Life was going magnificent and smoothly, until the letter appeared.
It arrived in his mailbox, and it was indeed a deal of a lifetime. Hunter read the letter and discovered that it was an invitation by NASA to perform a top-secret, underground capsule training deep under the earth. The training was supposed to last seven years, in preparation for visiting, inhabiting, and populating planet Mars. The proposal had ignited a flame of blazing excitement deep within him. And a perk of two spare years before the mission heightened his susceptibility to seal the deal.
A flashback dating back nine years ago began accompanying his worried mind. Remembering the days when he dated Lizzie, with youthful vigor he reminisced the good times. He was a college professor in MIT, teaching Quantum Physics and Calculus. He loved his job, and moreover he was a smart guy, with a face and body attractive enough. For all he remembered, he was simply pacing through life comfortably — looking calm and ever assertive — and was a pleasure to everyone he met. He was devoted to only two things: his love for science and his love for Lizzie.
He married Lizzie, and everything was seemingly perfect, except that he didn’t tell the truth behind the mission. It was a trip for a major research project, he lied.
Two years after, Hunter then flew to Colorado to commence the training. He got introduced to his co-astronauts, eighty-eight of them, and got oriented with the rules and regulations. Mandatory surgeries were to be performed upon their bodies to mutate their genes. Genetic upgrades included not needing to breathe, not aging, and not running out of reproductive cells. Lastly, they need not take a bath for seven-year mission; body odor was no longer an issue.
Then he got to know every co-astronaut, and one woman stood out from the crowd. Looking immaculately white, with captivating blue eyes, and a soft voice beautifully fusing innocence and intelligence, Alicia commanded Hunter’s attention right away. She looked a lot like Lizzie, he thought. Shortly after, he realized that certain sides of her personality included being witty and passionate, neat and pretty. The entirety of her personality had always been his ideal wife, and had he known her before Lizzie, he knew he would have chosen her instead.
Foreboding thoughts of polygamy and infidelity had begun clouding the deepest trenches of his mind.
But no matter how much he abhorred such thoughts, the voices in his mine were constantly shouting much, much louder every time, including thoughts of choosing Alicia’s splendor of beauty over his wife. Soon after, he brought his fantasies into reality, and betrayed Lizzie, in a way that’s purely carnal and void of conscience. Shortly, he wooed Alicia with full might, and she delightedly responded back with similar intensity and attraction. Making out with her beneath the secret chambers of the capsule, he kissed her parts as passionately as he did before, with his wife. It’s all good, it feels so right, and there’s nothing wrong, nobody would know — not even my wife was all he thought, repeatedly, as he released all his energy unto his newfound astro-mistress.
After seven years of disciplined, underground capsule training void of gravity, the Captain said that Hunter was finally receiving the recognition he had been longing for, all his life. Years of hard work were imprinted on a thin piece of paper, certifying his allegiance to the mission and authenticity of the skills he had earned under intense supervision. While letting time pass, the reality dawns on him slowly yet more intensely hour after hour: they were about to go to Mars — and start the first Martian civilization.
Such accomplishment made his eighty-eight co-astronauts truly ecstatic that the mission had finally ended — and two weeks later they were about to defy gravity and conquer Mars. But he didn’t share a big part of such delight; he was feeling empty instead.
He knew that graduating from the mission meant a chance to meet with Lizzie. The mission had brought them apart so much — and a planet apart by two weeks.
He put on his best suit, made sure his beard was well-trimmed, and sprayed on his favorite perfume. And then, standing tall, he smilingly proceeded to meet Lizzie at their favorite restaurant in town. At this most decisive night, when everything seemed to be all right for Lizzie, he made sure that he made the choice that would make him truly happy.
But he didn’t know which decision to make, because happiness wasn’t clearly defined in the first place. Righteousness dictated that he must confess his tale of betrayal — but that would leave her with a shattered soul, suffering eternal regret for ever trusting him. Conversely, happiness dictated that he must hide the truth from her, say his final goodbye, and live a Martian life with Alicia to populate Mars with humans. Utterly ripped apart between two options, he was.
Inevitably, what's right oftentimes interferes with choices that truly make us happy.
But with our happiness at stake, do the rules irrevocably apply?
