Being angry on a crowded spaceship would be fatal. Ethan maintained a placid posture and kept his monitored heart rate and body temperature midline. He thought about how his life of writing, home brewing and riding his bike miles and miles each day among the green parks and byways was usurped by corporate New Yorkers. Options: Work on the massive sea wall for the East Coasters or help settle the American sector on Mars. Not everyone got the option for Mars, so all could have been worse.
How’s this for a journal entry: There is no sci-fi looking dome you can see leafy trees and happy folks inside while riding their personal dune buggy outside. Instead, our new home is a series of weird steel-like huge multi-story warehouses that were interconnected for services and transit but able to be cut out of the system easily if damaged, too bad for inhabitants. Arranged in an immense circle to simplify the connections to each neighbor and the central hub, the scene reminded him of a fallen Ferris wheel as seen from a couple miles up. On arrival, I was assigned to Building 8.
The Building 8 Administrator had requested him specifically, worrisome that. Turns out Colonel Bredagnian had difficulty wording his dispatches and announcements right. Being a ‘count my blessings’ person, I made subtle changes in his documents, nothing to show he had assistance. Actually his missive weren’t that bad. After a month, I learned the real reason he requested me. His list:
- Interview technicians, scientists and others to create textbooks
- Create a library of all available books, documents and the textbooks
- Write Mars-based children’s stories, upbeat and fun
- Get the skilled folks to work on things together
- Teach writing in the Hub school, get other teachers going
- Learn to use the available materials to make new items
He said the buildings had the ambience of a prison, and that absolutely had to change. Such change was not generally an Army specialty. Perhaps I actually could make some inroads!
This really invigorated me, to think I would be in on the ground level creating an education system, my part of it anyway. The stories would be a real service to the kids, they needed real help in their formative years. I’d done some teaching in St. Louis and enjoyed it. Making new items? Well, I’d worry about that later. If everyone had done as I did and loaded their laptops with eBooks, I should be able to accumulate a fine library in no time!
There were already several shared book and manual sites and most were easily incorporated into a site-side free library. A couple graphic designers made the library look really cool and a couple geeks worked out the borrow or whatever part. One of the people I interviewed for textbooks was a children’s book illustrator! How serendipitous! She’s very sharp witted and nice looking too. She said she needs paints or markers as the markers she brought with her have dried up. Perhaps I get to make a new item!
There was one older scientist who knew about pigments, glory! This chemist determined a way to make pigments a new way. I’ve got Dr. Chu and Jenny working together to see what works and what might with a tweak. This could be big, paints and dyes could brighten up everything! If Earth won’t send us anything but the barest basics and weapons we’ll make our own!
As I thought hard about proposing to Jenny, I noted how much weight I’d gained. The gravity is less so it wasn’t so apparent but the feeling of being out of shape had been bothering me. Bike riding! I know several folks who can help me but tires are a problem and sharing with the other few thousand folks here is too. One helpful thing, a track was made in the circle for the utility connections between buildings; it was for the train or at least a trolley Earth kept promising us. Right.
Now we keep bike stations at every Building and folks are crazy about them! They’ve put bushes and flowers all around the track, what a grand change! I found my wife loves to ride but didn’t want to talk about what she couldn’t have. Ha! There’s a couple medical doctors who’ve requested a stationary bike. No problem! An Engineer I’m working with whipped a stand up that can be used with any bike! I’ll just cycle right on over to Building 4 and let them try the stand out! Then get Lucas to make a hundred more! We’re definitely keeping the miners busy.
Jenny is due any day. We have only about 50 names picked out. One of the groups I’ve been meeting with about innovations wanted to celebrate. I told them about the musical instruments being made. They kept insisting on something else. That’s when I found out they have somehow acquired yeast. You don’t have to use hops to brew something good. We have more apples than we need here…Wow!
How Would You Do It? 