THE MARTIAN 2 - FIRST GIRL ON MARS

There are six chairs at the table. I use one. The other five haven't moved in four years.

I used to push them in after meals, keep everything neat, like someone might walk in and sit down. I stopped doing that. Nobody's walking in.

I eat at the same time every day. Same seat, same corner of the table. Not because it matters, because if I don't keep a schedule, the days stop having edges.

They blur into one long afternoon, and you forget which meal you're on, which filter you changed, which month it is. Routine is the only architecture that holds up out here. Everything else erodess.

The water recycler needs a new filter every 90 days. I've changed it 16 times since I've been alone. 16 filters.

That's how I measure time now. Not months, not seasons. Filter changes and battery cycles.

I heard something behind me. A tone from the emergency frequency monitor. Short, like a hiccup in the static.

I turned around and the screen was already flat. Nothing. Equipment glitches out here.

Cosmic radiation hits a circuit board and a monitor thinks it heard a voice. It doesn't mean anything. The signal came again on my suit display this time.

Not a glitch, a pattern. Regular intervals, same frequency. An emergency beacon, the kind that activates automatically when things go very wrong.

I stood there holding a sheet of aluminum against the frame, and I couldn't make myself drill the next bolt. Somewhere past the horizon, something was sending a signal that nobody was supposed to be sending because nobody was supposed to be here. I put the panel down, left the drill on the ground, walked back inside.

The coordinates said far, several hours each way if the terrain cooperates. I sat there staring at the numbers and I thought about the last time. My own crash.

My own module torn open. 6 hours going from body to body checking for a pulse I never found. Five people.

My crew. I was the only one who woke up. I built this base out of what was left.

Four years of not dying. I stood at the window. I could ignore the signal, stay, keep building, keep changing filters, keep eating alone at a table for six.

Nobody would know. Nobody would blame me, but I'd know. And I'd hear that signal every time I closed my eyes for the rest of however long I have left on this planet.

I started packing. I passed through a debris field. Old cargo drops, failed landings.

Found a compressor unit inside one of the wrecks. Life support hardware still intact. I loaded it into the rover.

If someone out there had survived in a broken module, their air system was probably failing. A spare compressor could be the difference. You learn to scavenge out here.

Everything has a second life if you're desperate enough to find it. A landing module, full size, lying in the valley like something had dropped it from orbit and walked away. One side crushed, landing struts snapped, hull torn open, debris 100 meters in every direction.

My chest tightened the way it does when your body recognizes something before your brain does. I'd seen this before. Different ship, same silence.

I found them outside. Three of them still in their suits. The first one was face down, arms forward, crawling toward something.

There's nothing out there to crawl toward. One of the others was sitting against a landing strut with a medkit open on his lap. He'd been trying to treat himself.

He didn't finish. I didn't stop. I've done that before.

Kelt beside people and pressed my fingers to their necks and felt nothing. Every time I did it, a piece of me stayed on the ground with them. So, I kept walking.

A child's drawing on the floor. Crayons on white paper, a house, stick figures, something yellow at the top. Someone's kid made that and handed it to their parent and said, "Bring this with you.

" And the parent carried it 200 million kilometers to hang in their locker on Mars. I picked it up. Put it back where it belonged, kept going.

She was in the corner, sitting against the wall, head down, still the way all of them are still when it's over. I knelt down, took a risk. The numbers were impossible.

Heart rate in the 20s, oxygen almost zero. Every indicator red. By every measure I know, she was gone.

And then her finger moved one finger. A small slow contraction. I stopped breathing.

I looked at that finger and I thought, "Not this time. I've got you. Just hold on.

Almost there. Her oxygen alarm went off. I swapped in my last tank, but her temperature was still falling.

Hypothermia in a suit means the heater's dead. And without external heat, the oxygen doesn't matter. The compressor unit, the one I'd pulled from the wreck.

I rigged it to her suit's ventilation port. Improvised. Ugly.

But a minute later, the temperature stopped falling. I stood in the dark next to the rover and I thought, "This is the part where I decide if she lives. Not with medicine.

With a scavenged compressor and the decision not to give up. " I drove through the night. I talked to her even though she couldn't hear me.

