Mars Needs Babies is my response to the challenge of writing a future shaped by Elon Musk. If you’d like a new piece of short fiction delivered to your email every month, please subscribe to my newsletter.
Gwynne concentrates on breathing gently as she secures the suit seals. They’ve never been worn in and you can’t hurry suit prep, but she’s only got one chance at this. This isn’t a spur of the moment thing, not exactly, she’s been thinking about it since her freshman class, right after she handed little Jeff over to the creche mommy. His name, the tiny scowl it brought to their faces when she chose it. Her first act of rebellion.
Her filter mask and goggles never come off. The suit might be fresh but peroxides are everywhere in this city, in her daddy’s wheezing lungs, in the brother and sister her mom lost, trying to win them all a place in the new district, with its Earthlights, hyperfiltered air and green rooms. Daddy’s sperm were screened, mommy’s eggs too, but the red dust is relentless. Little Jeff won’t have to watch his mommy and daddy get sick on the red dust. All the new X-Kids have one parent, the President, and a legion of mommies to shepherd them through to a productive adulthood.
The Asian Coalition has proper air scrubbers, lush plants everywhere. That’s what the other students sometimes whisper when they’re in ones or twos, on a maintenance shift somewhere they can’t be heard. She knows that none of them will dare to do this. They promise themselves there’s a legit way to breathe clean air and live longer.
Get onto one of the asteroid crews, maybe building the new station on Deimos. Low-g kills you slower than bad air and red dust, that’s what they say. Join the roughnecks on the polar outposts, drill fresh pure water and if you survive there’s a better place for you. Become a creche mommy, but don’t get your hopes up because there’s never enough new babies for all the girls who want to raise them. It takes a village to raise a child, but a factory does it better, says the President.
He’s been with the First Mommy almost five years, though, so maybe wear your hair right and get good grades or post something funny on MarX. You could be the next: a real mommy who keeps her babies until they know your name. They’ll be his, too, and he likes to make them the old-fashioned way. Old-fashioned is right; he’s 88 years old now. Gwynne doesn’t want to think about that.
At least making little Jeff was just her and the medics. Right after her sixteenth birthday, a few scans and samples then a dose of drugs to bring on her eggs. It wasn’t nice, but when is any of that nice? She didn’t know the donors but they were the best matches for her, good Men from Earth and Mars. Little Jeff was the best of the lot. She could have had more but this was her first time. One was all they wanted, back payment for raising her inside these domes and tunnels and concrete-lined caverns. Now she’s graduated, she can have as many as she wants. Her fertilised eggs are ready any time and Mars needs babies, that what the President says and he leads by example.
Maybe little Jeff is his. She didn’t see the resemblance, but it happens. Maybe little Jeff isn’t so little any more. That was the day she didn’t want to do it again. The day she knew she’d never see him grow up, except from afar. Maybe he’s not even called Jeff now. From what she’s seen on the weekly address, the President only laughs at his own jokes. No one knows what happened to the guy who joked about the First Mommy’s age that time.
The Coalition won’t let her just walk onto their rover. It docks, full of greens from the big hydro farms they’ve built on the high plains, unloads under guard and heads back, full of spare parts. Dad says the Coalition crews used to stay a while, unwind with Occupy Mars before the long trip south, but someone here got pregnant and those genes are not welcome. His generation didn’t clean out America so cheating birthers could sneak through on Mars. Bad enough they have to share the New World. Worse that the Coalition crops are thriving while ours barely last a couple of seasons. To hell with them and their brown fingers. No Gwynne, I did not mean “green” fingers. Stop laughing.
Gwynne switched her major to life support in the second year, when the plan started to fill out, just like she had with little Jeff inside her. A maintenance pass will get her outside, near the transport dock. Climb up between those big wheels, clamp on, switch herself into their air supply and power. She only needs a trickle to keep her suit topped up, with luck they won’t notice. Coalition equipment isn’t as good as ours, daddy says, that’s why they need spare parts. They’ll think it’s a leak.
For two years, she’s made things disappear, here and there. A diaper, food and water pouches, tubes, clips, and micro pumps. Eventually, an older suit, out of warranty by a couple of decades. Whoever the guy on the nametag was, he’d never used it. Maybe he never left Earth. Too big for those old ships, if the size of it was any sort of clue, but that made more room for the food and water. Replacing the filters, re-lining the seals, it was good practice for her practicals. She aced every test. Useful skills for her new home, she hopes.
And when they get there, she’ll climb off and say hi. Even if they stop on the way, they won’t turn around to take her back. They couldn’t. They have to let her stay, right? An Occupier life support systems graduate, healthy lungs and eyes, ready to make Coalition babies. Brown is brown, right? Except no-one will make jokes like they do with her and mommy, asking if they’re really American, if they couldn’t have babies for other people instead of wanting their own. It’s just an accident that mommy keeps losing them, right? Whatever, Gwynne’s done with feeling like she’s just a mouth to feed and lungs to fill. Even with the tattoo, she isn’t Occupier property, right?
The last seal clicks home. Cuffs fold down. Pressure’s good. She sucks on the food and drink tubes, tucked under her mask. Warm already, but it’ll be cold soon enough, even with the suit powered up. Her eyes itch, but what’s new? It’s time for Gwynne to leave Occupy Mars. She swipes her pass, punches the code and takes a clumsy step into the airlock.
Six hours in, the Coalition crew finds Occupier astronaut Trump, clamped to the side of their rover. They can’t stop laughing at the young black girl shivering inside the suit, healthy apart from the cold and the usual attrition of the Occupier class system. She doesn’t get the joke, but she will. They wrap her in hot blankets, feed her strange food that sweats the red dust right out of her eyes, and they don’t turn back.
After all, Mars needs babies.
Images created using Adobe Firefly Image 3, which is supposed to be more respectful of creative rights. I could write a whole post about the challenge of generating AI pictures, especially when it comes to women and non-white characters.