Binary Systems [Complete, Slice-of-Life Sci-Fi Romance]

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Gordon: What will it be like, on Mars?

Marie: Well, you'll lose some weight.

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Sol 492 FY 26, 10:53 Mars Time, Bonestell Crater Colony, Hab Layer, 9.32.002.B

Gordon stepped off the ship, looking around at the stark mesas bathed in thin pink light.

Marie ran forward to greet him, only to feel her smile falter at his familiar face, tight with what she recognized as repulsion and fear.

"Everyone's shrunken and withered—you're all dying," he said. "What have you done to me?"

She looked down, her graceful pertness and slender curves shriveled to sticks and angles—nothing left of what he had loved. She smiled up at him a death's head smile. "Mars was always death," she crooned to him, reaching out with skeletal arms to receive him.

Marie woke up in a cold sweat.

That, she thought, had been truly draining.

From what little Gordan had been willing to say on the topic, she had gathered that she was probably not Claire's favorite person. It wasn't a happy thought, but she could understand it. One of the first big limits on humans going into space had always been human physiology. That truth hadn't changed just because they had figured out how to build an infrastructure to keep people alive once they got somewhere. Humans were built for Earth—gravity, atmospheric density, radiation shielding, phosphorus and nitrogen cycles for plants, trace elements, and oxygen for breathing.

This was her work. This was literally what she did: reclamation of resources, balancing of nutrients. Living and breathing this stuff, she knew Claire had a point.

Mars was not meant for humans to live on.

Gordon had touched briefly on a topic they had apparently discussed before: Why would you even want to go to Mars? Why would we pay people to go and maybe die on Mars? What benefit does that serve humanity?

And, of course, she had heard him bring up all the old arguments—the classic not putting all of humanity's eggs in one basket, for example. She knew that was a fallacious argument, though it had been taken seriously enough to shape the colony as it currently existed. Without a viable breeding population, after all, the Martian project risked being deemed a failure before it even began. Many, many more people had been given the opportunity to go to Mars than perhaps had been strictly warranted.

But she considered another reason—one she found more noble.

They were pioneers.

The pioneer spirit hadn't died with the end of the Old West. The settler's spirit hadn't faded after the Northwest, Alaska, Canada, Siberia. Running out of new, horrible places to live—horrible only because no one had yet made them paradises—didn't fundamentally change people. In fact, the call of the unknown, the desire to put down roots by your own effort, to make something of yourself in a new land, to get your name put on a mountain—these were real driving forces.

Her parents had been part of that first Martian wave.

For her, the argument was something more like this: There's no excuse to force someone to be a pioneer, and there's no excuse to prevent someone who wants to from going—to stop them from spreading the frontier of humanity.

Her tiny water heater turned cold, and she stepped out of the shower reluctantly. If Mars really needed one thing, it was more textiles, she thought, as the air dryer kicked on—several notches too cold, as always. She watched the droplets race away across her skin, leaving gooseflesh behind.

She was in an odd mood.

The idea that anyone could make Earth so bad that Mars became a better option—because of climate change or something—was ludicrous. She knew that. She knew she should explain to Gordon that people had come for adventure. People had come to reinvent themselves. People had come to get their names on something, to make discoveries no one else had made before.

And she had been an accident.

It wasn't the kind of truth you told the press when, for the tenth time, they asked, What's it like being the first human born on Mars? Can you tell us your parents' story?

Oh, well, they were two twenty-somethings with a close working relationship. They got a few too many drinks, didn't use birth control.

Charming.

She really hated that story.

As if most humans had ever been born for grand or romantic reasons. More had been born because their parents needed farmhands, someone to watch the sheep, to pick up the wheat stalks, to water the herds.

Her bed let out a deep, familiar thrumming note as she put her weight on it, the wire-mesh hammock design unique to her Martian setting. People on Earth had mattresses made of textiles and foam rubber, but she got wires and springs. People on Earth printed on paper instead of foil.

She wondered if she would have loved hardcopy books more if they had been made of paper.

