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Martinez came sauntering in Mark's room about forty-eight hours after the rescue and threw himself down in the bedside chair.
All his other crewmates had been walking on eggshells since he arrived, asking only careful questions and their conversations stopping as soon as Mark was in earshot.
Martinez put his feet up on Mark’s bed and asked curiously, "So what was it like?"
Mark was sore. Every breath hurt, every piece of him felt all the forces of the G's he'd endured. His eyelids perpetually felt like sandbags. Despite it all, alongside the force of thrust that took him off the planet, there was this absolute hurtling relief.
Mark had no idea how many more times he was going to be asked this question, over and over for the rest of his life. In that moment, he didn't want anyone to walk on eggshells, he wanted to be treated normally. For him and Martinez, a serious answer wouldn’t be normal, so he said, "Boring, man."
Martinez said, "We should've just shot some magazines down to you instead then."
Mark smiled, despite how sore he was. He'd missed a good exchange of wit, it certainly wasn't boring. Even if Martinez would never truly know the extent of what Mark meant, and he sure as hell wasn't about to admit it.
It should have been hard to be bored when his entire life was on the line, every second of the day. But once the days stretched into weeks into months without an end to the stress, he developed an almost hysterical boredom.
In the HAB, it was alright because there was always something to do, and if there wasn't something to do, then there was room to make something up. But the journey to Ares 4 was practically torture. The actual driving was okay, but then there was the waiting. Sitting beside the solar panels and left alone with only thoughts and time.
There was no room to be a human being. Just enough physical space to transport his little air bubble across Mars. He'd watched every show and listened to every song available to him. Mark found boredom on the orange sands with dozens of hours to waste waiting for the panels to charge. And boredom was a deceptively dangerous thing.
An intense claustrophobia manifested at the worst moments, filling him with a horrible desire to shed his space suit. A small voice in the back of his head suggesting that if he wasn't alive anymore, this whole thing would swiftly become a non-issue.
Mark had tried not to pace because it seemed like a waste of calories, but sometimes it was the only way he felt he could get from one moment to the next. He'd never admitted it, not even to the video log, but there was more than one occasion where he struggled to identify if he was listening to his own interior monologue or if he was legitimately hearing voices.
That was about the time he took up singing to himself in the space suit, because the ringing of his own voice was better than the complete silence that could be filled with a terrifying anything. Singing through any song he could recall moved to reciting the plots of books and movies. He did this until there was none more that he could remember without outside prompts. And there were no outside prompts on Mars.
That boredom was penetrating and absolute. Getting to the MAV and having a complicated task to complete was helpful, but there still wasn't truly room to be a person. On the Hermes now, he had room to be a person again.
So two days into broken ribs, Mark told Martinez it was boring. Judging by the look on his face, Martinez didn't really believe him.
But Mark didn't want to explain himself further. He said, “As long as they aren’t your magazines, dude, keep those to yourself.”
Martinez took the hint and moved away from the topic. “Sounds good, I’ll see if the Commander brought any Disco 45 with her.”
Mark groaned and tried to hit Martinez with his pillow.
Seventeen days after his rescue, Vogel was supervising Mark on the treadmill. The doctors micromanaging Mark from Earth had tasked Vogel with babysitting him to make sure he didn’t strain himself doing light exercise.
Mark didn't mind the constant babysitters he had since he arrived back on the Hermes because holy fuck it was better than being alone.
"Got something on your mind?" Mark asked because Vogel was frowning at him as if he were working out a puzzle on the side of Mark's face.
Mark was sweating and wiped it quickly. He wasn't enthusiastic about looking weak, but he also didn't want Vogel to leave him alone to struggle.
"Can I ask about your experience there? What was it like?" Vogel asked.
Mark said, without much thought, "Lonely."
Of course it was lonely, he was the only human being on an entire planet. In the beginning, before he had any idea that NASA was watching, was a period of incomparable loneliness.
Back then, Mark had a word on the tip of his tongue. And such was the nature of being alone that he alone could not remember the word, and had no way to find out the word. He could only run the definition over and over in his mind: The idea that the self is the only thing that exists, that when you die, you take the world with you.
There was a single word that encompassed this idea, but Mark couldn't remember it. In that period of extreme loneliness, he was obsessed with it.
Mark told the camera as he paced the length of the HAB, "I'm thinking about how... this experience I'm having right here, it is the only reality I know. It is, in fact, the only reality I'll ever know. Nothing I do can ever change that. And the pain and the uncertainty and suffering I'm experiencing, that is the only reality that exists. There are only two options here. One, I continue to suffer. Two, I don't."
Hard and long silence.
