you didn’t do it right, you would lose your hand. I didn’t believe the losing a hand part, but from the school vids on exposure, I was pretty sure the pain part was under-stated. “Okay guppy, now you know what to do, lift the seal patch between your glove and forearm, that will expose an inch or so of your skin. Leave it off for as long as you can stand- the longer the better. But not to long! I don’t want you runnin to Doc Winters about this, he would have a fit!”

I nodded in agreement, and grabbed the seal patch release. I couldn’t help it but my teeth started chattering in anticipation as I steeled myself for the ensuing attempt at childhood stupidity. “Here we go guppy, on the count of three.”

Benny was staring at me; his voice filled my helmet as he counted down. “One.”

Flashes of every exposure video I had seen started running through my mind. Suit depressurization, pictures of frost-bite, freeze-burns-

“Two,” Benny’s voice became slightly louder, more excited. I imagined the time I had fallen down the crater on one of the field trips. A fractured wrist that stung, the most physical pain I had ever experienced. What would this be like? I promised myself that no matter what, I wouldn’t cry. Not in front of Benny, I needed to be able to hold my head up.

“Three,” Benny thundered over the com, and I closed my eyes. Everything seemed to stop, my breathing, time, everything except the slow motion of my seal patch between glove and suit being pulled off. The burning was immediate and intense, and I gasped.

Alarms started going off inside my suit. It seemed like forever, those moments where my wrist lay exposed to the Martian air. Benny later told me I held out for five seconds, long enough to give me a permanent band around my wrist, and respectable enough that most kids wouldn’t hassle me as an air-breather.

After resealing our suits, I chiseled my name into the Martian rock. The walk back to the hab was different. It was the same path we had taken, but it felt different. Maybe it was the still agonizing pain in my wrist, but somehow I saw Mars differently. I saw Mars, for the first time, as a Martian.

Ian Flint · 2005-04-06 13:45:56

After the two boys left, I detached myself from the boulder that hid me during their little ceremony. Had they dicerning eyes they could have seen me, but mother knew how to hide me -- even in plain sight.

Walking up to the wall of names, I felt the sacredness of the site. It was surprising, for I had thought that Mars loved only me, Her firstborn. But she had surely blessed this site, as she had blessed me.

What was I to do now? As I read the names of those who called themselves true Martians, I recognized some whom I hated. How could I dispose of them now, now that Mars had touched this place with Her spirit.

Were they Her sons and daughters as well? As I pondered upon these new discoveries, the rage that had possessed me earlier subsided. Perhaps I was an only child no more.

All of a sudden things became clear. I now knew why She had led me to this spot -- why She had urged me to follow the youngsters, instead of proceeding directly to destroy the settlement. Her children, my brothers and sisters, lived there!

I paced back and forth in front of the smooth stone for hours, soaking into my soul the names inscribed there. Many of the names brought memories to my mind, sweet memories of childhood. Smiling faces, loving embraces, laughing voices. Sweet memories. I didn't know I had any, but She helped me find them, deap within. Sweet memories, sweet mother.

Suddenly I found myself staring at the green bubbling cancer that grew upon Her skin. Domes of vegetation fed the cancer while it's tendrils grew beneath the surface, meandering mounds of ice and regolith their sign of infection. All the parasites scurried within. Why had she saved the settlement?

Oh yes, my new brothers and sisters...I must meet them and show them Her love. Then we would all remove the cancer.

clark · 2005-04-07 11:14:11

Through Martian Eyes.

“Timothy, come in!” Admiral Nevis exclaimed, rising to greet his visitor, “I’ve been expecting you.”

Timothy hadn’t seen the Admiral in years, at least since the Admiral had retired from the Administrator position of Hab Station Bravo, and Timothy had begun his various wanderings throughout the more remote research stations on Mars.

The Admiral looked still as he remembered him from his youth, except now his piercing gray eyes matched his full silver hair. He seemed smaller too, but time and age seemed to have only compacted the power and vitality within him, not diminishing it any.

“Admiral, it’s been too long… sir… Mr. Nevis,” Timothy replied, stumbling over the proper name to call this man he once feared and respected, even now the man intimidated him. He could feel his cheeks flushing in embarrassment. ‘Why do I ever listen to Benny,’ he thought to himself, ‘this was his idea, and his ideas never come to much good.’

Timothy held out his hand with the bravest smile he could muster, hoping that the Admiral would be kind enough to overlook his confusion.

“Nonsense my boy,” the Admiral replied, a grin growing across his face. In a few steps the Admiral crossed the room, and unexpectedly grabbed Timothy in a firm hug, patting him on the back. “God it’s good to see you Tim, and my how you’ve grown!” The Admiral pulled back enough from their embrace to look Timothy in the eyes, still gripping his arms. “No, you’re not the boy who always got into trouble on my watch! You’re a man now! Staying out of trouble are you?” He finished with a sly grin.

“I manage,” Timothy laughed, “Of course not having Benny around may have more to do with that than anything else.”

The ‘trouble’ the Admiral referred to was adolescence, usually because Timothy was too young and stupid to not listen to some hair brained idea of Benny’s. After Benny joined the Explorer Corps, Timothy’s routine visits to the Admiral’s office had stopped. The Admiral probably thought Timothy had matured, but Timothy knew it was just the absence of a goading Benny that had finally allowed him to stay out of ‘trouble’, and out of the Admiral’s office.

The Admiral let go of Timothy, and sat behind the wide expanse of his desk, motioning Timothy to take a chair. The only thing on the Admiral’s desk was a medium sized globe of Mars; little white dots on it seemed to indicate various stations and habitats.

He continued their conversation, “Of course, you two were pretty much inseparable, if I recall. Except he always seemed to have an alibi when you two pulled some damn fool stunt.”

