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Mark never bothered to keep track of what the Earth-date was while on Mars. What was the point? All that mattered was how many days he’d managed to survive, how many days he could manage to survive, and how many days were left until he might be able to get off this rock.
(That’s not true. He had kept track of the days. Until that first Martian Christmas. He’d thought it would be cool. First man to spend Christmas on Mars. It wasn’t.)
It had been easier not to think about it. Not to think about the holidays and family get-togethers and birthdays and special events he was missing.
So he doesn’t notice when his birthday passes, near the end of his first year on Mars.
(His first year on Mars. God, that’s a depressing thought. He’ll be gone before he makes it to two years, though. One way or another.)
He’s busy modifying the rovers for the roadtrip to Schiaperelli, spending his daylight hours doing back-breaking modifications and his evenings running and re-running the math. He hasn’t converted sols to their equivalent Earth-date in over nine months, and hasn’t really been thinking in terms like “month” in longer than that.
On Mars, it’s just an endless, ever-growing number of sols stuck on the red planet.
(NASA notices; the cafeteria serves cupcakes. The crew aboard the Hermes notice; they’re quieter than usual at dinner. In Chicago, Mark’s parents notice; his mother holds his baby photos and cries. Around the world, people raise glasses in a quiet toast. No-one really feels like celebrating. With Pathfinder broken, NASA has been unable to contact Mark for over a month.)
In a strange coincidence, Mark is the first astronaut to ever celebrate a birthday while on another planet.
It’s one of the few “firsts” that Mark doesn’t celebrate. Or even notice.
—X—
They’re almost home when Mark’s birthday rolls around again. Less than 30 days from entering Earth’s orbit, the Hermes has already begun her deceleration and they’re right on track for their return. Mark has been spending as much time as possible in the rec, watching Earth get closer through the windows.
He’s feeling melancholic and strangely nervous about his return (prompted in part by the ever-increasing ramp up of NASA’s PR machine), which is why he doesn’t notice the rest of the crew being odder than usual. He barely registers the increased observation and the conversations that abruptly end when he enters the room.
If he thinks about it at all, it’s fleeting and easily filed away as just another example of the crew worrying over him.
(The crew is worrying over him, but not for the reasons he suspects. The week before Mark’s birthday, they expect to start hearing about. They expect Mark to be bouncier and crack more jokes and generally drive them all (fondly) mad with cheesy birthday advice. They’ve learned, through years of training and on the journey to Mars, that birthdays were a thing for Mark.
So when Mark shows absolutely no indication of his usual birthday cheer, when he in fact shows no indication of realizing that it’s his birthday at all, the crew worries.
Vogel is, surprisingly, the one to guess the cause, and once he points it out, it makes a terrible kind of sense for the entire crew.
They immediately begin to plot.)
So Mark’s profoundly surprised when Beth slides something in front of him one night after dinner. It’s a small cake covered in chocolate frosting and someone (Mark suspects Martinez and his secret artistic inclinations) has used gummi bears to make a crude image of a candle.
He blinks at the cake, then looks up at the crew. Who are all staring at him and pulling various things wrapped in plain paper from pockets and from under the table.
“Happy birthday, Mark,” Chris says quietly, and Mark feels like a giant fist has just squeezed his heart.
He has to swallow hard to keep from crying and can’t think of a single thing to say.
The crew understands.
(Mark eats the entire cake himself and no-one objects, not even Chris who would normally kill someone for chocolate. The presents are small, just trinkets from each crew member’s personal effects or something small they made. Vogel, it turns, is extraordinarily good at origami.)
(Lewis gives him a mixtape of disco music. This is the gift that makes him cry, even as he swears and threatens to burn it with fire. If, in the end, he tucks it away next to his picture of his parents, well, nobody really needs to know.)