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“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“Martian, you're a Martian. Born on Mars.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t live on Mars.”
“Yes, that’s why we left.”
Grace sighs loudly, pacing around his living room. Just seeing the visible laceration on Simon’s neck and nape makes him want to itch the burn on his arm.
“You’re not from Mars, man,” he scoffs.
“I was born there, but I grew up on Eden.”
“What’s Eden?” Grace gasps, holding his head with both hands.
Simon swallows. “It was home…”
Grace goes to pour himself another cup of coffee while shaking his head. Space madness only happens in movies. It’s fiction. But again, so are sentient rocks. Were. He mutters about space-time continuum, laws of physics and biology.
This is impossible. Mars.
Mars!
Nobody can survive on Mars.
“Thank you for the coffee…,” Simon says, making his way to the door, “I’ll see you around.”
—
“Erid-scientists say Grace 2 ship made from the same material as Hail Mary. Steel, glass, copper. Same technology; sonar, electricity.”
“He says he’s from Mars. That’s the planet right after Earth in our solar system. It’s a desert planet, no water. No life.”
“Maybe made after Grace left Earth? Humans live on Mars, now?” Adrian sings, tapping their foot on the ground.
“No, I think he’s just definitely crazy. Who would ever try to live on Mars? It’s like, the worst planet to live on,” Grace sighs.
“Doctors said brain scans are… acceptable,” Rocky adds. “There was a high level of radiation. Nearly died, like Rocky’s crew.”
“Obviously,” Grace scoffs. “Have you seen him?”
Rocky says no.
“Well, he’s covered in chemical burns. Like, there’s a lot. I’m surprised he doesn’t glow in the dark.”
Grace loses the rock he’d been kicking along his walk. Rocky and Adrian go and play in the waves for a bit while he stands on the beach. He’s been here for a while now, but it never gets old. The back-and-forth of the waves, the soothing sound of it. He likes to keep the window of his room open at night. It lulls him comfortably to sleep like a long-forgotten lullaby his mother used to sing to him. It is a song from Earth.
“His name is Simon, by the way.”
Adrian repeats in Eridian. It sounds pretty. Everything sounds pretty in Eridian, especially when it’s Adrian saying it. It hadn’t taken them long to meet, Adrian being the lead engineer in making Grace’s biosphere. Adrian had immediately welcomed him into their family. They were expecting their new batch of pebbles very soon. Grace had asked to witness the hatching and had been promptly denied, as baby Eridians imprint on the first rock they see.
– “I don’t look like a rock, why would they imprint on me?” Grace had argued.
“Don’t want to risk Grace raising Rocky’s baby. Grace make bad parent,” Rocky had replied. –
He turns around, and as usual, sees Simon watching them from the cliff.
“How is cohabitation going?” Rocky asks.
“Good, good. He’s really friendly, you know. Very warm and welcoming.”
Rocky laughs. He looks up to see Simon and waves at him with his little rocky arms. The man retreats out of sight.
“Don’t freak him out. You guys are probably the weirdest thing he’s seen all his life,” Grace shrugs.
“Give Simon time. Simon was sealed in ship. Sealed from exterior,” Adrian softly says, touching sides with Grace.
“Someone put him in there.”
Grace sighs softly, a familiar ache taking hold of his heart. Despite having made peace with being sent permanently into space, kicking and screaming, he would wonder from time to time what his life on Earth would’ve been like if he had stayed. He would’ve worked for Stratt on ways to slow Earth’s temperature from dropping.
He would've seen his students graduate. They must be grown adults by now, he thinks.
And they’ll grow older and older, because of me, he also thinks.
—
When he comes up to his house, he finds Simon sitting under the tree. His legs are folded under him, and his palm is set on his knee. His face is relaxed, eyes closed. He breathes deeply, his back leaning on the tree. If he hears Grace passing by, he doesn’t show any signs of it. Grace steps closer and closer, but still Simon doesn’t move.
In an effort of connection — human connection, specifically, which is, in Grace’s opinion, a lot more demanding than Eridian connection — he sits by Simon, in the same position, and closes his eyes.
He’s had a couple of yoga classes in college, but he never picked up meditation for himself. Grace’s inner thoughts had always been too loud and too fast for him to ignore and enlighten his conscience.
Yet, he finds himself trying to sync his breathing to Simon’s. Eventually, he manages to follow the slow and deep rhythm of the man’s lungs. He can hear the sea so well from up here. It crashes against the rocky cliff side, creating familiar white noise.
After a few more moments, Simon mutters something under his breath and rises to his feet so seamlessly you wouldn’t have guessed he was on the brink of death just a week ago. Grace looks up to him, and the hand that he stretches towards him.
Grace allows himself to be pulled to his feet. He barely does anything, really. Simon pulls him up effortlessly, his lips curled in a small smile. His hand is calloused, warm. His bicep flexes with the effort.
Grace’s heart swells with the realisation that this is the first time he’s had physical contact with another human in about a decade. He hadn’t thought he ever would again. He wasn’t big on it even back on Earth, which caused some romantic issues, unsurprisingly.
