>MARANET Messaging Server
UESC DEEPSPACE COMM SERVICES
>Archive 557872_SWEENEY_S_J
>MSG_ID 04M_00001265488
>SNDR SWEENEY_D_M
>SENT NOV_12_2502
>RCVD OCT_19_2515
>RTRV JUN_01_2775
***INCOMING MESSAGE FROM MARSNET***
Sarah,
It’s been 30 years since the Marathon launched. Where that time went I don’t know. It doesn’t seem real. I know it’s been a long time since I wrote last, but there isn’t much to tell as far as the day to day story of my life as an ordinary Martian. The truth of it is, it took this long for me to finally accept that by the time you read this I’ll be long dead. I know you can’t reply to me, but it feels like you’re the only family I have left...at least, you’re the only one who remembers me as the person I was. So forgive me if these observations and recollections cut hard, but they’re real, and hope you’ll take a moment to suffer the mutterings of an old fool.
Thirty years. All I can do is marvel at it. I remember the times before the launch so fondly, through the purified rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia, when things seemed to at least make sense, when, by virtue of youth, everything felt fresh yet familiar, simple and clean.
It’s not possible to mark such a time without taking stock of all that’s changed in the interim, but then, it’s also impossible not to get lost in the attempt. There’s a witsfulness to it and in its depth lies an inescapable mixture of joy and tragedy. It makes me feel so alone and so in awe. I remember standing, looking up, knowing but not truly realizing that we were riding on the razor edge of history. Witnessing. Deimos became the Marathon, and the Marathon became a star, and it joined the stars, glittering into the distance, and then you were gone. And life had to go on.
Now, I know we find comfort in the past because its future is known. But that knowing makes fools of our past selves even so. It’s wasy to say we didn’t know how good we had it, because it’s true. Maybe our naivete made it all the better. But then the innonence was lost, as inevitably it is. And the world and all its madness and demands closed in, and in a blink 30 years has gone by. I can’t really convey in words how uncanny it all feels, how frightening it is that the future arrived so suddenly.
I still dream about you. Especially the nights when the dust storms are blowing. In my mind’s eye I can see you lying in that pod, in complete serenity, as if under a spell. Not even sleeping, and yet not dead, with centuries and lightyears still to pass before you wake up. In my dreams you are vivid, and my soul hears and knows your voice and your face is more real than conscious memory can depict. And I feel twelve years old again. And you’re always smiling, but sad. That was your way. Melancholy, yet hopeful, pensive; you were ever the dreamer. You weren’t meant to stay here. You would have escpaed Mars somehow. Your spirit is vast. You’re where you belong. In my dreams you are among the stars, and you swim on their surfaces. I awake with burning eyes. I wonder if you’ve been dreaming too.
I still dream about Dad. In them he’s no different. It’s like he’s still here. Do you remember when he would come back from a Deimos rotation with his bag filled with toys and worker’s rations? It was like Christmas, every six weeks. And that look on his face, seeing us filled with rapturous joy, I think must have made it worth it to him. The time away from us, the shame for having taken work with the UESC, and the years upon years of boring into and shaping that cold rock in the dead of space. That was that. A man has to feed his family. Those were the times. The Marathon was the pride and rape of Mars, and nobody here has yet forgotten that and I doubt they ever will.
I think the Marathon killed him twice. The work broke and posioned his body, but learning that that work would take his only daughter away forever was something he was never able to comes to terms with. Perhaps he felt he had spend his adult life working to build his child’s tomb. He didn’t come outside to watch the night you launched, though I know he’d promised you he would. He wanted to be alone. It was hard for a lot of people, and when that ship left I believe there were more souls on board than bodies to house them.
But I had known. I knew why you were studying what you were studying and I knew that you’d applied as a candidate colonist scientist. I also knew that if I’d told him about it before you’d been chosen that he would have put a stop to it. I can’t regret having kept that from him, knowing that it kept you from being trapped here on this dying world. And I never doubted they would pick you, you who could could work miracles, making the poisoned soil yield green stems and stalks.
I know it must hurt to read this, and hurting you is not what I mean to do. You being you and Dad being Dad, there was no other way things could have gone. I realize that these memories must feel far, far fresher to you than to me, and that I’ve had the luxury of decades to reflect on them and be shaped by them. You deserve to know the truth, and I wouldn’t tell you it if I didn’t think you could grow from it.
You have to understand that in the body of his despair was a core of pride for you, not only for finishing school but actually making the cut to be a part of the Martian colonial contingent. The first human settlers on an interstellar world. That warmed him, and that kept him going, for a time.
Time has weathered many of the memories I have of you. It has also insulated me from them. As time goes on it becomes harder to revisit them, special as they are. It hurts to know that I can never return to the purity of those times, but I fear in going back to them I would taint them with impressions from the present day. It’s so silly. Because in another sense it feels like you never left. I can always sense you but just, a shadow in the periphery, a faint echo in my own voice, the serenity in the moments when my mind is utterly still. When I feel compassion and wonder it’s though I’m feeling with your heart and seeing through your eyes. I wish I could explain it. I wish I could say it hadn’t crushed me too when you left, being as much a mother to me as you were a sister. I am your living imprint here, and every day since you left I have tried to live in a way you would accept and be proud out. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded. But there’s still time.
I miss you so much.
I wish I could say that these are better days than those from when you left. Though it does not feel like it. Maybe that’s just how it feels to be a Martian. But, it makes me so happy to think about you, to dream about you, up there, safe, with your heart and life and vigour intact, and I envy that new world that will know the work and care of your hands. You keep me going, you’ve kept me going. If this is the last message you ever get from me, I need you to know at least that. You’ve been my vessel of hope, the constant line that has spanned the margins of my life. I hope with all my being that eventually, somehow, I’ll be able to see you again, in some moment out there between eternities, and if I do I’ll be able to tell you that I’m so sorry that things turned out the way they did, and that for all my years and tears and nostalgia and recollections all I really have at the end of it is stupid, simple love and gratitude for everything you were and everything you ever did and every moment you gave me. Please take it with you, and with it spring blossoms from poisoned soil. I know you will. I love you.
Forever,
Your little brother.
***END OF MESSAGE***
