Autumn on Mars
A science fiction novelette by Matthew Crane.
A Modern Odyssey, Chapter 2: Leaving Home
Over the first hour we rocketed down the mountainside. Mika asked me to stop a couple times so that she could get out and look at things.
This was the first time she’d been this far from home, and I remembered how awe struck I had felt the first time dad had taken me down here, so I let her see the world. But each time we came to a halt I couldn’t help feeling a little more on edge.
I knew they were going to catch up to us eventually, and I wasn’t thinking about that as hard as I could. But I also knew that if we got off the mountain, that we’d have enough of a lead to get to the blue mountains before anyone could get to us. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. It was true. It had to be true. It was true. I also knew we couldn’t stop as frequently, they must have been following already. But we were explorers so I didn’t want to let Mika down by telling her we didn’t have time to explore.
But then I realised things had worked out perfectly for me.
The rover had a very short, very forward facing windscreen, I was driving using the screens in the dashboard a lot so it’s a good thing that they made those work in manual mode. But that meant all I had to do was keep her from looking forwards.
I looked over sneakily. She was taking notes on her pad. Perfect
“Mika?” I sung, slyly. She turned round.
“You want me to do something?”
I’m not that good at looking innocent. Even when I’m super innocent.
Mika kept watching me closely, and I had to say something.
“You know how we can’t activate the GPS because we don’t want to turn on the locator…”
…which I didn’t want to worry her about…
“…Because if we turned the computer on it’d stop me from driving…”
…this was technically true, but less worrying than the full truth. I didn’t want to lie to my sister…
“…so I need you to sit and work where we are, and… how we’re going to drive to the mountains”
Mika considered this for a moment. I could see a glimmer in her eyes, this was the sort of nerd stuff that she just loves to do. She was still very suspicious though.
“You’re trying to trick me into doing that. Why would you try and trick me into doing that?”
“If I told you then it wouldn’t be a trick” I smiled, and just as I knew she would, she began doodling maths and stuff on her tablet, while sometimes looking up to watch me.
That couldn’t have gone better.
My sister is what most people politely refer to as “Inquisitive”. It’s difficult to hide stuff from her, because she picks up on the little clues like a detective at a crime scene. But it’s also really easy to hide things from her, if you know she’s like that. All I do is just make it clear to her that I’m hiding something, and it drives her crazy. She has to know what it is, so she starts trying to figure it out and goes super focused in on that. And when she gets like that I just do what I was going to do, and she doesn’t notice it, because she’s looking for something sneakier than that.
I don’t like to lie to my sister, but sometimes I don’t tell her the whole truth. I regret it. This time especially because now that i’d distracted Mika doing that, I was alone again. But I have to do it sometimes.
The next half hour was pretty uneventful. I still had ages to go before we reached the bottom of the mountain, and as I realised just how long that was going to take, which weirdly made me weirdly calm. I’m pretty sure I should have been very stressed, it bugs me more that I wasn’t. I realised this at the time as I was driving on the right slope of this dusty “gulley” between two igneous banks. It bugged me, but at the same time I kind of wanted to enjoy not worrying. I wanted to have some fun.
“Hey, Mika”
She looked up, “Yes?”
“We should do something fun” I told her.
A soon as I saw a grin start to form on her face, I jabbed the throttle down with my foot, and started swinging the wheel around. That began blotting out the rear view camera with some butterscotch-ish coloured dust, but I didn’t have time to watch that. I was thrown by the familiar kick in the stomach of acceleration, but not back into my seat like with rockets so it took me by surprise, and we started skidding. Mika screamed, I may have made a noise of surprise also when we were spinning. We only spun less than half around before I could make us stop, it felt like a lot more.
We sat for a while and tried to remember to breathe.
“Trip”
“Yes?”
“I think I know why they don’t let people who are 12 years old drive”
I nodded.
“Let’s do that again” she smiled.
I nodded again. I also smiled.
“But this time don’t turn as much, and I think you go a bit the other way”
She was right, my sister is scarily smart sometimes. Rapidly I got the hang of snaking between each side of the valley and I only had to stop us once after that, I had to put my hair in a scrunchie so it didn’t swoosh in my eyes.
Unfortunately, and annoyingly, we did actually have to stop again. It looked like we were going to make it to the end of the “gulley”/valley, and I was rather pleased to see that next, out of the bottom of the valley, I could see the mountain’s foothills.
Of course, it was then when disaster struck.
As I swung us around to do some left drifting. Mika tapped me on the shoulder.
“What’s that?” she asked.
And then I noticed it. There was this beeping noise coming somewhere in the rover. It was somewhere in front of me. I looked for it and then suddenly I noticed loads of these messages in little boxes flashing on all of the screens around me.
That couldn’t be good, so I slammed down on the brakes and we stopped.
“ATTENTION: This Rover will be stopping for routine diagnostics in 57 seconds, in accordance with SCD:119-D. Please ensure the vehicle is stationary”
I sighed. I slammed the dash, with the wrong part of my wrist but I didn’t care.
But then I thought back to something mum had told me:
If something stops you, keep trying or you’ll never win.
People say i’m a lot like her, and i know why.
I couldn’t give up now.
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