My anti-space development bona fides have been pretty rock solid. I live in the Argo Restoration quarter of Milwaukee, I donate to Mothership First, Original Lifeboat Foundation, and I have a “space is for robots” bumper sticker on my commuter bike. I eat Earth. I go on weekend outings to do dirt watching (laugh all you want, it’s mostly just yoga). I also get motion sick easily. My mom and dad named me after my great great grandpa, who was one of those early 21st century space evangelists. His wildest dreams came to pass, mine haven’t. It seems we still have an appetite for upward expansion, even after 150 years of exporting everything off world. And as far as I’m concerned, “off world” is so right. This is the world. Everything happening out there, it’s OFF world. The world has the Sphinx and fatwas and Evangelical snake eaters and authentic chicken pox.
Well. That’s how I went into this anyway.
So it’s late August and I’m sitting in one of those hive-built bodega breathing rooms that pop up everywhere here in Argo south. The guy across from me is Luke Kohn, director of creative technology at Firestar Watermelon (more on that later). He has already informed me without prompting that he is of Hungarian jew ancestry, that he recently had surgery to remove his right testicle and replace it with something called a “Flo-nad”, and that he absolutely can’t wait to get back to Mars. In the first 5 minutes I have no idea where the conversation is going, other than strapped to whatever missile is buzzing around this guy’s mile a minute mind.
“They didn’t let the president start a proto-credit suck chain because her brother-in-law works at Luru turning weasel piss into medicine for all the crippled moon babies. It’s wild, but it’s an opportunity. This is disaster capital 3.0, chaos-to-altruism straight shot but without anything you homeworld knuckle draggers would begin to recognize. Oh shit those hivers are all underage. Did you notice that? Those are underage hivers. Decohere meshuggeneh before it eats your soul… that one looks like my zayde before her turn, oy vey…”
It’s a lot.
“So I did my research on you too, you know” Luke is positively impish. He’s swirling a coffee I just watched him pour seven sugar packets into. “I know you don’t like me. Or any of that stuff.” He gestures at the sky. I admit that it’s not my jam. But I also really value taking perspectives, I’m willing to see things his way, and this whole trip is about that. “Sure sure. I think Mars is gonna blow your mind honestly. I don’t think you know what’s going on up there at all.”
Well, I know that 3 million people live there for some reason, on a frozen, barren, lifeless tundra full of high tech, inhuman equipment, clinging to life, under bizarre secrecy and seclusion. I know Mars has anti-hive laws; no coherent hives have existed there for 70 years. Having a few close relations that are hive nodes, I have seen the pain Martian trolls masquerading as human rights police have caused them. Martians believe it’s their job to rescue Earth from itself. So it seems to me that it’s a planet of backwards cultists that never fully let go of the Musk-agile directive, suicidally committed to burning themselves out gardening a red grave. So yeah, I don’t really get it. I think it’s a dead end. And I think we have a really good thing going here on Earth. We’ve sorted out a lot since the days of the first Martian city and its pseudo-moral justifications. Hives helped a lot. AI helped a lot.
“So did moving 90% of big industry off world. So did a lot of Martian tech, my man. You know your hat has Martian mycological textile in it.” That’s not actually true, my hat is 100% Earth grown hemp. And a lot of industry is moving back. Spacers are coming back to Earth, there is a pretty big exodus from Mars, Martian expats undergoing all kinds of medical adaptations to live in high gravity.
“Don’t believe those numbers. You people don’t know how many Martians there actually are. And we aren’t all on Mars.” He’s talking, of course, about the asteroid belt. Fine. He’s very pleased that I’m willing to play along. In any event, I let him know that part of this journalistic experiment is to take a dyed-in-the-wool-astrophobe (yours truly) and take him to Mars. On the nose stunts like this make for the kinds of stories I like to read and write, apparently.
“I’m not saying you’re gonna wanna settle down on Mars. I just think you’ll just be pretty surprised. A hundred years ago people kept saying no one would choose to live in Antarctica and now Antarctic GDP rivals China. I ate Antarctican freaking lab trout last night.” You Get What you Give by the New Radicals is playing and this guy is actually thrusting his head at me to the beat. Jesus.
The enthusiasm is charismatic, infectious, incredibly confident, and manic. The last person I want to give that kind of satisfaction. I am pretty motivated to stay ‘me’.
Anyway, band aid off, let's go to Mars.