"Every minute longer I choose to keep this reality alive I wonder if it's the right choice. Because this reality sucks but I don't get another one. If I throw it away, there won't be suffering but there won't be anything else either. And what unique suffering I have. Is it fair of me to even think about giving it up?"
Mark sat heavily in his desk chair and spun in a sad circle. He rubbed his face with both hands and said through his fingers, "What is that word? What is that stupid word?"
When he made contact with NASA, text communication was good but it was missing humanity. There were no voices; there was no touch. Sometimes typing half an hour back and forth only served to increase that physical sense of loneliness, that they were so far away, and Mark had only himself within arms reach.
Occasionally Mark saw people standing there out of the corner of his eyes. At first, he would whip around, his heart pounding frantically as he thought he wasn't alone. It lasted for a delirious second before the mild hallucination vanished the moment it was no longer in his periphery. After a while, he would remain still when he saw them and bask in that momentary hope before he turned and broke it. After almost a year on Mars, if he thought he saw someone, he would just close his eyes.
It wasn't a hope anymore, it was a torture.
Mark told Vogel it was lonely. Vogel's eyes crinkled in sympathy, and he said, "I'm glad you're with us now."
"Me too, buddy." Mark smiled.
He ran a little longer, until Vogel's watch beeped. Then they sat on the rec room floor and Mark stretched slowly and carefully, mindful of his healing ribs.
"Can I ask you a weird question?" Mark said.
"I've come to expect it," Vogel replied, calmly.
Mark laughed, then said, "What's the word for when you think you're the only person in the universe with a mind and if you die, the universe dies with you?"
Vogel raised an eyebrow. He replied, easy as can be, "Solipsism."
"Solipsism," Mark repeated, slow. It was the right word, the one he'd been wondering about for over a year. And because there was another human, he was able to know it, instantly. Mark's eyes watered without his consent, and he knew he wasn't alone anymore. He choked out, "Thanks."
Vogel's expression was a little dark, a little confused, but nonetheless he said, "You're welcome.”
The day before they touched down on Earth, Commander Lewis had breakfast with Mark.
There was something painful in her expressions, lurking behind relieved smiles and steady eyes. There were many things she didn't say to him. Many things Mark could read between the lines about because he was a smart guy, and he knew her.
There was that guilt. The heavy burden that despite his rescue, lingered, and there wouldn't be much that could dissolve it but time.
But Mark wasn't one to sit by, and he wanted to help. So when the inevitable conversation came, and Commander Lewis asked, "What was it like?"
Mark said, "It wasn't that bad, really."
Lewis didn't leave it there. She said, "Come on."
"Really," Mark replied, thinking about the good days he had and letting the victory of it spread over his teeth as he smiled. "For real, Commander. You were there. Just add a couple more days."
"And a few less people." It was clear that Commander Lewis did not buy his words in the way her eyes narrowed.
Mark shrugged. He thought for a moment how to put it so honestly that she would believe him. He settled on, "There are some experiences I had that I wouldn't trade away. That's why you go to space, right?"
Commander Lewis visibly swallowed, and looked away. It would be along time before that guilt wouldn't be there, but Mark would happily show up and pester her until it was gone.
And he wasn't lying. There were some parts of the experience that he honestly cherished. There were other parts he could not articulate even if he had a million years.
The moment he uncovered Pathfinder. That first moment of communication with NASA. The first potato plant leaf. Hearing his teammates' voices. A hundred tiny moments of success after a million moments of failure. The world coming together to save him. That time he got to remind one of NASA's micromanaging supposed 'botanists' that no, he couldn't eat the leftover fucking potato plants, because they are nightshade , and where did you get your degree?
It took someone incredibly special to be an astronaut. Mark had never in his life felt like he'd reached his full potential, and now he could safely say at least he'd come close. It was a good feeling.
Mark had a hundred memories of watching the Martian sunrise, of dancing like no one was watching, of singing his little human heart out, of triumph and of science and of success.
Mark was the unique owner of an experience, and it could not be shared or expressed, it could only be held inside him -- the bad, sure, but the good too. In this way, the solipsism was real: when he eventually died, this experience would be taken out of existence from the only person who'd ever had it.
He wasn't lying to Commander Lewis because he had been gifted something that no one else would ever have. He gave her a real smile, and didn't stop until she gave one back.
The reporters on the ground asked him relentlessly, "What was it like? Mark, Mark, what was it like on Mars?"
Mark tried to think of a different answer every time.
"It was a little past my bedtime, but I pushed through."
"Too red, have they ever heard of an interior decorator?"
"The accommodations were good but the service was awful."