The cold metal leeched the remnant heat from the shower away from her on contact, but its porosity meant she could just lie back and let the residual moisture wick away, a tradeoff which had always been worth it to her. She busied herself with a comb, listening to the faint pat, pat sounds of droplets falling to the painted cement floor beneath her bed. The silence around her was a pleasant contrast to the storm of thoughts inside her head—a fleeting luxury, as she would soon leave for work.

She had tried to tell herself that she didn't have anything to worry about. That there wasn't anything else Gordon wanted than she could provide. Or, if there was, that it wasn't as easy as his just reaching out and taking it.

But now she knew that was a lie.

All he had to do was say 'yes'. Karen would be in his arms a moment later. It was … well, pretty damn obvious.

She could hear her own voice in her head, repeating similar lines to those she'd told her father: That will be true when he's here in person, too. If you can't trust him now, you'll never be able to trust him.

It had been so much easier before.

And awkward though the other girl had been, she seemed… nice.

Karen had been there for him. Through thick and thin, through upheavals and fights with his father, since high school age. Marie had hesitated to say anything mostly because she didn't want to deprive Gordon of a major part of his support network—one she couldn't replace herself.

That seemed unfair. Selfish.

But she was starting to realize that there might come a time when selfishness was warranted.

She wasn't 100% sure she hadn't already reached that point.

She readied her plastic pressure suit—Nylon, synthetic and scratchy, couldn't compare to cotton—the greenhouse-grown luxury she saved for her duvet and her intimates.

In the worst-case scenario, they could always send off for a shipment of thread and wait, but if they were to run out of food, there would be no such option.

She rolled on her work socks, slick sleeves of synth-thread that made walking on her painted floor more like figure skating. She stepped into the undersleeve for the pressure suit—an uncomfortable, form-fitting garment tailored exactly to her figure, with memory gel in all the strategic hollows—backs of the knees, inside elbows, between her thighs, other places. It was designed to prevent soft tissue rearrangement in low-pressure emergencies. It was even less pleasant and more invasive than it sounded. Especially the first fitting.

The gel was cold. She shivered as her flesh made contact, winced as it clung just enough to make seating it difficult. It squelched as she moved, and she had to shift her hips to let the trapped bubbles out.

Every small motion met resistance. The elastic material pushed back just enough to stop even the smallest gap from forming between skin and suit. A gap meant bruising. Or worse, tissue literally flowing from one place to another.

It was undignified. It was indisputably worth it.

The first pressure suits had used clay, packed into bodily cavities to prevent decompression. She'd never been sure which would be worse.

Over that, the pressure suit itself, an elastic garment with tubes running along the seams, each ready to be inflated to draw the whole thing tight around her and prevent her from being harmed by the low Martian pressure during an atmosphere loss or a trip outside. If she could say anything nice about her suit, at least it breathed well where the undersleeve wasn't rubberized. A matching canister of pressurized CO₂ hung off her thigh—ready to inflate the compression tubes at a touch of the switch. Her oxygen and helmet mount was part of her backpack cum shoulder harness, and fortunately not something she was required to maintain at home. Hair net. Work gloves—plain synth leather, for protecting her fingers, to be swapped for pressure gloves if an occasion arose for it. Steel toes, for falling objects. Hard hat, same—for use until she got her atmosphere pack and helmet. Better to get battered than to suffocate.

All that, with a dash of eyeliner, and she was as ready as she'd ever be.

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She looked herself up and down in the mirror. All her curves had been erased by the hard-nosed, this-is-war, people Martian aesthetic. She was going to risk her life, and she was going to look drab doing it.

"Well, you look mournful," said Vera as Marie emerged, ready for work.

"Did something happen? He didn't dump you, did he?" The older woman, hair lightly sprinkled with steel and iron bands, shot her a compassionate look. She'd been lounging, fully suited up including her toolkit, against the opposite wall, teacup in hand. It was still steaming.

Marie shot her a fake glare. The transition from being alone to being chatty was always harder after a nightmare.

"I'm just saying, you look really sad."

"I might be," Marie admitted, "But I don't have a good reason to be."

"That's the kind of self-talk we talked about," Vera chided, easily falling into stride with her shorter companion. "It's not 'I don't have a reason'. It's 'I have a reason, and I don't like the reason I have'—isn't it."