“Yeah, he was pretty lucky-,” Timothy paused; realizing the grin on the Admiral’s face told more than he was saying. “You knew! All this time, you knew?”

The Admiral laughed, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “Yes I knew. I knew a lot of things, even some of the things you kids thought you were getting away with. Like the rock. Like the midnight rover race. Or even that environmental control system error that made it snow for two days in the main rec room.”

Timothy shook his head, ‘this wily old coot’, he thought to himself. The snow was another of Benny’s, and a few of the older kids idea. For years, it was legend, more so because they had gotten away with it, or at least thought they had.

“But why didn’t you say anything?” Timothy asked in wonder.

Leaning back in his chair, the Admiral placed his hands behind his head, staring up at some distant memory. “Because I didn’t have to.” The Admiral sighed, “I tried to be firm, but fair. I may not look it, but I was a kid once, and keeping you kids on a tight leash would have only made things worse. Besides, things seemed to have turned out all right. For instance, Benny is in the Explorer Corps, and you’re something of a rising artist I hear.” The Admiral paused, finishing some silent musing of his own, then brought his gaze back to Timothy.

“So Tim, how is Benny these days, anyway?”

Timothy shrugged, glad to avoid confronting the personal praise bestowed to himself by the Admiral, “doing well, at least from the few messages I’ve gotten. His mission is half way to Pluto now, so the time delay and communication windows make conversations few and far between.” Pausing in thought, Timothy added, “He joined the corps because of you.”

The Admiral was silent, a weary smile crossed his face. “I think I knew. After the accident, then his father, I wanted to help guide him.”

Timothy suddenly felt as if the Admiral was staring through him, lost again in some distant memory. “Bill, his dad, he was a good friend of mine, and I never had children myself. Perhaps maybe I helped a little, but after that, I think Benny needed to find some way to get top-side, and away from all the reminders.”

The accident had been a suit malfunction, which claimed the life of his mother. Benny’s father, in his grief, killed himself shortly afterwards. Timothy recalled how Benny seemed different afterwards, more hell bent on exploring beyond the standard perimeters, often running his oxygen reserves to near zero. Some of the mysteries of Benny started to make more sense now. Even the unexpected leniency from the Admiral looked wise, instead of indulgent and lax.

Both the Admiral and Timothy were silent, mulling over their thoughts and memories, different perspectives reshaping the past into a clearer picture. Timothy shook his head, realizing that it was Benny who had suggested this meeting, but the reasons why were still elusive.

“Admiral,” Timothy said hesitatingly, “the last vid I got from Benny, he suggested I come see you. He didn’t really say why though.” Timothy watched as another smile crept across the Admiral’s face. This man had smiled more times than Timothy could ever recall in his long youth, before today, he was pretty certain the man didn’t know how to smile.

Timothy chuckled to himself, realizing the ‘wily old coot’ still knew more than he ever let on. “Do you know why?”

Clapping his hands with a laugh, the Admiral sat up and reached into a drawer inside his desk. “Because I asked him to,” he replied, pulling out a thick plastic envelope, placing it on the desk in front of himself. “Because of these.”

Timothy watched in amazement as the Admiral pulled photo after photo of Martian landscapes from the envelope, digitized sketches, even some actual hand drawings, all done by Timothy. Some of the photos Timothy recognized as copies published in various magazines or site surveys, but many of the others were ones that he had only shown to Benny and a few others. The hand drawings themselves he had given to Benny before he left on the Pluto mission.

“I don’t understand, Admiral,” Timothy reacted, confused, “Benny never told me he had shown you these- had given you these.” Perplexed, Timothy finished, “why?”

“I told you, Benny needed to get away from the reminders. To get away from Mars.” The Admiral started to point to various photos and reliefs of the Martian desert and volcano’s, “he had to get away from this. Us,” he finished sadly.

“Before Benny left, he told me to keep these things. Then I started to collect them. I suppose you could say I’m something of a fan,” the Admiral stared at the photo’s, seemingly lost in the pictured landscapes.

For the first time, Timothy looked up and realized that several of his photos had been enlarged and were hanging on the Admiral’s walls. Timothy rose from his chair, and walked over to a framed photo of a sunrise over the Tharsis Bulge. It had taken Timothy two weeks to get the right shot where the shadows and light mixed with the rose colored dawn to show the living colors that breathed out in the desert. It was one of Timothy’s best shots, but he never could bring himself to publish it.

The Admiral, now standing behind Timothy, broke the silence, “Martian Eyes, one of my favorites.”

Timothy turned, looking at the Admiral questioningly, “How did you know the name…” Then suddenly realizing, “Benny!”

Smiling, the Admiral gently grabbed Timothy’s arm and brought him over to the globe on his desk. “Benny. He may not be able to look at Mars the same way as you and I anymore, but in his heart, he understands.” The Admiral twirled the globe, with a flick of his wrist. Timothy saw the faint purple-blue scar, just like his own, slipping out from beneath his sleeve. Timothy couldn’t help but stare, remembering that moment out by the rock with Benny, realizing something new about the Admiral.

The Admiral caught his stare, turning his wrist up so Timothy could see the scar fully. “Timothy, you and I, we see Mars with different eyes. Not as it was, or as it will be, but Mars as it is.” With a quick flash, the Admiral returned his scar to the hidden sight of his sleeve and stopped the rotating Martian globe.

“And it is with those eyes, these Martian eyes, I want you to do something before it’s to late,” the Admiral finished, pointing and looking to an area somewhere on Mars.

Timothy looked from the spot on the globe to the Admiral’s deep gray eyes, wondering what else this ‘wily old coot’ knew.

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