Pumped in extra thick, 40/60 mix, euphorics for a sullen crew. Out past Jupiter the hallucinations kick in, open sky visions, phantom smell of rain, insectoid hums, gravitational tugs on calcium-filled bones, nostalgic visions scraped thin off childhood media memories.
You’d think we’d be used to the dark now, used to the float. But in my dreams I still scream as I fall.
Wake up.
Fall some more.
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Notes:
1. Written on October 19th, 2022
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Destination: Mars is the first part of a series of four.
Part 1 – Destination: Mars
Part 2 – Location: Mars
Part 3 – Contamination: Mars
Part 4 – Evacuation: Mars
The complete Destination: Mars collection (containing all four parts) is available to buy as an ebook on iTunes and Amazon
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Notes:
1. Written in August and September 2017
2. This is the first chapter of four
3. The other three chapters are Location: Mars, Contamination: Mars, and Evacuation: Mars
4. I hope those chapter titles aren’t spoilers
5. This isn’t actually named after the Tintin book Destination Moon
6. Despite it seeming obvious that it should be
7. Somehow I had never read that one or even heard of it until a couple of months later
8. When one of my nieces or nephews had it out from the library
9. Having previously only read Explorers On The Moon out of the Tintin moon books
9. It is also not named after the film Destination Moon
10. Which I had never heard of at all until exactly now
11. While writing these notes
12. And looking up the Tintin book on google
13. Which also showed me there’s a book called Destination Mars
14. And another book
15. And a film
16. And a tv show
17. I’m going to give up looking now
18. At least mine has a colon in the title
19. To differentiate it
20. From all the others
21. I hope that’s enough
They opened a gate, a few thousand years ago, out in the desert, as far away as it could be from people and animals, so they didn’t fall through by accident and end up on the distant planet it connected to.
It was made in such a way that what went in came out at the same rate on the other side, and what came back did the same here, so that there wasn’t a catastrophic loss of atmosphere, either there or here. Although they didn’t take into account the effect of the acceleration as our planets moved apart, so actually slightly less came out then went in, on both sides of the hole.
It used to be so busy they built a railway to bring people here to the in side, and another to take them away from the out side. And they did the same on the other planet, although that wasn’t a railway but something more advanced for which we never had the words to describe.
No one comes here now, though, so the railway’s all rusted and partially submerged beneath the sand.
I stepped through the gateway to the other world, and it was as bleak and as dead as our own. I walked round to the other edge of the gate and stepped back home, and did this over and over, each step through advancing time by fifty years, or thereabouts, and by a hundred, by the time I got back.
And like this I watched the worlds change, a stroboscope of incremental decay.
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Notes:
1. Written on 20th July, 2018
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