“Are you happy?” he asked.
“If I were mean, I would say no, but because I am a good person, I will say yes.” She was, he thought. Happy. Which was the whole point of the thing. You couldn’t leave sad women behind, not with children. Not if you ever wanted. Well. He didn’t know what that was anymore, when it came to women. Had he ever? It seemed to him that there had been a time of certainty. And when Talia had asked for the divorce, that too had seemed clear, like something he could do, a course of action that would be positive in the end. It was to the end that he had looked. The boys, safe. Talia, happy. Sergei, walking, with only himself to tire or hurt or blame. Granting Talia a divorce had seemed both noble and punishing, which was how he knew it was the right thing to do.
Before she left him that night in Utah, she did his favorite thing. This was to be stroked. After sex, not before. After, when he was tired and depleted and could take his reward. Sometimes he would turn and stretch like a cat and Talia would scratch his chest or his back or his thighs. Wonderful. Sometimes it was just having her hand move slowly up and down. Not sexual, it could be his arm even.
The surface of Mars rolls by. There are those that say we should not disturb Mars, not drill, not examine, not gather rocks, not submit it to thermal emission spectography. Too late. There are robots on Mars. There are nuclear reactors on Mars. Worse, Prime will send him.
YOSHI
Yoshi is inside something, something that confines him and yet has no distinct boundaries. There is a threat, a malignant presence. He is aware of a great evil, hovering. He realizes that he has been foolish to think that things like demons, or devils, were metaphors. Evil lived, and had a purpose. It was close. It saw him.
When Yoshi wakes up, he does not know where he is. Never in his conscious life has he so profoundly not known this. The first thing he does is attempt to establish a sequence. Has he just arrived at this place of nowhere, or has he just returned from it and is reliving the memory? This was a question of safety.
He realizes he has very recently shouted, or grunted. He thinks he can hear the last bit of a shout, in the air. If it is air. Yoshi breathes, experimentally. If he cannot move his lungs then it will be a sign that he is dead.
He is not dead, unless death includes an illusion of respiration. It is a disadvantage, knowing so little about the rules of death.
Sergei’s voice, speaking to him, saying his name. Yoshi looks at his screen. He sees Sergei’s face, hears Sergei apologizing for waking Yoshi up.
“I was dreaming,” says Yoshi, at the same time he realizes the truth of this. He looks at the watch on his wrist. The numbers do not make sense. His eyes, adjusting now, can pick out details. He had fallen asleep in his chair in front of the console in the Science/Lab wedge. He checks the systems of Primitus. There is no cause for alarm. He looks at Sergei’s face on the screen. He does not see Helen.
Yoshi knows he is not dead, and that Sergei is with Helen in the Rover, returning from the sortie. They check in with each other, every hour.
But he does not feel safe. Mars. That’s why. Mars. This is a new feeling. He can remember confidence, if not comfort. Why is he now afraid?
“Helen is taking a nap too.” Yoshi watches as Sergei raises a canteen and drinks from it. Yoshi has a similar canteen, filled with water. They can make potable water here, make oxygen from the water, grow food, build shelter. But for all of that they are at the mercy, absolutely, of machines. The robots are despots; man is enslaved. It’s this, perhaps.
“We are totally dependent on machines,” Yoshi says.
“Pfuh. Yes. This was what you were having a bad dream about?”
“No.” Yoshi finds his canteen and drinks. They have been joking that they will make a fortune bottling Martian water, which they will brand as “Sabatier,” in honor of the reaction that produces it from Martian hydrogen and carbon dioxide. They have lemon and orange essential oils to flavor their water, but the water still tastes metallic, or it is the canteen. Or no. He did bite the inside of his cheek. That is iron he tastes—his own blood. Or maybe everything on Mars ends up Mars flavored. Including himself.
It is okay to be dependent on machines.
“It is okay to be dependent on machines,” Yoshi says out loud. “No, it’s fine. On Earth, we do, we are. Earth is not really a hospitable planet. Without machines, existence would be pitiful, if you even survived. ‘Nasty, brutish, and short.’ We have made the Earth a place we can live on, with machines. We could not live without them. Earth is only a different kind of Mars, underneath what we’ve made.”
Sergei laughs softly. His face is green, reflections from the interior lights of the Rover. “You can breathe everywhere on Earth,” he says. “Still. Maybe not forever, but right now.”
“We are all astronauts.”
“Yoshi, that is true. But it’s okay. You’re okay. You were dreaming.”
He is not quite done dreaming, perhaps.
“I’m not worried about the machines,” Yoshi says. “I don’t think that was the problem. I was thinking I could see devils.”
“Bff,” says Sergei.
“Rather like Batman.” Yoshi tries to remember. “The shape of the head. Or something like a manta ray. Yes. A school of blue manta rays, flying above me. Evil things.”
“Did you have spicy food for dinner? Spicy food gives you bad dreams. Whenever Helen uses paprika, I have a nightmare.”
“I heard that.” It is Helen’s voice. Her face is not on screen.
“Yoshi had a dream of scary Batman devils,” Sergei says. “This is anxiety dream.”
“I think I’ve seen them before.” Yoshi feels as if he is rowing against the current of his own brain.