I never expected to live to see it all fall away. For years, the warnings were folded up like paper
from old earth mixed into our daily prayers, seeped ifrom the sermons of Father Elias as he read
from the last chapters of The New World Testament. And we believed him because to do
otherwise would be the forfeiture of our only comfort we had left that our suffering had
purpose, that our divine savior had meant for us to be here. But purpose is a strange, elusive
thing, and even faith fades with time.
Like many my grandfather had come to Marsas a boy, on one of the first ships that ferried the
hopeful and desperate froma decaying Earth. He was among the first waves—scientists,
engineers, agricultural laborers brought along their children; true first colonizers of Mars—They
saw the human exodus as a beginning rather thanan escape. Mars was New Jerusalem, the
salvation we'd build with our own hands, they planted seeds in dry soil and reaped its bounty,
dug tunnels for infrastructure,and built towers that gleamed of glass and silver. He always told
stories aboutthe way people smiled back then, parables I thought woven about the history of
our people on Mars, casting our struggles as part of some divine plan. "Tolabor is to praise",
he'd tell me, his voice low and steady, as if he were confiding some great secret.
YOU ARE READING
The Lysander Gospel- Prequel to Melancholia's Elegy
Science FictionA man is driven by a dangerous vision of salvation amid rising tensions on Mars. As secrets intertwine with ambition, he must confront the shadows of his desires. Will he be a savior or a harbinger of doom?