"The aliens are much cooler than you guys."
"A disco prison camp."
"Like the world's worst potato farming simulator. Wait, can I say world? Mars' worst potato farming simulator."
A lot of those got him in trouble, but who was going to stop him now? HR tried to, but he just said, "Should've left me on Mars then."
Mark didn't bother giving any reporters or paparazzi a real answer. They weren't asking because they cared, after all.
When NASA asked during a long meeting, Mark said, "Educational."
He meant it in a hundred ways. Mark learnt about Mars, not just in the 'learn Mars or die' way, but also in a scientific way. He also learned how to do his crewmates' tasks and specialities.
He learned about himself. About what he was capable of. About how far he could go, and he discovered it was a lot further than he would've guessed.
He learned through trial and error; he learned through the scientists micromanaging him; he learned from books left behind; and he learned more lyrics to disco songs than he ever wanted to know.
Vincent Kapoor smiled at him. “Do you think you might like to share what you learned someday?”
Mark paused for almost too long before replying, “I… I mean, maybe?”
He thought about it for a long time afterwards because this question of 'what was Mars like' came up near daily, and Mark had yet to ever come up with a good answer. One that he felt was true to what his experience was like.
Beth asked him on his birthday. Everyone went out for drinks and celebrated Mark being alive. He laughed so hard his stomach hurt. In a crowded bar Beth said, "You've got to tell us more, Mark! What was it really like?"
There was no way to really summarize over a year of his life in what was essentially accidental solitary confinement. He was drunk and he wanted to make Beth laugh. So he said, "It was weird as hell."
The crew laughed obligingly. They asked how. Mark tried to tell them. But he couldn't capture how weird it was with words. The absolutely surreal moments that hit him over and over -- he was alone on a planet; he was alone on Mars. The sheer number of fuckery circumstances that could lead to that happening were staggering. And he could see in Beth's eyes that she knew he was just playing around, but for the sake of his birthday she let him talk about blowing himself up and farming in his own shit. She laughed with everyone else, but didn't stop watching him with that knowing look.
Halfway through his own party, Mark felt like he couldn’t breathe anymore. Like he was standing in the HAB and it burst and sucked all the air out. Except he wasn’t there, he was in a crowded bar with all the people who loved him.
Looking at their faces, feeling the throngs of people around him, he couldn’t stand another second of it. He mumbled an excuse and left, sweating. Their eyes followed, and Beth called after him.
But it was Chris who joined him outside. He sat beside Mark in a damp alleyway and pressed their shoulders together. The silence rang in Mark's ears.
The difference here was that Chris didn't ask. Mark soaked in the company. He found there were words clogging his throat. He mumbled, "It was so fucking terrifying."
Everything came spilling out at once, tripping over his tongue in the haste to escape the pressurized emotions in his chest.
The uncertainty, the constant unending unknown, the struggle to survive, the struggle to breathe , the airlock, the lack of food, the lack of people, the lack of almost anything, including good music.
Mark talked and talked about the terror that never left, that exhausted him almost more than the hard labor ever did, how he felt strung up even now that he was safe, that he dreamt every single night that he was still trapped there and coming home was a dream, that he thought he was going to die. He'd wanted to go home, of course, but the only scenarios he could imagine were death on every side and it was too much to handle for just one person.
Chris gave him a hug and didn't let go for a long time. Mark leaned into it and pressed his nose into Chris' shoulder, took several shuddering breaths.
"That must have been so hard." Chris said at last, tone heavy, not moving away. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."
Mark felt a wash of relief, of vindication, of sadness. He murmured, "Thanks."
He was glad he told Chris. The immediate validation of his experience and the tight hug were exactly what he wanted and didn't know how to ask for.
Mark became a teacher for multiple reasons, of course. The whole ‘teaching a younger generation to survive’ thing was important. He was taking the experience he had and putting good into the world with it, paying back all the people who helped him survive the un-survivable.
But everyday as Mark came up with a lesson plan, he found his most selfish motivation for teaching these classes was that it meant he could spend a lot of time properly coming up with an answer to the question 'what was it like?'. And that meant talking for almost hundreds of hours, and helping to take that traumatizing experience and reduce it from something that hurt and overwhelmed him, to a digestible lesson plan. It helped Mark come to terms to what happened to him, what he had to do, and how fucking lucky he was to have survived.
Mark stood in front of a class everyday and answered the question 'what was it like being alone on Mars' and it was not a one-word answer. It was long-winded, complicated, and he had a constant captive audience. It was the ultimate spit in the face to the idea of solipsism, that he was taking the universe he'd created and sharing it, so it would never die.
It didn't get much better than that.