Immediately after landing, a rover, Martin, picked us up. He had been living on Mars since 2022 (five years). Martin took us to our living units, which were not too far away. Once we entered them, our acclimatization period began. This took 48 hours and was done to allow our bodies to readjust to gravity after spending half a year in space. Then, we set up the solar panels that we brought with us.
It felt interesting to be on another planet. Jasper, to my surprise was eager to go outside and begin planting fruits and vegetables.
"Why are you so interested in planting out here?" I said.
"I owned the biggest vineyard in France. It has always been my dream to plant stuff outside of France. This is me living my dream," Jasper said.
Everyone going to Mars was going for a specific reason. Matt came because he was a scientist studying Astrobiology back home and wanted to find life on Mars or figure out how to sustain life on Mars. Jill went because she was a motivational speaker on Earth and the founders of the Mars One mission thought she would spread positive energy. They were terribly wrong. Jasper went so he could farm and lastly, I came because I am the best female theoretical physicist in Australia and want to prove string theory on Mars.
Adjusting to our new environment was difficult. In the first week, we all threw up at least twice a day because our bodies couldn't handle the change in environment. One day, we all just looked at each other. Not one word was said, but we knew what the others were thinking.
"What if we don't survive? What if we all died tomorrow?" we all said in our minds.
On day seven, we had a celebration. Matt took our pre-packaged food that was sent with us and turned it into a masterpiece. I still don't know how he made it. Sometimes, I think that it was the thought that Matt himself prepared the food that made it taste so good.
On day 14, we had another celebration, but this one was smaller.
"We gotta stop doing this," Jasper said with food in his mouth.
On day sixteen of our Mars journey, Jasper went outside to get some "fresh" air and monitored the growth of his plants. We all hoped that his plants would develop into food that we could eat. It has been a long time since I was able to eat a fresh strawberry. Every year on my birthday, Andrew would make me waffles with one perfect strawberry on top.
Whenever we left the pods, we wore our special space suits. They measured oxygen dispense levels, pressure equalizers, and many other minor yet important things to keep us alive. In sixteen days, we hadn't experienced any problems, and that was about to change.
Jasper left the pods for the third time that day, as he did multiple times each day. His suit passed all of the tests and seemed to be fine. 30 seconds after leaving the pods, he began to feel different. Jasper began to feel dizzy and saw hallucinations. He knew exactly what was wrong and ran to the doors to get back inside. He was not receiving oxygen.
As I learned many, many years later, the founding fathers back on Earth also knew what was wrong. They knew more than Jasper did himself. We saw him fall to his knees, then on the cold, Martian ground as he banged on the door. He was supposed to be automatically let into the neutral station, where Jasper could take off his suit and put on his regular clothes.
The founding fathers decided to treat this unfortunate incident as an experiment to see how we would respond. They got their answers through a painful experience. Jill thought of Jasper as her brother and was in mourning for longer than Matt and I. Her bitterness morphed into a state of being desperate; like a dog who relies on his master.
"I'll go get his body," Jill quietly told us.
She came back with Jasper's soulless body. We sat down and discussed what we would do with him. We couldn't keep him. After hours of brainstorming, instead of just finding a way to respectfully dispose of his body, we developed a whole religion. For over two weeks, we had been isolated. This wasn't going to change and we quickly lost our faith to whatever religion we believed in before. This was simply because we couldn't relate to it. We developed the Faith of the Martians religion.
The Faith of the Martians religion believes that if we are loyal to our fellow Martians and protect them, they will bless us once they passed. The burial instructions were that the deceased person would be cremated and the ashes would be spread on top of the pods. That way, those who were no longer with us would would be watching over us.
We cremated Jasper and put his ashes on top of our living stations. Jill got to go first, because she had the strongest connection to Jasper, maybe they even dated for a short period of time. Even though we were all still sad, we had to continue on with our mission. There was no one to grow our vegetables.
"Does anyone know how to plant vegetables?" I asked.
"Jasper taught me a few tricks," Jill said.
She went outside, looked at the vegetables, and saw Jasper in them. She saw his soul in the carrots and tomatoes. She saw his soul in the blueberries and blackberries.
