We’re at our breaking point, myself and Taylor—even the Captain sounds hang-dogged and defeated. “Just a little further,” he keeps saying into his mic, as if repeating the lie will somehow make it true, “We’re almost there. Feel that moisture in the air? That’s the Acidalia Canal and the next Oasis. Just stay sharp. Oh, and Taylor? Quit blowing debris into the f*****g pools. Nothing pisses a settler off worse than arriving to a dirty pool.”
I laugh aloud at that, knowing Taylor is doing the same. As if. We haven’t seen a transport or a settler in weeks. Has immigration to the Formerly Red Planet slowed? We don’t know.
I look at the houses, so pristine and white, so uniform, their black windows glinting, resolving to ask the next settler I see (and to hell with the no-contact edict). But
