HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some writers and artists who’d sent in work the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, in the run-up to the release of The Green Issue…
Calvin Jordan
Dreams of a Red Planet
Alex gripped the arms of her seat. All around her, the ship creaked and rattled, groaning under the stress of re-entry. The sound of the engines roaring in her ears, she could feel the bile in her stomach rising. They’d told her it would be uncomfortable, but she hadn’t imagined it would be this bad. At least it was better than take-off.
Swallowing down her stomach, she shut her eyes tight as the incessant shuddering reached a fever pitch. Only a few more seconds, she thought to herself. Nearly there… With a sudden lurch, she felt the ship decelerate, as rapidly as it had launched some forty million miles previous. She grit her teeth, and tried not to think about what might happen if the pilot misjudged their landing vector. In reality, of course, the ship’s computer would handle it, but in their current state, Alex’s nerves were too frayed to think about that. She just wanted to get off.
Finally, after what felt like eons, she felt the seat beneath her stop shaking, and the ship come to a stop. Letting her head fall back against the wall behind her, Alex let out a long sigh of relief. Any second thoughts she’d had about this trip, any lingering desires to return home, were gone now. There was no way she was going through that again. For better or for worse, Mars was her home.
* * *
Stepping off the transport onto the loading platform, Alex took a deep breath as a wave of warm air hit her face. The red dirt felt pleasantly firm under her feet after eight months in space, and with a childish smile, she felt her own weight under the new world’s gravity. Slightly lighter than the Earth’s, but not by much. Taking a few steps, she felt like she was walking on air, although whether that was due to Mars itself, or the fact that she was on Mars, she couldn’t tell. Either way, she was glad to be back on solid ground.
Hefting her suitcase, she turned back to join the growing throng of migrants leaving the transport. Following the crowd, she marvelled at the blue sky above her, paler than she was used to, but familiar nonetheless. Thin, wispy clouds drifted lazily across the horizon, and deep in her heart she felt a swell of emotion – not quite excitement, and not quite pride. Just a sense of awe. That she was here, that this was possible.
Before long, she’d reached the immigration checkpoint. It would always amaze her how quickly the first colonists had set up their bureaucratic systems. A tall, bearded man asked her for her papers, and she handed them over without reply. He spent a moment studying them, checking her details against his records, before taking a heavy stamp and pressing it down on her visa.
“Welcome to Mars, Ms. Dawson.”
Taking her papers back, she flashed him a smile, before hurrying off on her way. Looking down at the green approval mark, she felt that same strange emotion course through her. Part of her still couldn’t believe this was happening. Making her way into the spaceport’s main thoroughfare, her eyes glanced across the sea of moving bodies, eagerly searching for that familiar face, but in the crowds it was futile.
I’ll try outside. There’ll be less people out there. Joining the traffic again, she shuffled towards the exit, glass doors flung wide into the street beyond. The first thing that struck her was the glare – bright sunlight dazzling off the white polished buildings beyond. The second was the smell.
Fresh. Clean. The way long summer days felt. Jason would later tell her that that was a side-effect of the atmospheric generators, a non-perfect replication of the air on Earth. “More oxygen, less CO2. How it used to be” he’d say, as the two sat down for dinner in his modest apartment downtown. “Before we started pumping god-knows-what into the air.”
Alex took a sip of her coffee. It was dark, rich, real. They grew it in plantations, only a few miles away, just outside the city. One of the many agricultural blocks that covered most of the southern hemisphere. It had been a long time since she’d had real coffee. She savoured the taste.
Across from Alex, her brother continued to tell her about life on the Red planet. “We’ll be saying the green one soon enough.” He chuckled. “Did you see it coming down?”
Alex nodded. She’d heard about the terraforming efforts, but the reality hadn’t hit her till she’d seen the planet from above. The thousands of green dots, each hundreds of miles across, scattered all across the globe, each built from scratch to replace those lost on Earth – Farmland and wilderness, great forests and flower-filled meadows. That’s what the crew had said. She’d barely believed them.
“I’ll take you out to see one tomorrow. There’s a forest not far from here. Deciduous,” Jason said with a smile. Alex felt her heart tremble. She’d never seen a living tree before, not in real life. Only in photographs, and old films made before the seas began to rise and the air got hot. Before the fires came and burnt everything to the ground, and the rains fell, washing away the wreckage. Before the world died.
“I’d like that” she said, a smile on her face.
* * *
The next morning, Jason took her down to the garage. The weather was just as perfect as it had been the day before. “A great day for it, huh?” He assured her it did rain, in the spring and the autumn. “Some places even get snow. Not here though, we’re too near the equator.”
Soon they were on the road, passing between the towering white spires of the city, the near-silent engine of Jason’s electric car humming along beneath them. Alex marvelled at them as they passed, all glass and polished steel, upper levels coated in solar panels, trellises of greenery dotting their facades. “To help with air purification,” Jason explained. “As well as looking nice for the public.”
Leaving the city behind them, the pair found themselves on a long highway, stretching off toward the horizon, flanked on both sides by cycle paths and pavement. Stretching out as far as she could see, fields of wildflowers filled the landscape, and Alex felt her breath catch in her throat. Everywhere she looked, she saw greenery – bushes broke up the rolling grassland, blooming with brightly coloured flowers, in every hue she could imagine. Between them, winding paths of stone led toward crystal clear lakes, sunlight dancing on the faint ripples as children played in the shallows. The smell of pollen filled the air, and she found herself holding back tears as they sped through the paradise. But nothing could have prepared her for the forest.
As the pair passed beyond the utopian park, and crested the edge of the crater, it was as if the gates of heaven had been opened before her. Stretching off into the distance, a rolling sea of verdant leaves rustled in the wind, and as they came down towards them, the dark shape of tree trunks took form. As they passed beneath the canopy, the dappled sunlight fell on the road ahead like golden shards, moving and shifting like dancers in the warm breeze.
Jason parked the car at the side of the road, and Alex stepped out into the shade. Her footsteps felt light, as if she were in a dream, and as she looked around, she found herself at a loss for words. Sounds filled the air, and it took her a moment to recognise them as birdsong. It had been so long since she’d seen a bird. Peering out into the forest, she watched them fly from branch to branch, cheeping out proudly as they pirouetted on the summer wind. She felt at peace in a way she never had before. From behind, she felt her brother’s hand on her shoulder, and turned to see his face smiling down at her.
“What do you think?”
Alex didn’t know how to respond. All her life, she’d wondered what it could be like, to live in a world free of pollution, of desperation and decay, to start a new life somewhere green. She did nothing to hold back her tears now, letting them roll down her cheeks as she turned back to the emerald kingdom before her. “It’s beautiful…”
Her brother’s grip on her shoulder tightened. He knew how she felt – he’d felt exactly the same the first time he’d seen it, the vast, unending wilderness, where only decades before a red ocean of dust had stood. It was enough to bring tears back to his own eyes as well. Turning to face her once more, he spoke softly in the tranquillity.
“Welcome home.”
Calvin Jordan is an emerging playwright from South-West England. Originally from Cornwall, he studied Theatre at the University of York before returning to the South-West to live with his partner. He is currently based in Bristol. He has been writing for the stage for over five years, and has recently branched into prose. His professional credits include the screenplay for the upcoming interactive film “Perspective”, funded by Sky Scholarships.