So a trip to Mars, I discovered, is actually 5 destinations that you have to plan out. First is your Earth departure point, next is the ship you call home for a week, next is where on Mars you want to go (turns out it’s a whole planet), then the ship you call home for the return trip, and then your arrival point on Earth. My thinking went something like this: I want to ease into this, so Milwaukee has an equatorial sister city in Bella Vista with their own Argo district. I’d like one last cup of cold cream nitro scintilla before I get into a god damned rocket, and I want to be able to trust the doctors who I’m definitely consulting one last time before I climb aboard.
Luke, who had enthusiastically volunteered to be my guide in this experiment, was apparently quite willing to let me experience this however I wanted to. “My heart is in Kampala, and there’s nothing to do in Bella Vista, other than drink or get a virgin spacer tattoo”. Music to my ears.
During the flight to Bella Vista, in between many a gin and tonic, Luke gives me the sacred oral history of Firestar Watermelon, that they began with the humble dream of making designer watermelons that could feed millions of Martians during the dark days, how they succeeded in staving off malnutrition and madness in a stunning show of public private collaboration under the unique Martian direct democratic system. It was such a transformative moment in Martian history that the watermelon became a universally known symbol of Mars. I ask him if it bugs him that the universally known symbol of Mars on Earth is “Blorpy the Anal Bleed Boy”. That ACTUALLY got to him. He HATED that meme.
“Earth solved so many problems that it forgets what problems look like, so it laughs at them.” He knew a lot of kids that grew up with perchlorate related developmental challenges, thyroid issues. Part of the “triomphe de la pastèque” was everything they packed into their product to improve iodine saturation in the population, among other things. Wouldn’t growing up on Earth solve that problem?
“Growing up on Earth would have given them a far worse condition.” Which would be?
“Being a cunt.”
Bella Vista was exactly as boring as I had hoped. We didn’t stay long. From the airport to the launchpad was a 15-minute ride in a tuk tuk through some dull oceanic rice paddies. The lack of meaningful distraction around the spaceport meant I had plenty of time to pop over to an Argo clinic for a physical. Doctor gave me some first-time spacer candies, told me to mind my salt intake, and sent me on my merry way.
Luke and I are standing in the sun behind a high school lacrosse team from Laos. Ahead of them, our ride to space, a skyscraper of a porcelain dildo. Luke is jiving to music in his implant, he keeps looking over at me for reactions to every minute of this thing. I am determined to remain poker faced. He catches me wincing every time a rocket passes the invisible sound suppression field and the muffled roar switches to proper thunderclap. He loves it. God help me what am I doing.
I’m in my seat. Luke is above me. A sun-dried tomato of a woman is to my left, reading Kidney Detox Journey. To my right is a gigantic window and the Bella Vista spaceport 200 meters below. Did I mention my crippling Agoraphobia? Since I don’t have an implant, I can’t just dissociate or sidestep for the ride. I had never wanted that ability before. I want it now. I try meditation.
At some point liftoff happens.
What I remember from the moments my eyes were open until the double gravity shut off was thinking “I thought there’d be a lot more shaking” and “oh no it’s Earth”. I absolutely hate weightlessness. I’m immediately a cat in freefall, or a white belt in jiu jitsu rolling with the instructor for the first time ever. Basically drowning. I go full sarcophagus, crossing my arms, and let the flight attendants and Luke just… move me around. For about 15 minutes I’m in a tumble dryer of arms and baggage and waiting until we are somewhere I can stand. There’s a moment of panic when I think this might be what the entire 3 weeks is like.
Mercifully, no. I find myself in a bamboo and marble concierge area aboard destination number 2, guzzling water, slowly turning my head side to side to adapt to the “vestibular experience of being in a spinning frame of reference.” Hotel staff is rubbing my back, I’m texting my girlfriend for moral support. It’s pathetic. Luke is talking to someone in implant space over by the elevator. Who does this? Who does this to themselves day in and day out? Luke apparently. And this nice manager lady who brought me the water. Ugh.
It took a full day for me to emerge from my room and start to explore the interior of my home for the week. The hotel began accelerating while I was asleep, so I woke up to something just shy of 1 Earth gravity and a knock on the door. It’s Luke, he wants to grab breakfast with me. I shuffle out and take in my choice of transit to Mars. I deliberately eliminated any gimmicky flying resorts, I wanted the most milque-toast, working class whip in the spacer world - the Highliner Executive Torch Service, business-economy class. It’s just… a hotel. A cylindrical hotel atrium really, about a dozen floors, water fountain and restaurant in the central courtyard, access to the observation deck above, sorta Japanese or brutalist but with plenty of greenery to calm the nerves. Water and bird noises piped in.
