Longfellow

Bart Longfellow had been a fat kid. Shy and sweaty under the arms, his physique was a direct antonym to his surname. He was surprisingly rotund given the food shortages, and his bones were peculiarly thin, he was so bulbous, in fact, that it was a minor feat of the human anatomy that the bones could withstand the excess weight. He moved with a morose gait, but he never lost his upbeat attitude or love of puns.

He had not been a great student. He had not had a knack for numbers, and was the type of thinker who'd spend class idly wondering about numbers as an agreed upon language. If it was just something someone made up, did he have to care?

He'd brought a similar apathy to language, history and physical education classes. His principal Mrs Larson once said to Longfellow's parents--

"Your son is deeply unremarkable. He is quite possibly the only student to have graduated despite retaining almost zero information whatsoever. Friendly, though.”

All of these factors are part of what make Bart such an unlikely candidate for The Game.

His one skill, if you can call it that, is his love of gossip. He wrote for the school digipaper, specifically the headlines. The school was, of course, underground, there were only 8 students in Longfellow's class, four of them the Lago quadruplets, there were no sports teams and very few extra-mural activities due to a lack of people to compete with. He had no readership, but he told stories and spread rumors with fervor.

Longfellow had attended the Waterford School District in Trixie, North Dakota--Trixie had once been a booming oil drilling town after the advent of fracking, the population had soared with new businesses. The town grew and grew, they added a massive cardiology wing to the hospital, they had a Krispy Kreme doughnuts and on Friday nights there was a demolition derby at the racetrack next to the plastic museum.

Longfellow always wished he could've seen it during those days, he’d never been topside.

The oxygen around Trixie and rural areas is better than in the old cities, but it's still too impure to go outside for more than a few minutes without a mask.

Longfellow had never seen Trixie because everyone was underground now.

The earth had become less and less inhabitable, at a more and more rapid pace beginning around 2050, before Bart was born, and since then, global leaders had refocused their efforts on colonizing Mars. The global population went from nearly 10 billion in 2047 to the less than a few million who remain today. About half had perished in the plagues, flooding, the diaspora induced by the flooding of coastal cities led to food and housing shortages, lack of jobs and housing, the tumultuous weather patterns disrupted the food supply, and pretty soon it all started to crumble.

The wealthier nations fled Earth via commercial and eventually government-sanctioned space flight, mostly between 2065 and 2070. This led to a ground war on Mars as the earthlings vied for territory on the new planet. Eventually, the Super-governmantal Organizational Federational Alliance or SOFA was formed on Mars— The American President, alongside the leaders from many of Earth’s formerly great nations—finally acknowledged that the fossil fuel shortage meant only so many of Earth’s remaining humans could be able transported to Mars. Most of the ships brought the last vestiges of vegetation that had survived the plight, that would be planted in the vast Martian Greenhouses that had been built by Germany.

In an order to avoid being accused of prejudice, SOFA created The Game on a strictly merit-based statistical evaluative system that would project the competitors Viability of Species Continuation—Fertile women and children were of the highest priority, they’re all but gone—so Earth’s remaining men will go through a series of challenges—biological, DNA, mental, physical and survival challenges. A tournament with a grading system.

Only the “Most Fit To Reproduce ” will be chosen. The last ship would leave on Christmas 2181—the end date. Three months after the explosion.

The Game will be held in San Diego, California and televised intergalactically on SOFANET.

Most of the people left on earth are from poor nations, there are the Earthists, who refuse to believe that Mars could sustain life, though most of them gave up that fight when the oxygen became so scarce in ’68, and then there were the leftover scavengers. These groups were tribal, international specialists had been sought to drain the last gulps of oil, oxygen and life-giving seeds the earth had left to give. The ARK Shuttle would transfer these valuables to Mars in exchange for prominent housing assignments on Mars, but SOFA shut down the program in ’77.

And yet there was still one mine operating, ran by the insatiably stubborn Peter Lago, despite everything, the Lago Oil Company has stayed afloat by sheer will. Lago and his four sons run the company entirely, and they'd hired Bart Longfellow to operate their social media campaign in an effort to gain Martian support for a rescue mission.

He'd caught it all on his small iPhone XXX+, he'd been checking something in his teeth when Jep Lago shook him violently by the shoulders--

"Bart! We've done it! Come on!" Jep got right in Longfellow's face, they were each temporarily blinded by their high powered head lamps. Before Bart could ask what they'd done, Jep was leading the charge down the tunnel-- you could hear the other Lago boys yelling through the tunnel.

The Lago family were exactly the type the SOFA was looking for, strong, broad shouldered and previously successful in business. They were healthy, almost none of them was ever injured or sick, and their father had a mind special mind for engineering. All four Lago boys had qualified to be part of the competition. Bart didn’t, but he decided there was no point in whining about it. He’d do his job, and be a good friend, maybe something would change.