I don't remember what I said. I think I told her about the base, about the table with six chairs. The kind of things you say when silence feels like giving up.

Dawn came and there it was, the base on the horizon. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And it's a collection of metal boxes on a dead planet.

I took her helmet off. She was young, pale, lips cracked. She looked like she'd been fighting something for days and had only just stopped.

My hands knew what to do. I'd practice this. Not on people, on empty suits, on simulations, on the hope that someday I'd get to do it for real.

Every wire I connected was a thread keeping her here. The monitor lit up. Pulse.

Slow but steady. oxygen climbing. She was alive.

The numbers said so. I sat down and I believed them. I went to the command console, opened every emergency frequency, set them to scan continuously, static, nobody out there.

But tomorrow I'll check. And the day after that. The hanger was where I left it.

panel leaning, drill on the ground, dust on everything. I picked it up and drove in the first bolt. Same rhythm as before, but I wasn't building for one anymore.

The table has six chairs, and for 4 years, only one of them mattered. Now there's a reason for two. It's not redemption.

The others are still out there in the sand. I can't go back and answer the first signal sooner, but I can build. I can listen.

I can make sure the next signal doesn't go unanswered. Her monitor beeps behind me through the walls of a base I built for six. Maybe tomorrow she'll wake up again.

Maybe she'll stay awake. Maybe eventually she'll sit at that table and I'll have to wipe the dust off a plate that hasn't been used in 4 years. Today was an incredible day.

My seismic scanner detected a strange anomaly 15 km from base. A geometric structure too precise to be natural. I decided to investigate.

What I found there will change everything we thought we knew about Mars. I need to tell you how this happened. Oh god.

God. The ship was massive. When I went inside, I realized a tragedy had occurred here.

Signs of a firefight everywhere. Bodies in sealed suits scattered throughout the vessel. They were trying to evacuate when Mars was dying.

But something went wrong. A conflict. A mutiny perhaps.

They all died. The ship never left. God, this is worse than I thought.

It's a little fast. Almost there. Acknowledged.

Slow and steady. Hey, hey, hey. Come on.

Come on. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Hey. Hey.

Hey. There are six chairs at the table. I use one.

The other five haven't moved in four years. I used to push them in after meals, keep everything neat, like someone might walk in and sit down. I stopped doing that.

Nobody's walking in. I eat at the same time every day. Same seat, same corner of the table.

Not because it matters, because if I don't keep a schedule, the days stop having edges. They blur into one long afternoon, and you forget which meal you're on, which filter you changed, which month it is. Routine is the only architecture that holds up out here.

Everything else erodess. The water recycler needs a new filter every 90 days. I've changed it 16 times since I've been alone.

16 filters. That's how I measure time now. Not months, not seasons.

Filter changes and battery cycles. I heard something behind me. A tone from the emergency frequency monitor.

Short, like a hiccup in the static. I turned around and the screen was already flat. Nothing.

Equipment glitches out here. Cosmic radiation hits a circuit board and a monitor thinks it heard a voice. It doesn't mean anything.

The signal came again on my suit display this time. Not a glitch, a pattern. Regular intervals, same frequency.

An emergency beacon, the kind that activates automatically when things go very wrong. I stood there holding a sheet of aluminum against the frame, and I couldn't make myself drill the next bolt. Somewhere past the horizon, something was sending a signal that nobody was supposed to be sending because nobody was supposed to be here.

I put the panel down, left the drill on the ground, walked back inside. The coordinates said far, several hours each way if the terrain cooperates. I sat there staring at the numbers and I thought about the last time.

My own crash. My own module torn open. 6 hours going from body to body checking for a pulse I never found.

Five people. My crew. I was the only one who woke up.

I built this base out of what was left. Four years of not dying. I stood at the window.

I could ignore the signal, stay, keep building, keep changing filters, keep eating alone at a table for six. Nobody would know. Nobody would blame me, but I'd know.

And I'd hear that signal every time I closed my eyes for the rest of however long I have left on this planet. I started packing. I passed through a debris field.

Old cargo drops, failed landings. Found a compressor unit inside one of the wrecks. Life support hardware still intact.