Breakfast is good. Some oatmeal and fruits in a cup, coffee. As usual, I let Luke do all the talking. “You handled that about as well as can be expected. You should be proud of yourself.” He’s chilled out a lot. I get the sense that being on Earth keys him up. Space is his home, he’s got nothing to prove here. It’s… nice. I decline the invitation to go to the observation deck, maybe later. I’m enjoying the illusion of being in a hotel back in the world, and I notice the rotating frame weirdness is gone. “Yeah this is all acceleration gees, baby. There’s a flip in the middle you might want to be asleep for.” Noted.
I spend the day at the restaurant writing and talking to people. I meet Jack Adashan, the newly minted mayor of Igaluk, a space station orbiting the moon. He’s got a soberness to him that I find myself clinging to, what you hope for and admire in young politicians. I learn that his wife’s name is Sky and she’s a first responder in the Orbital Search and Rescue. They are expecting their first child, a boy, in about a month. He’s visiting Mars for a symposium on expanding family care services in orbital habitats. “Well it was a big campaign goal for us, the OSR contingent around the moon is growing but there are open questions about family, we want people to stay and settle down, but growth and development haven’t been focused on that side of things for a long time. I’m hoping we can change that.” How… refreshing? I think? This guy isn’t in the least bit worried about Earth vs space. He’s worried about his family, his home, the people he works with, his community… A man with his slice of work in front of him. I’m so used to running into the Lukes of space. The people trying to sell me on it. And talking to Jack is the first time I get a little self conscious thinking about it as “space”. To someone like Jack, it’s not space. It’s Igaluk. And Tharsis City. And L4 resource zone municipality. Even Earth isn’t just Earth to him. “My mother lives in Glendale, I have sisters all over the continental US, my brother lives in Greece with his family. I’m coming back from seeing them actually.” I ask how his wife is holding up with him gone. “This is the last bit of travel before bonding leave!” Mayors get bonding leave? “On Igaluk, they do now!”
I ask Jack what he thinks of anti-space development activism.
“It’s not on my radar if I’m honest.” In Jack’s view, space has moved on, it’s an irrelevant debate only a marginal group on Earth seems to be having. If anything he’s baffled by it - he sees only ‘development’. Some parts of Mars are growing, some are shrinking. Some cities in the polar region of the moon are being developed by cities along the equator of Earth. The distinction seems utterly arbitrary to him.
I meet Ambika Bhagwat, who is headed to Mars for retirement, to move in with her son’s family. She is wistful, full of reservations. “I don’t know what to expect on Mars, but Milkha is very happy there, and has been pushing and pushing. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself there.” I ask what she’d like to do there. “Grandmothers are a very cherished sort of person on Mars, he says.” Milkha Bhagwat must be the long-suffering face I see on her phone from time to time in the videos she quietly watches sitting by the fountain.
I actually tolerate the “flip” fairly well. The hotel spends about 45 seconds in microgravity, the hotel staff kindly helps you stow everything. My stomach slowly drops, I feel like I’m hanging onto a small hill that decides to rotate 180 degrees… and then my stomach comes back and I’m on my feet again. Not as bad as before. Not great. But I don’t need a nap again this time. I decide it’s time to go to the observation lounge. I take the elevator up, emerge into the universe, and walk around a bit. I don’t see Earth, I don’t see Mars, I don’t see the sun. Just… stars. And a thoughtfully curated, moodily lit Basquiat gallery with some nice couches. I take a seat; I find myself staring at the slightly annoying inclusion of a Banksy tribute piece to an otherwise solid collection. I start to think there’s nothing for me, begin to leave, and something about trying to leave makes me realize that I’m just not accepting the stars. Why? Because I’m seeing them in space? Because the night sky on Earth is constantly swarming and moving with orbital bullshit and THIS is unnatural to me? It takes me a minute to realize that I’m seeing the stars, the frozen, true, naked stars, unobstructed, without any traffic in the foreground. Without all my baggage on it.
I feel a sting of sadness for an appreciation I want to be having but I’m blocking myself from.
Two days later, Mars. I snap a selfie in the observation lounge. I don’t really comprehend what I’m looking at. I know I’ve come a really, really long way. The flip made me overconfident in my ability to handle microgravity. Everything about docking to “Mars Customs Waystar Phobos”, disembarking, getting through “Mars Customs Waystar Phobos” to our departure terminal for Mariner Valley Metro Area, boarding the shuttle and strapping in for the ride to the ground, I had no hand in. Credit goes entirely to Luke for manhandling me along through my sweaty delirium. These people are used to leaving and entering all these different frames of reference. They have implants, years of experience, they move like seasoned travelers, and I move however the hell Luke moves me.