When the oil struck something funny happened. Despite his sons who were exuberant, veins popping from their forehead excited, throwing their fists in the air. Their father, Peter Lago, the engineer, didn’t celebrate. He dutifully checked his systems, and he noticed the pressure valve was reading a low number, too low.

“Boys!..BOYS! WAIT!” Peter yelled, but the boys were celebrating and it was so loud, they couldn’t hear him.

"I'm coming to you live from Lago Mines in Trixie, this is it, the moment we’ve been waiting for!,” Bart held his camera out documenting the grand achievement. "The Lago's have done it!..."

All the boys crowded around the phone, celebrating and yelling.

“You idiots, turn that off! The pressure valve has failed, it’s not going to stop the pipes from filling, they’re gonna go—we have to get out of here!”

Peter demanded Bart turn off the camera, but Bart, media expert, slyly keeps the phone recording, people were gonna eat this up.

"BOYS! We have minutes, maybe less before this entire mine explodes and us with it--we have to get out!" yelled Peter.

It finally sank in.

The Lago's were fast, and they took off like down the dusty paths of the mine with everything they had, they knew these tunnels inside and out...

Bart was not fast, and he brought up the rear of the group. But he had an old pair of electric roller skates on so he was able to keep up. Kind of.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Bart coaxes the skates along.

And then the mine blew.

The fire enveloped Bart instantaneously, he felt the heat, but kept himself upright, the electric skates shot him and the Lago boys forward through a chute that led to the upper living quarters, the force of the blast and the wheels kept Bart upright, and he plopped out into the mess hall in a heap, miraculously shielded from the small explosion.

He opened his eyes and realized he was the only one there.

He went to the mouth of the chute and screamed—“Mr. Lago!! Joey! Guys! Anyone!!!!”

The rumble of the explosion was fading now, but gases and smoke were filling up the space.

Bart heard coughing—through the smoke in the chute appeared Joey Lago, he pulled himself to the edge, and Bart pulled him into the mess hall.

“Bart. You gotta help me," said Joey Lago, burnt and bleeding, tears in his eyes, the hair all gone from his face and head, nothing but blue eyes looking back at Bart in the light of his headlamp.

"They're all gone..."

"We can still find them."

"They're dead! I saw it. They're dead."

They lock eyes, both are devastated.

Joey pulls out a small heart shaped locket from his coveralls.

"This stupid thing. Annie left it with me before she went up with ARK. I told her something, the message is in the heart shaped locket, so stupid, but only she can open it. You need her retina. It’s important. The old man found something in the ground, something important. You gotta get it to her."

"Get it to her? What, on Mars? How? There are no more ships,” said Bart.

“The Game.”

“Yeah right.”

You can take my spot."

“I'll never make it.”

“Bart, I’m a body.”

“No, no, no,” Bart’s eyes well up with tears, his best friend, his only friend was dying in his arms.

“If you take this locket, you'll have my ticket, the locket is my nanocomm, if you bring that to the game they have to let you participate."

The smoke fills up the room more and more.

"But--"

"Just take it, will ya? Stubborn ass. Just try! You gotta. Maybe you can get off this planet. Take the 2061 Range Rover, it's parked in the airplane hangar on 7th street. Dad rigged it out with a solar panel, you can do it.

"Can I make it San Diego with that?"

“Yes, you can. Now go! Get a gas mask, get the go-bags, and go!”

The go-bags and gas masks were pre-built for the five of them in the event of a blast. They’d ran the drill before, and Bart remembered what to do. He crawled up into the attic, about 35 feet beneath the ground. The attic fed into a vertical tunnel with a ladder, that he could get out. Atop the tunnel was a pulley which could be used to hoist the go-bags.

He put a gas mask on, put the heart shaped locket in his pocket, and started climbing.

When he opened the hatch, he stepped out onto the surface of the earth for the first time in his entire life. It wasn’t what he expected, there was a haze, the ground was hot and the sun overwhelming, wind hit his skin carrying with it tiny pebbles that stung. There wasn't any grass.

He breathed through his oxygen mask, and looked around. There were cars and stores and homes, all of it abandoned. Nothing was living.

He saw a sign that said 1st street, he walked past it, looking for the airplane hangar on the edge of town.

And so Bart Longfellow trudged along, he cried for his friends, and figured he was lucky to see the surface. Most people didn’t get to. He’d be dead within a few days he figured, might as well see as much of Earth as he can.

Inside his pocket was his phone, it was damaged, but inside the heart shaped locket, little did he know, was a recording device, and his entire journey had been being recorded and watched by just a few people on Mars. An audience that would grow tremendously over the next three months. The Game had already begun.