I loaded it into the rover. If someone out there had survived in a broken module, their air system was probably failing. A spare compressor could be the difference.

You learn to scavenge out here. Everything has a second life if you're desperate enough to find it. A landing module, full size, lying in the valley like something had dropped it from orbit and walked away.

One side crushed, landing struts snapped, hull torn open, debris 100 meters in every direction. My chest tightened the way it does when your body recognizes something before your brain does. I'd seen this before.

Different ship, same silence. I found them outside. Three of them still in their suits.

The first one was face down, arms forward, crawling toward something. There's nothing out there to crawl toward. One of the others was sitting against a landing strut with a medkit open on his lap.

He'd been trying to treat himself. He didn't finish. I didn't stop.

I've done that before. Kelt beside people and pressed my fingers to their necks and felt nothing. Every time I did it, a piece of me stayed on the ground with them.

So, I kept walking. A child's drawing on the floor. Crayons on white paper, a house, stick figures, something yellow at the top.

Someone's kid made that and handed it to their parent and said, "Bring this with you. " And the parent carried it 200 million kilometers to hang in their locker on Mars. I picked it up.

Put it back where it belonged, kept going. She was in the corner, sitting against the wall, head down, still the way all of them are still when it's over. I knelt down, took a risk.

The numbers were impossible. Heart rate in the 20s, oxygen almost zero. Every indicator red.

By every measure I know, she was gone. And then her finger moved one finger. A small slow contraction.

I stopped breathing. I looked at that finger and I thought, "Not this time. I've got you.

Just hold on. Almost there. Her oxygen alarm went off.

I swapped in my last tank, but her temperature was still falling. Hypothermia in a suit means the heater's dead. And without external heat, the oxygen doesn't matter.

The compressor unit, the one I'd pulled from the wreck. I rigged it to her suit's ventilation port. Improvised.

Ugly. But a minute later, the temperature stopped falling. I stood in the dark next to the rover and I thought, "This is the part where I decide if she lives.

Not with medicine. With a scavenged compressor and the decision not to give up. " I drove through the night.

I talked to her even though she couldn't hear me. I don't remember what I said. I think I told her about the base, about the table with six chairs.

The kind of things you say when silence feels like giving up. Dawn came and there it was, the base on the horizon. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

And it's a collection of metal boxes on a dead planet. I took her helmet off. She was young, pale, lips cracked.

She looked like she'd been fighting something for days and had only just stopped. My hands knew what to do. I'd practice this.

Not on people, on empty suits, on simulations, on the hope that someday I'd get to do it for real. Every wire I connected was a thread keeping her here. The monitor lit up.

Pulse. Slow but steady. oxygen climbing.

She was alive. The numbers said so. I sat down and I believed them.

I went to the command console, opened every emergency frequency, set them to scan continuously, static, nobody out there. But tomorrow I'll check. And the day after that.

The hanger was where I left it. panel leaning, drill on the ground, dust on everything. I picked it up and drove in the first bolt.

Same rhythm as before, but I wasn't building for one anymore. The table has six chairs, and for 4 years, only one of them mattered. Now there's a reason for two.

It's not redemption. The others are still out there in the sand. I can't go back and answer the first signal sooner, but I can build.

I can listen. I can make sure the next signal doesn't go unanswered. Her monitor beeps behind me through the walls of a base I built for six.

Maybe tomorrow she'll wake up again. Maybe she'll stay awake. Maybe eventually she'll sit at that table and I'll have to wipe the dust off a plate that hasn't been used in 4 years.

Today was an incredible day. My seismic scanner detected a strange anomaly 15 km from base. A geometric structure too precise to be natural.

I decided to investigate. What I found there will change everything we thought we knew about Mars. I need to tell you how this happened.

Oh god. God. The ship was massive.

When I went inside, I realized a tragedy had occurred here. Signs of a firefight everywhere. Bodies in sealed suits scattered throughout the vessel.

They were trying to evacuate when Mars was dying. But something went wrong. A conflict.

A mutiny perhaps. They all died. The ship never left.

God, this is worse than I thought. It's a little fast. Almost there.

Acknowledged. Slow and steady. Hey, hey, hey.

Come on. Come on. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Hey.

Hey. Hey.