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Per Aspera Ad Astra

by Mamamera

By MamameraPublished 3 years ago 12 min read
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Once they built a Sky dome on Mars it almost looks like back home

PER ASPERA AD ASTRA

By Mamamera

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Social Housing Application Centralized Waiting List

To Whom It May Concern

Planet: Mars

Republic: Ilonia

Application Name: Misha Weiss (also known as MI-3032), Koshka, grandma Anna and twins Ilo-3475X and Gagarin-181818

Former residence and citizenship: Sector 345, Phoenix, Zone X, Planet Earth

Password: Phoenix1976!

Application Date: March 28th, 2037

Dear Madam,

I would like to submit my application for any of the first available three bedroom units in the Redwood Forest housing complex.

My family consists of five family members: Misha, primary applicant, Koshka, my partner, Anna V, my grandmother and our twins: Ilo-3475X and Gagarin-181818.

We do not own any property on Mars and in the province of Ilonia.

Our twins are fourteen years old (Mars years).

We do not drink or smoke and are pet free.

My partner and I work for “Vodka-Mars Incorporated” full time.

Short family history: (I decided to shorten all of the events and delete emotional and cultural details. They are available in a longer version of this application upon your request)

My partner, Koshka and I worked in Phoenix, Zone X, Planet Earth, Solar System, Milky Way for the company “International Transportation Pod Designs” as software developers of municipal transit pods. Our projects included some simple government contracts servicing the township of Ilonia (Mars) transportation development, but most of the time we were toiling in the field of cognitive programming of transportation pods for city folks on planets Earth and Mars.

A passenger cabins, designed by our department, carried by, for example, a robot drones can be moved from one transportation platform to another without the need for the passenger to exit and enter another vehicle: the cabins that we programmed could carry on a floating in the sky railway, ship, in the vacuum tune, or on an aerial vehicle.

My relationship with Koshka started in 2035. Our company threw a year end party and allowed one of our regular sponsors, “Vodka-Earth Incorporated” to showcase their latest development of a new generation mini vodka drinks. Their gimmick was activating weightlessness and throwing a couple of hundred drinks at our friendly gang floating in the air around the Aral swimming pool, in Poenix.

Self-served fifty ml drinks were flying in the air, slowly cruising towards our bots and playing music. The flying drinks design wasn’t anything new, but I noticed some advanced tech stuff added to their delivery methodology. Those small extra high tech features that could so easily woo the crowd were probably added by young software techs, who typically are ready to crawl out of their skin for pleasing bosses.

The forth drink that I gulped down very quickly made me realize that floating booze served in cute shiny bottles could recognize our moods spot on and the music that accompanied their delivery changed from person to person, within our party radius.

Nazareth was my theme, or at least what the Vodka Company has recognized in me. Such ancient music!

I wondered why I was marked with this redundant theme, but didn’t think much of it and only looked at Koshka, who flew from one corner of a party perimeter to another in her shiny flower bot.

Koshka was my coworker for the last five years. That evening she was wearing a navy blue dress that changed shape and colour depending on the intensity of the sunlight. Her short mini dress and transparent lucent body could make anybody jump! (Please forgive me such an emotional detail in this housing application)

During that time, the last two weeks of our time on Earth, we accidentally met by the chocolate fountain within our company’s headquarters.

I was sincerely thinking of exchanging my emotional flash drives with that attractive co-worker of mine!

We programmed stuff together, in the same room, or as they called it “a cooperative cyber space”, whereby the corporate company protocols we had to share our thoughts and emotions. I didn’t have any problem with that. Our company paid us well and we complied. Because of this wordless exchange, our projects were done more efficiently and much faster than usual. With this new development our coworkers didn’t really have to talk and waste their time on discussing things when working on the same software programming.

I also made some progress with building my relationship with Koshka, since it was really easy to read her emotional data, which she never blocked from me. Both of us were ready to start this wonderful relationship that we’ll cherish even on Mars.

During an above mentions year-end party, we accidentally overheard a conversation of one of the directors and his wife. They were frantically discussing a future imminent city fire that would shortly destroy rainless Phoenix. It came to our director’s attention that for the past ten years the municipal cloud harvesting system was experiencing problems and city’s fire fighter chief was planning to retire to Hawaii. In other words: the doomsday was near, as it didn’t rain in Phoenix for the last ten years.

Immediately, Koshka and I started searching through our connections and looking into possibility of leaving Phoenix and becoming intergalactic climate refugees. We learned that as it was done with vaccines during pandemic years a long time ago, seniors came first!

The city was giving away free passes to Mars to all senior citizens and their caregivers. Koshka lived alone and I had no family either except my ancient grandma who lived on the outskirts of Phoenix.

I must mention that my grand ma was born in 1971, but during her life span she has already undergone a revitalizing vitality enhancement procedures several times, and also received a “New Life Brain and Blood Activation” pill that is currently available over the counter.

We visited grandma Anna in her “Forever Senior” housing complex.

She lived alone and was very happy to see my beautiful girlfriend and me.

Grand ma served us some pumpkin pie, as she thought it was already a Thanksgiving holiday.

I sincerely feared that she would never survive such a lengthy trip to Mars if we were to leave Earth tomorrow.

To my surprise my grandma didn’t have any concerns. She said that travel was the only thing in life that excited her besides being married to first ever cosmonaut, Jirij Gagarin, who was, in her own words, the best man she ever met. She didn’t mind him being a celebrity who met the Queen and many other beautiful women of the world.

Despite his extensive travel in space and on Earth, sooner or later, Jirij always came back to my grandma.

