Red

Iggy Petri was on her way to the Grocery Center when the oxygen unit failed.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a tiny chime, inaudible yet audible because of her E-Musk Brain Implant (or EBI), followed by a voice in her head that wasn’t her own: “Attention Tyrrhena Terra citizen—please return to the Bunker, an anomaly has halted surface atmosphere regulation…” the message repeated until the neurons in Iggy’s brain fired her comprehension.

A few seconds later, there was another chime, more musical than the first.

“Iggy?” Her father’s voice—or how he thought his voice sounded; it always sounded off to her—said, “Where are you?”

“Three minutes from the Bunker,” she thought, “I wasn’t able to get mom’s tomatoes. What happened?”

“If I had to guess, it’s one of the filters--the one that’s half a millimeter too short. That dust storm earlier probably knocked it loose. We’ll have to make it work until the next shipment arrives, though. Daddio-o-o out!”

Iggy sighed deeply, thinking, not for the first time, that she shouldn’t be so wasteful. She shivered in her jacket and looked up at the sloping dome that covered the colony structure, tinted to protect them from space radiation. Everything within the bubble was balanced, intentional, and precious—down to the last carbon molecule.

The Tyrrhena colony structure, located just south of Mar’s equatorial line, was referred to as Dodger Stadium. Apparently, the colony’s architect had been a huge Dodgers fan, and had modeled the colony after the structure on Earth that shared its namesake. The one on Earth probably didn’t have the sealed dome, though, to keep the sports fans from turning into popsicles, or getting blown to bits by high-speed, radioactive dust storms.

She knew about sports—at least a little bit. When the supply ship from Earth docked every 2 years, there’d be news of sports victories—the “Vikings” won this, “Manchester City” won that; South Korea’s “figure-skater” “took home the gold”, although this didn’t mean the thin, golden sheets of aluminum-coated polyester that covered the colony’s orbiting satellites. Then, there’d be bets on future tournaments. Not usually on winners, though, since that was nearly impossible to predict, but on who would get to participate. Iggy figured that even on Earth there were limited resources; otherwise, surely everyone would get to play.

Dee-dum-dee!

It was her father again.

“Iggy, where are you?”

Iggy waved to a friend of hers from school, entering the Bunker just ahead with her family, “Almost there.”

“I need you to go get your mother, her EBI must be malfunctioning again. I’ve already called HQ, they’ll hold the seal open for you. So hurry, but don’t run—conserve oxygen. That filter isn’t clogged, we don’t know what the problem is. We’ll need to limit our carbon dioxide output to maintain the surface temperature, or our other systems could overheat.”

“Are you okay?”

“Of course! This happened before, when you were a baby, but you probably don’t remember. We’ll be fine.” He paused. “Have your mom pack a bag just in case, okay?”

“Okay, but--.”

“Dad out!”

Iggy didn’t like the sound of that. The Bunker was six feet underground and had its own life-support system. When the original colonists had arrived eighteen Earth-years ago, they’d lived totally inside while the seal on Dodger Stadium was being finished and the poisonous Martian air within was converted. But it had been designed for a crew of twenty-five—there were almost a hundred of them now, as native Martians like herself had been born, and additional waves of colonizers had arrived. If her father’s crew had to retreat to the Bunker, and only go out to work in the 4-hour shifts that their rechargeable suits allowed, it could take days to fix the Stadium’s oxygen system. Or, worse—nine months, if they had to wait for the next supply ship for a part. They’ be stuck underground, piled on top of each other, for almost a year. She’d never known a life where she couldn’t look up and see the hazy winking of the stars.

She tried to call her mother—why not? But, like her father, she only got silence.

Despite her father’s encouragement, her heart was pounding as she reached their home. It was a red, circular, two-story building--one of the original ones. It had been printed with a slurry composed of the Martian soil.

Iggy pushed open the door, blinking as she was bathed in the white glow of the electric lights. “Mom?”

There were footsteps on the stairs—there she was! Her mom’s curls bobbed up and down, “Hey kid! You got my tomatoes?”

“Sorry, no. Is your EBI offline? We’re going into lockdown.”

Her mom swore and shook her head, “Again? This is the second time this month!”

“I know, but dad says to pack a bag this time. It’s the oxygen unit for the whole Stadium.”

Her mother’s face fell. “No kidding! That’s almost as disappointing as not getting to eat tomatoes. Your brother isn’t happy.” She patted her belly, where a little bump poked out of her rust-colored jumpsuit.

Iggy grabbed a plastic sack and ran halfway up the stairs before she remembered—Breathe slowly, Iggy! Don’t be wasteful.

“Do you remember where dad’s box is?” Her mom called, “Grab that, and the blankets! Everything else we can print in the Bunker.”

She knew what box she meant. It was small and wrapped in the same gold foil they used for the satellites, and it lived under her parents’ bed. She dropped to her belly and wriggled in after it, ignoring the dust that had accumulated on the clay flooring. Sliding it out, she undid the clasps and lifted the lid to verify its contents.

