Always Earthling

                                    Always Earthlings

         He saw his dying day quite clearly for a man who had no illness, except grief.  John was one among three companions who left Earth for Mars on an American rocket less than a year ago.  He now stood alone weighing far less than he did on earth, yet far heavier for carrying Roger and Ted around everywhere.  It was on the twentieth day in space that Roger had doubled over in agony and died of internal bleeding.  The two men remaining straightened out the corpse, then John recited a piece of a biblical psalm from his memory over Roger's body.  He and Ted then gave Roger passage out through the ships portal to the starry black eternity.
         The landing on Mars seven months later went badly.  Even if the space agency had not been taken over by the military the month before the landing, nothing Command Center could have sent would have saved Ted.  It took nearly an hour after Ted's death in the botched landing for John's transmission about the mishap to arrive home.
         The landing module's descent was too rapid at every stage because of the loss of good communication and support from the space agency.  The United States had gone to war with six major powers, and the Command Center had been turned completely into a war center.  These three men who were sent by this government to Mars on a mission intended for all of humankind were abandoned by this same government.  With earth so preoccupied with World War Three, did his message about Ted's death from head and neck trauma reach anyone who cared?  Did it mean anything there?
         John's survival of the near crash landing was truly a wonder.  He suffered pain everywhere from an impact which was no less than that of a high speed car accident.  His first missions on Mars became recovering from his injuries and burying his last friend and comrade.
         On Sol Eleven; eleven Martian days after landing, John had finished turning the craft into the permanent settlement it was intended to be.  It was functioning surprisingly well after all that had happened.  "Permanent" meant that it would sustain the men's lives for the few Martian years they were expected to live on the planet.  It is wrong to call this a suicide mission.  It was the first test of living on Mars.  They knew they were giving their lives to the start of making a New Earth.  They were pioneers, not just martyrs of science and exploration.
         John took his pain and loneliness far from the settlement.  He stood on the vast plain and looked out on the whole Martian horizon, turning very slowly one complete turn in his space suit.  There was no one else to share this planet with.  The meaning of having a whole planet to ones self came to him and made him laugh through both his suffering and his helmet.
         "If only the greedy, warring tribes on Earth could know the emptiness of having it all!" he said to himself.
         News from Earth had been reaching him hourly and was all about the war.  No one was asking for reports from Mars anymore.  It was sunset now on this day, Sol Eleven and he knew it was pointless to even try to report anything back to earth.  John lifted his sad eyes a little from the horizon to see Earth as a prominent blue star on the horizon.  The loveliness of Earth hanging just above the distant Martian hills gave no hint of the horrors going on there, but John knew the worst outburst of war and death of all time was raging on that peaceful looking dot of brilliant azure.
         If the three of them had not chosen the mission to Mars, they all would have been assigned posts in the air force.  They would have all died fighting.  In taking this path to Mars, John and his companions die in a mission of their choice, as explorers and path breakers for a possible new future for humanity.  Either path would lead through great unknowns.  In staying on Earth they would have died to conquer and claim.  In going to Mars, John would die a pure soul.
         "I am a Martian." he said aloud as his overwhelming sadness for Earth's upheavals turned to disgust.  He tried to forget Earth and dismiss the madness there, but he kept his stare upon his starry former home as it grew brighter in the night.  A piece of him remained there.
         A pang of guilt seized him when he realized that the many millions of lives being wasted up there could not make him feel the pain of loss he felt for Roger and Ted.  How could he feel so much less for so many more?  The lives of these two men who shared the vision and part of the journey with him were the only ones who could touch him so.  The tears that had been waiting for so long were finally bursting out.  He could not fully be a Martian.  He had no one to be a Martian with.
        He was crying for Earth inside, and was unable to stop his actual tears from pouring out for two Earthlings.
         He brought his tears to Ted's grave.  Though he could not open his suit to give this parched, deadly ground entombing his friend the water from his eyes without endangering his own life, he was there to dedicate his tears.  He knelt and scratched Ted's name on the nearest rock.
         When John's own life starts to give out, he decided his burial place would be no more than five paces from this grave he made for Ted.
         On the next Martian morning he started digging.  He would place a rock bearing his name nearby.  In this hole he would lie when the time was near and wait for death.  Other humans will eventually come as space travelers and planet colonizers after him here and finish the burial.
         Now John could live for a while and establish the colony of one.  In his daily log he knew what he would write.  Along with recording his daily life here, his many thoughts of Earth and its wars from the perspective of a Martian would fill the pages of the book.  From this, the new arrivals would learn how to live and think as a Martian.
         To his last Sol his mind was filled with images of his life on earth.  As he lay in his Martian grave staring up at the stars through failing eyes, he saw his father, the airman who piloted many flights to remote places and finally had died in a plane crash.  It was mostly he who had inspired him and led him here.  As John's eyes closed for the last time he saw the DNA of his mind:  It was no less of Earth than that of his body.  He realized he could never be fully Martian, no matter how long his life lasted here.  He had done his best to be a Martian, and all he could do now is die in self-exile on the most alien place humans had ever been to, knowing wherever humans go in the universe, they will never leave Earth.  Troubled Earth will go wherever we go.
         "I am Earth.  I cannot leave." he said.  He realized that we would always be Earthlings.


Word Count: 1,240