She looked at me today. Not like before. Before it was just reflexes, eyes open, but nobody home.
Today she actually saw me. Looked right at me while I was changing the IV bag. I didn't know what to do with my hands.
It's strange having someone watch you. 3 years nobody watched. I ate alone, fixed things alone, talked to myself when I needed to hear a voice.
Now there's a person in the next room and I can hear her breathing through the wall at night. I haven't slept properly since I brought her in. She asked about her crew.
I shook my head. She didn't ask again. Then she told me they were sent to find us.
My crew. The first expedition. Where am I?
You're safe. You're on a base. my base.
She said they were told everyone was lost. The base went dark. No signal, no survivors, everyone.
I sat with that word for a while. That's what Earth thinks. That I'm one of the dead.
She's not wrong about the rest of them. The landing took four of us on impact. The module came in at the wrong angle.
Port thruster gave out at 400 m. I crawled out from under a collapsed panel with a broken rib and a suit full of dust. It took me 11 hours.
Marcus was still alive when I found him. He died while I was trying to set up the emergency shelter. I couldn't do anything.
I didn't have the training, the equipment, the time. I had nothing. I buried five people in three weeks.
carried them one by one to a flat spot behind the base and welded crosses from pipes I pulled out of the wreckage. I didn't say anything at the graves. I didn't know what to say.
[sighs] The others turn out from my module. Did anyone We were sent to find your crew from the first expedition. They told us the base went dark 3 years ago.
They told us no one survived. We came as a rescue team, six of us. Then the landing went wrong.
That's all I remember. Not everyone. Not everyone.
She told me Mars isn't what they expected. I almost laughed. I told her the same thing.
It's not what they told you it was. But I meant something different. She meant the crash, the danger.
I meant the oil that bled out of the ground when I was digging a foundation trench. I meant the seeds from the emergency bio kit that actually grew in this soil. I meant that this planet isn't just a rock you survive on.
It's a place you can build on. It took me 3 years to understand that. The first 3 months I didn't even leave the base.
Just sat at the comm's panel every morning sending the same signal, checking for a response every evening. Day 91, I stopped sending. Day 92, the water filter broke and I had to fix it or die.
That was the day I stopped waiting and started living. She sits at the table now, second chair from the left. I opened a supply kit that's been sealed since we landed.
Her plate, her cup, her spoon. You can take my money, steal my [music and singing] car, and sell my clothes. You can take the shoes I'm in.
Go on and take everything. You can [music] have about everything I want. [music] Just leave that old piano [music] so I can sit down there and play when I'm old.
[music] I heard it. I'm going to drive back to your module. There might be a transmitter I can use to reach Earth.
3 years those kits sat there untouched. Five of them in a row sealed. I used to look at them and think about the people they were meant for.
Now I look at them and one is open. One out of five. It's not much, but yesterday it was zero.
She said Earth sent them. That means someone up there knows this base exists. Knows there might be people alive.
If their module carried a long range transmitter, something stronger than what I've got. And if it survived the crash, then maybe I can reach further than I ever could on my own. That's the thing about this place.
You stop hoping and then something forces you to start again. I buried hope 3 years ago right next to Marcus and the others. And now I'm driving across the desert because a woman I pulled out of a wreck told me that Earth remembers us.
I don't know if that's beautiful or cruel. He hasn't said much about himself. I know he was on the first expedition.
I know five others died. I know he's been alone here for 3 years. Everything else I'm learning by looking.
There are five crosses behind the base. Metal pipes welded together, names scratched into the crossbarss. He made graves for his crew.
Proper graves with markers in a neat row. I stood in front of them and read the names. I didn't recognize any of them.
His mission was before my time. But someone carved those letters into metal with a steady hand and then got up the next morning and went back to work. That tells me more about him than any conversation.
Their comm's room is half destroyed, but the main transmitter is intact. I found emergency power, plugged it in, and the screen lit up. For about 10 seconds, I felt something I haven't felt in years.
[sighs] I don't even have a word for it anymore. I tried every frequency. UHF, [music] VHF, deep space relay, emergency bands, our mission ID, my call sign, coordinates.
Sent it once, twice, kept sending for 40 minutes. Nothing came back. Not static, not interference, nothing.
Just a flat line on a screen in a broken room on a dead ship. I sat in the pilot's chair and stared at it for a while. Part of me wanted to be angry, but mostly I just thought, "Yeah, I know.
I've known for 3 years. My name is Katarina Chen. Back on Earth, I was a flight engineer.
Structural systems, life support, emergency repair. 14 months of training for this mission. They told us the first expedition was lost.
No signal, no telemetry, 3 years of silence. Our job was recovery. retrieve the data, document what happened, bring home whatever we could.
Nobody used the word bodies, but that's what they meant. I'm walking around what was supposed to be a dead base, and there's a greenhouse. An actual greenhouse with living plants built from scrap metal and cargo plastic.
I touched a leaf [music] and it bent under my glove like any leaf anywhere. He grew food on Mars in soil that's not supposed to grow anything. Further out, there's an oil derek.
Crude, welded from scraps, but functional. He found oil and figured out how to extract it by himself with crash salvage and a welding torch. I climbed a ridge and looked back at all of it.
the base, the greenhouse, the derek, the hanger he's still building, the crosses. They briefed us on what to expect. Equipment failure, structural damage, biological contamination.
Nobody briefed us on this. Nobody said, "You might find a man who turned a disaster site into a civilization. " I sat on a rock and the wind stopped and for 30 seconds there was no sound at all.
Not quiet, zero. I've never heard nothing before. You don't realize how loud Earth is until you hear the absence of everything.
This is where I live now. I keep saying it and it keeps not feeling real. [panting] You hear us?
I found the transmitter, powered it up, tried every frequency. Nothing. Nothing.
So, it's just us. So, it's just us, she said. So, it's just us.
and I nodded. But I've been thinking about that sentence all evening. Just us.
3 years ago, just meant alone. Meant one plate, one cup, one voice in an empty room. Now, [music] just us means two.
Means I need to double the greenhouse, add a second filter loop to the water system, figure out how to make the food last. [music] The medbay needs to stay stocked for two people getting older on a planet with no hospital. [music] The hanger needs a roof before storm season.
There's more work ahead than everything I've done in 3 years combined. The math is harder now. The margin [music] is thinner.
And one mistake doesn't just cost me, it costs her, [music] too. When I was about 8, my father took me to the sea. I remember standing on the shore, unable to tell where the water ended and the sky began.
He said, "Don't be afraid. It's just big. " And I wasn't afraid.
I just couldn't believe that much water could exist in one place. Then I grew up, flew to another planet, and now all around me is just dust and rock. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to remember that sound, the waves.
I can't. Jack. [music] Heat.
Heat.