"Maybe," Marie admitted. "I did a digital conference last night—well, early, early this morning. I got to meet Gordon's friends afterward."

"And you're feeling self-conscious," Vera said. "Aren't you?"

"Yes."

They walked along the corridors, Vera brushing her hands along the potted rosemary stalks as she passed. Marie had once asked her parents why people did that, and was told 'for luck'—a founder's superstition she'd never been passed. Her mother didn't approve of such things.

"I was so confident," Marie confessed. "I didn't think I had anything to worry about, with Gordon."

"And what changed? Did he do something wrong?" Vera's voice was patient.

"No. But I saw his best friend. And she's … gorgeous. Strong, fearless, with long golden hair—."

"—You know better than that," Vera chided. "And I don't think you need me to tell you how pretty you are, either. You've got legions of followers who would like nothing better than to set you down in their lap... No, girlie—think it through. Nothing has changed. Everything is still the same as it was before your call. Except now you know more about the situation you're in. That should be a good thing, shouldn't it?"

"I guess," Marie admitted. "But knowing something and feeling it are two different things. How do you actually live like that?"

"You practice," Vera said cheerfully. "We don't come out of the womb thinking right. You have to put in the work."

Marie gave her a skeptical look.

"You're not convinced?"

"I'm just not sure how that's supposed to make me feel better."

They passed the outer airlock border for the residential area. Vera did not put down her teacup.

"She was nice," Marie admitted, partially to fill the silence. "But she's one of those really flirty people. Really flirty. With no boundaries. Picture Jillian—but with adult confidence."

Vera raised a brow.

"And you're letting yourself think that just because she's flirty and doesn't have boundaries for herself, that she gets to be flirty and have no boundaries with your boyfriend?"

Marie hesitated.

"That's not how relationships work," Vera continued. "That's not how boundaries… happen. Boundaries in a relationship are set by the lowest common denominator of what you're both willing to accept. If he's willing to be careful with it and you're not comfortable, then it's not comfortable. And if it's not comfortable, you either set limits, or you shouldn't be together."

Marie sighed.

"I don't feel like I have the right. I never said we were exclusive."

Vera rolled her eyes.

"He's the one dating the Martian princess. Whatever you said out loud or not, he knows."

Marie looked worried, and knew she looked worried and her eyebrows just wouldn't stop making sad shapes.

"He knows he's talking about moving to Mars. You don't do that for a fling." her mentor said in her cracked, well-meaning voice.

Marie opened her mouth.

Vera held up a hand. "Excuse me, let me clarify—you might say you'll follow someone over to Mars for a fling. You wouldn't actually move to Mars for a fling."

Marie gave her a look, and Vera shrugged. "That's if you're a terrible person. But I tend to trust your judgment a little more than that. So—let's talk access and attraction. You say she's a looker. Well, sometimes pretty people end up surrounded by pretty people. You should see my social circle—it's got you in it!" Vera winked, but Marie didn't respond. "—well. Thing is, if he's driven to cheat, he'd lower his standards and cheat, attractive people being available or not. If he's driven to stay faithful to you, having attractive friends won't override that choice."

She leaned back, considering. "My guess? This guy is an idealist. I don't get the feeling he's trying to pull one over on you. But what do I know? I've never met him. You could be missing signs. If you're not telling me about them, I can't say for sure."

She tapped her fingers against the table. "What I'm trying to say is: if your gut tells you to worry, then look at its track record. Has your gut always been right? Mostly right? Or is it just a silly little worrywart, and you need to listen to your brain instead?"

Marie exhaled. "It's the second one," she admitted.

Vera raised an eyebrow as Marie's expression shifted to one of sudden defiance. "Have you ever had this conversation with someone, and it wasn't the second one?" Marie challenged.

"Well, I don't know," Vera deflected. "Some people are very intuitive."

Marie gave her a flat look. "No?"

"No," Vera conceded. "Okay, everybody's a little worrywart about something. That's how you know you care. What's important is that you think before you act on caring."