The smell was always a surprise to her. It wasn’t like burning carbon or baking bok choy, or the warm smell the 3-D printer made as it whirr-whirred her a new outfit or hair brush, or the rusty tang of the Martian dirt. She didn’t have words for it. It was…alien. Otherworldly.

She shut the lid, redid the clasps, and slipped it into her bag. Even despite its wrapping, it would accumulate radiation outside if they weren’t quick.

Her mother was waiting impatiently at the bottom of the stairs. Bags dangled from her arms—produce, it looked like.

“There’s a food printer in the Bunker!” Iggy said, amused, as they started the trek to the Bunker.

“It’s for the seeds. The food printer prints food products, but not vegetables.”

“But…Hydroponics has its own closed system. Wouldn’t the vegetation be okay?”

Her mother smiled, “Ecosystems are delicate, kiddo. It’s better to be prepared.”

Their feet crunched quietly across the pavement. Iggy took two of the bags from her mother to lighten her load.

“It’s a good thing we just got groceries!” her mom puffed. “If we have to start over again like last time, we should have seeds for everything.”

“Tomatoes,” Iggy swallowed, guilt making her cheeks flush. “Sorry, mom.”

“Don’t worry,” her mom smiled. She put her free arm around Iggy’s shoulders. “We can always request more seeds for the next supply drop, we’d just have to go a few years without. There are worse things.”

Surprisingly, they weren’t the last to arrive. It seemed, despite the utilitarian nature of the colony, there were other things like her father’s box that were worth going back home for.

The dim space between the slate floors and low ceilings was already warm from the body heat of the other colonists. They spotted their neighbor, Dr. Adrik, amidst the clusters of rust-colored suits. She waved them over to her—she'd saved three, freshly-printed bunks. Their elbows would touch as they slept.

Her mother sat on the cot closest to Dr. Adrik and chatted with her about her lousy EBI unit, and a recipe she’d come up with. Perched on the cot next to her, Iggy balanced the box on her knees and opened it.

Inside, it was lined with something green and incredibly soft—“velvet”. It trapped that foreign smell the way the dome trapped their atmosphere.

She selected a tiny bag made of a material similar to the box’s lining. It contained a lock of curled, white hair—from her mother’s mother, apparently—and a pair of small, round ornaments called “rings” that people on Earth wore on their fingers, because radiation and scarcity weren’t a problem there.

Among the treasures was also a small, black thing called a “book”. It wasn’t like the virtual books that she read inside her head with the EBI. This book was physical, and contained flimsy, flat things called “paper”, which were made from the bodies of plants called “trees”.

When they’d learned about trees in class, her teacher, Mr. Xing, had used his EBI to show them pictures of tall, towering, tubular things, with rough skin that crumbled and turned fingers brown, and the green masses at their tops made a “shh-shh” sound. He’d told them, depending on the type of tree, that they smelled of “pine”, but the EBI wasn’t able to transfer scents. Smells (and tastes) were associated with memory, and you couldn’t remember something that hadn’t happened to you. Iggy figured they’d smell similar to Hydroponics, where their produce grew, although Mr. Xing had assured her that that wasn’t the case.

This paper relic contained memories, but not the dynamic kind that she could send and receive with her EBI. These were frozen and without context, disconnected from the moments before and after them. Physically, they were discolored squares (“photos”) of her mother in an elaborate, excessive thing called a “wedding dress”, that would have used up at least four spools on a 3-D printer; and her father with all of his hair, posing in a retro-looking space suit between two elderly people, who were her grandparents. There was also a square of her mother when she was about Iggy’s age, wearing a dirty white outfit called a “jersey”; she was resting a baseball bat across her shoulders and smiling.

These, and other squares like them, were glued directly onto the book’s pages, but there were also other curious things stuck in between them. One was a rectangular piece of paper—two of them, actually, folded into each other—heavily colored by ink. They read: Series CC Crypto Bond, with the number 10,000 printed in the top, left-hand corner. They—

“Oh!” Her mother said, noticing her, “You’re going through the box!”

“What are these?” Iggy asked, holding them up.

Her mom took them and smiled. “Federal bonds. Your grandfather bought them for us shortly before we left. I’d told him not to bother, but he insisted.” She rubbed her thumb gently across the paper. A foggy look came over her eyes and her smile faded, although Iggy knew she was still happy.

“Your grandpa was a cool guy,” she told Iggy. “I wish he could have met you. Here,” she handed the papers back to Iggy, who took them with new reverence. “I forgot about these, actually. They’ll mature in a year or so--something like that. If any of us returns back to Earth, we can exchange them for $20,000.”

“Is that a lot of money?”

“Yes and no, given inflation was bad when we left in ‘58, but I’d imagine it would help.”

Despite the babble in the room, Iggy’s ears caught the final, mechanical exhale of the main entrance sealing. She looked up as the last pair of colonizers staggered inside, their arms laden with packages. The only way in or out now was through the air-locked Service Tunnel, where her father and his crew would pass.

“That’s Jay and Saoirse,” Dr. Adrik said. “They work in Hydroponics.”

“Look!” Iggy’s mom cried, pointing.

In a white box, held on either side between the man and the woman, were a mound of red tomatoes.