It takes so little time for the black sky to go pink, the broiler of plasma outside to abate, for our shuttle to careen in screaming freefall through upper atmospheric clouds, wave after wave of disconcerting hail-on-tin-roof noises. I’m consciously paying attention; it actually helps to think of it as a roller coaster and not the totally mundane form of tedious commuting that everyone around me seems to believe it is. But I do catch a glimpse of Mariner Valley as we turn over.
Boxes.
So a bit of background, courtesy of Luke, as we sit in a diner in “Atrio de Respiración y Descanso del Valle” - a very, very big box, with a conifer forest growing inside:
“Martians friggin love boxes. It’s just how we claim the land, one big box at a time. It’s a 120-year-old tradition of architecture. Don’t… yeah I know it’s older than that, you know what I mean. Here, we realized pretty quickly that rectangular just worked better than any of the other options. Everything transferred over. Ninety nine percent of the way things are done on Mars is how they are done on Earth, because we kept things rectilinear. It’s easy to expand, it’s easy to get big volumes. It’s easy to set up bellows and get nice breezes moving back and forth across a big box. The corners are just extra reinforced to keep the air in. You can build them above ground, below ground, it’s navigable, it’s clean, it’s easy to maintain, it fits in your head. People know what to DO with boxes. And you can make a box for anything. The big, beautiful thing is that because we control air so carefully, you can put down any two boxes next to each other and it’s okay! Have a facility using hazardous products? Put that next to a box with a daycare, they never notice one another. You know, within reason. Zoning is a lot easier in Mariner Valley than in New York.”
This box is a half kilometer on a side. Big hundred-meter-high window view of the valley floor on one side with the city (countless more boxes of all shapes and sizes) stretching out ahead, hundred-meter-high wall of vines and ferns and waterfalls on either side with shops and stores at various levels, and overhead is the forest, reaching into what apparently is not another window, but a projection, one that is amplifying the intensity of the sun. So it FEELS like you’ve got a box with an open top and side, and the sun is as bright as any day on Earth. Main floor is a kind of galleria with venues, amusements, a wood and brass trolley. A parade of steel drums and Brazilian-Japanese transplants are putting on a show, echoing off the cavernous walls.
It reminds me of Chicago in some ways. The energy I read off the people around is very similar. People walk faster than LA, slower than New York, but I can’t be sure that’s not just Martian gravity. But maybe that’s… part of what gives any city its tempo. They have that tired look that I recognize from people that live through seasons or hardship on a regular basis, but that blunt friendliness you get from being forced to huddle together.
“This isn’t Mariner Valley downtown, if you’re wondering.” Oh.
So we go downtown. Public transit here is quick, plenty of trams and taxis. I want to ask Luke about terraforming, a common theme in anti-space development discussion circles is that Martians abandoned terraforming as a project, their fixer upper planet just couldn’t be fixed up. But to be honest, it’s self-evident why. The boxes solve the problem. They are enormous. The downtown area is an incredibly long rectangle, a central park, but twice the size, divided into three parks with rows of high rises. Especially in a box, space is a premium. And premium space goes to vegetation here. “Mariners” (that’s what Mariner Valley people call themselves, as distinct from say, “Tharzees” or “Muskies”) are big on gardening. Garden shows and grower markets are EVERYWHERE. It has the feeling of an institution, something with lots of opinions and family squabbles baked in. The projection ceiling makes it feel like central park open to the sky. Not a hint of artifice to be detected. “We sell the sky box tech all over. I went to a concert in Kinshasa once that fooled an entire audience for the first half of the show into thinking the sun was setting, and then they turned the day back on for another hour, pretty great”.
We spend the next day exploring more. We have an afternoon tour of Firestar Watermelon that he’s eager to give me. I talk to lots of locals. I don’t see any evidence of destitution or homelessness, or meaningful crime or vandalism. I see kids picking up trash when they find it. I have this overwhelming sense that Earth isn’t in anyone’s front and center. I see advertisements for things going on in other settlements like Gale, Muskton or Medusae Fossae West. Medical treatments, live shows, fashion, legal counsel, implant games, food. At one point I tell someone “let’s head inside” because I felt some sprinkles rolling in. I paused to recognize that I was, in fact, inside. The whole time.
It’s going to be an interesting week.
— end of part 1