Simon looks up at the branches of the tree. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah. It’s made out of Eridian biological matter, though, not real wood.”
Simon frowns at him before turning around towards his house.
“What? What did I say?” Grace mutters to himself.
As always, the intricacies of human interactions are lost on him. Or maybe Simon is the problem. Yes, perhaps the Martian man who’s arrived here completely drenched in blood is the issue.
—
Every day around faux-sunset, Grace goes for a walk. The temperature artificially drops low enough that he has to put on a second layer under his white sweater. It’s a short walk; he usually walks to his classroom and sits on the benches, watching the waves crawl softly on the shore.
Today, as he descends on the beach, something in the water catches his attention. Rather, someone.
Simon faces away from him, waist-deep into the water. Grace glances down and notices a pile of clothes discarded on the sand.
He holds his breath, frozen in place. This feels like a private moment he shouldn’t be intruding on, but Simon has been nothing but confusing since he got here. Polite and friendly one second, and the next cold and avoidant. Grace feels like he’s back in a lab, doing research. This is just observation, he tells himself.
Simon’s back is muscular well toned. The faux-sunset makes his skin glow near golden. His bandages are off, and even in the low light, Grace can see the deep and large wounds on his body. Large patches of what seems to be burned skin.
There’s a small stub where his arm used to be. The skin is still raw and red.
Simon’s shoulders rise and fall with the beat of the waves, and as the last bit of artificial sun disappears, he dives below the surface.
Grace takes a step forward, a shout nearly escaping his lips, but Simon resurfaces just a few moments later with a loud gasp for air. He pushes his hair back from his face with his hand.
Simon sinks into the water again, keeping his head above this time. Grace finally decides to step closer to the water. The sound of his footsteps alerts Simon, who finally turns around. It’s too dark now to make out his features, but with Grace’s luck, he must not be too happy about seeing him here.
“Sorry if I interrupted your walk,” Simon says, sounding sincere.
“No, no, I’m the one interrupting your… swim.”
“I’m cleansing myself,” Simon answers, slowly rising out of the water. He is completely nude, walking through the surf, unfazed by Grace’s presence.
Grace averts his eyes, while Simon makes for his clothes. Grace remembers waking up pretty ripped from his coma, but Simon is strong, hardened by life. He’s shorter, but not by much.
“The elders used to tell us that to be born again, you had to be submerged by the sea,” Simon says softly as he puts his pants on. He doesn’t seem to have brought his shirt with him. “That the sea would cleanse us of our sins and fears, and upon resurfacing, you would be reborn as new.”
“The Elders from Eden?”
“Yes,” he answers, sitting on the sand.
Grace sits beside him, bringing his knees up. “It’s called a baptism, where I’m from. On Earth.”
“Baptism,” Simon repeats. “Never thought that it could ever exist. Water as far as the eye can see.”
“Do you know how to swim?”
Simon laughs, an unfamiliar sound coming from him. “I don’t.”
“I could teach you,” Grace offers, shrugging.
Simon shakes his head, digging his feet into the sand. “I think I’ve had enough of oceans for the rest of my life.”
A red, dark sea flashes behind Grace’s eyes. The surface is still and silent. There are no waves on this sea; the water is too thick. He runs his hand across his face, head spinning from sudden vertigo.
“It’s made of human blood,” Grace whispers. Outside the ship, inside the ship, he was told it had been flooded by it, too.
Grace stares at the dark sea before them. It’s pitch black. “Your ship, it’s…”
“It's a submarine, made of scraps.”
“Oh,” Grace says, lying down on his back. His breath quickens, and he sets his hands on his stomach, feeling his belly rise and fall. Fear. You can’t quite prepare yourself for it.
“We don’t have that on Earth. We have good ol’ boring, regular H2O oceans.”
“Like this one?”
“Yes, but much bigger. Earth’s surface is 71% water.”
Simon whistles, impressed. Grace turns his head towards him, and that’s when he notices something hanging from Simon’s neck. It’s small and circular, but he can’t quite make out what it is through the dark.
“This moon that they sent me on, it was covered in an ocean.”
“An ocean of blood,” Grace adds. He wonders briefly who “they” are, but abstains from it. One thing at a time. Perhaps Simon needs to unpack this slowly, to see through the fog.
“Warm blood, too. It got so hot inside the SM-13. The deeper I sank, the warmer it got.”
Ew, Grace thinks, though it makes sense. “That’s… horrifying. I’m guessing you didn’t volunteer for the job.”
Simon pauses, his gaze still fixated on the water.
“No,” he answers simply.
Grace gets the hint, and a very strong sense of camaraderie and sympathy grows in him.
“This trip in space was a one-way ticket for me. I was a last resort. I wasn’t meant to go alone, but my other crewmates died before we even got there.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry you had to go in an ocean of blood. But look at us now. Despite our bad fortunes, we made it. We’re safe on Erid, with a beautiful sea and a beautiful tree.”
Simon hums, perhaps not convinced that this is the best outcome for them.
Grace believes that Simon ended up on Erid for the same reason Grace and Rocky found each other. Right time, right place.
—