When Gagarin went to space or was flying and testing new supersonic jet planes he would always come back to my grandma. He was the love of her life, but didn’t live long, because the KGB secretly destroyed some parts of his plane’s engine. He fell to his death from the sky as a mighty eagle.

To calm down the nation, party leaders decided to commemorate his memory by creating silly songs and fairy tales about the superiority of their leadership in space exploration, but nobody ever believed them.

People missed Jirij and his smile forever.

Grandma Anna ran away from the cunning system of the USSR by fooling the KGB agents and fleeing the country with sailors from Baku.

So, on May 1st 2036 we picked up grandma via air taxi and went to the “Phoenix-Mars Launching Pad”. All of us were ready to start a new life. Koshka was holding on to our Earth-to-Mars immigration flight tickets.

It didn’t rain for ten years in a row and a dry wind was playing with electric wires day after the day.

The famous Phoenix desert fire started slowly and steadily grew into another national disaster when air taxi was leaving my grandma’s house.

On the way to Ilonia, Mars, my grandma took her famous woollen shawl with her and wrapped a couple of things inside of it, carrying them as reminders of her life on Earth. She certainly looked like a pilgrim to us.

Koshka and I didn’t have many possessions and we packed light. I brought the most expensive programming gear that I had from work, as tools for us to start a new life. We were almost half way to the rocket launching pad when grandma started to cry.

She certainly was nervous and forgot to take her heart shaped locket with her when packing. Despite the raging Phoenix fire, I had to turn back our taxi and rush towards her apartment.

The precious locket contained some hair locks from Jirij Gagarin head that grandma has saved for years.

When I reached grand ma’s apartment the fire has already gulped half of it.

Raging fire was dancing around me like red tongs of death. Crawling on the floor through the sick smoke, I still found her locket on the table.

I think it has survived the fire only as it was made out of the famous communist gold that has been melted a century ago.

Grandma still has this famous gold recipe recorded on her Facebook page. Anyone can make gold now and it is not a precious metal any more.

The recipe is saved under a title “How The Gold Was Melted”.

Many ancient capitalist adventurers lost their lives just to get this recipe and use it for profit a century ago. Right now it is still available on my grandma’s Facebook page for free. I decided to write these details, as I want to be transparent in terms of what we have to offer to your wonderful community of the Redwood Forrest housing complex.

Final words are about our wonderful twins and my grandma’s health condition.

During our lengthy flight to Mars we took advantage of the rejuvenation laboratory that is available to all travellers on the space ship.

“Your Second Life” lab is located in the third sector of the ship, right near the main restaurant, on the twenty first floor. My grandma was electronically and molecularly rejuvenated there during the flight.

She received several organ transplants, based on the echo-scope results of the genetic mutation tests of her aging body. She now has a new health card and is registered in the healthcare system as a citizen of thirty five years of age.

I should also mention that she got some additional functions installed and added to her body. She can currently swim as a shark, fly as an eagle and run as a dog, but all based on her current age abilities. As a side effect of her treatment she has to fight the episodes of vigorous composition of music, when for hours on end she is playing harp, piano and violin simultaneously, writing modern operas.

I do not think that her playing music would be of any disturbance for the inhabitants of your housing complex. We purchased a virtual reality composition booth and her musical activity remains within the low noise readings.

Grandma Anna is currently looking for job and will be working full time on Mars.

Furthermore, my partner, Koshka, was very interested to have children.

We found a licensed genetics lab on the space ship and successfully deposited a lock of hair from the heart shaped locket that I miraculously saved from the Phoenix fire into a plastic bag of a “Public Input” box available at the lab’s door. It was our one and only genetic sample of a famous cosmonaut Jirij Gagarin that we had.

A couple of hours later the lab has called us to report that they successfully delivered two beautiful twin babies wrapped in a special nutritional blankets that could provide food and comfort for babies for up to a year.

During the flight to Mars our twins grew really fast.

They reached the age of fourteen upon our ships landing on a red planet. Koshka and I love them very much. Their names are Ilo-3475X and Gagarin-181818. Today they are healthy and full of energy.

We hope that our twins will bring a lot of pride to the citizens of Ilonia, both have started playing football on the intergalactic sports scholarship.

While on Mars, Koshka and I decided to work for “Vodka Mars Incorporated” as senior district managers, as we were quiet familiar with their product line due to its popularity on Earth.

We send you our regards and a little present, a souvenir of mini vodka bottles distilled at our company’s Martian plants.

This product is programmed to change the weight of anybody who drinks it cold.

We all know how important is weight for living on Mars, so anybody who tries this type of drink would momentarily gain twenty five kilograms.

This advanced scientific pattern received a major intergalactic prize “Drink for being useful to your Red planet” that our company proudly displays on all promotional materials.

Please note that if you drink a warm version of this product, your hair will change to colour red. This information is printed on the instructional leaflet attached to each case of vodka mini drinks.

We send you our best wishes for a great weather and a lovely weekend along with twenty five cases of this product, so you could share it with family and friends.

Please consider us as serious applicants for a three-bedroom unit in your housing complex.

If you need more information, I would be happy to teleport and meet with you in person either via interspace travel mirror or via the Red Booth Time Travel Budka. (It is still the only one available in the Redwood Forest, located right in front of the Korean Bania that serves nutritious space lunches every day and is owned by HomeDepo Incorporated)

Sincerely yours,

Misha Weiss,

still at "Best Martian Hotel Ilonna"

Short Story
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About the Creator

Mamamera

I create moss art, I have met more friends than enemies, lived in Ukraine, Georgia, England and Canada.

I love traveling, volunteering, attending jazz concerts and opera, snowboarding and writing short stories. My goal is to share.

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