Marie nodded, thinking back to her dream. "Yeah—I'm pretty sure I care about him. Had a nightmare, last night." She told Vera the details briefly as they donned their atmosphere packs, a simple matter of stepping under it, releasing it to drop onto her body, and then doing up three ratcheting straps till finger-tight. The neckpiece, necessary for mounting the helmet's dome, always made her feel like she needed to pop her neck.

"So," the woman said, "you're telling me you want to drag some poor Earth boy all the way to Mars, and you've got this far in the relationship without thinking about what that'll mean for his health? Marie, I know you can do better than this."

"No, we've talked about it. I just never felt it, like that."

Vera ratchetted her own straps closed with rapid surety, then reclaimed her teacup. Now out on the engineering floor, the older woman secured her own hard hat. Unlike Marie, she didn't seem to feel the need for a hair net—she just tightly braided her hair and pinned it in a coil on the side of her head.

A quick climb up two sets of steel steps and they'd reached Vera's workshop. How the woman had pride of place, a loft so close to the entrance, Marie had never asked. It didn't stop her from wondering. The older lady refilled her own cup from a thermos, though the resultant cup didn't steam, and then filled a second one which she presented to Marie.

"Tell Aunty Vera everything," she commanded peremptorily, perching on her desk like a gossip-hungry hawk might.

"Well. First off, I'm not dragging him anywhere, Vera. I just—well, I guess I want to know if he'd even want to come. If it's even worth hoping for." She stared into her tea as if it held answers. "Everyone and their mom keeps telling me what a 'catch' Gordon is. Realistically, he may not even want to move to Mars. It might not be worth it to him. He'll lose muscle mass. He'll age faster. He might not live as long. And the lifestyle here... it's just so different. Why would he give all that up? It's so expensive to travel here, and it costs more than a years' salary to pay for the visa, and he'd be giving up everything his family wants for him...."

Vera tilted her head, the smirk softening into something more thoughtful. "You're overthinking it," she said after a moment. "First of all, you need to stop obsessing about the money. You're acting like it's some insurmountable hurdle. It's not. Money is just a tool. Those who have it know it, and those who don't figure it out eventually. It's not magic."

Marie glanced up, brow furrowed. "Easy for you to say."

Vera chuckled. "Oh, don't get me wrong—I've been broke before. I know what it's like to scrape by. But listen: if someone wants something badly enough, they'll find a way. There are always two ways to get to a goal. One way is money. The other is the hard way. If your boy really wants to come to Mars, he'll figure it out. He'll either get the money or earn passage some other way. Maybe he'll work as a crewmember or find another angle. It'll be slow, sure, but it's doable. The real question isn't whether he can afford it. The question is: does he want to come?"

Marie hesitated. "I don't know. I guess... that's what I'm trying to figure out."

"Well, you'd better figure it out before you invest too much in the idea," Vera said, her tone softening again. "Because you know as well as I do: it's a one-way trip. You know how quickly the human body adapts to low gravity. Sure, you might be young enough to handle the therapy and muscle training if you wanted to return to Earth now, but it'd be hell. He's young too, yeah? But keep him here a few years to acclimate and realize he'll never adjust, give him the few years older than you that he is, and the therapy on return gets harder and harder sounding. He might never make it back."

Marie looked down, her fingers tightening around the mug. "I know. That's part of why I'm so scared to even ask him about it. What if he eventually didn't want to stay? What if he blamed me for what he lost here?"

"That's the risk," Vera said simply. "But here's the thing–If you're going to let him come here to be with you, make sure his eyes are open about the risks. Let him know what to expect. It's a whole different way of life. The work, the schedules, the tight-knit community... not everyone can handle it. Some people need the anonymity of a big city. They can't stand being in everyone's business all the time, and Mars doesn't have a lot of places to hide."

Marie nodded slowly, and Vera leaned forward, her smirk returning. "Now, let me guess. You're still worried about the long-distance thing, aren't you? Whether he's willing to stay loyal while you're up here and he's down there."

Marie's cheeks flushed, and she looked away. "I mean... maybe. I told him I didn't want to hear any promises, once, what with our situation; and I haven't really talked about monogamy since then, but I kind of expect it and like you said he probably knows that."

Vera gave her a stern look. "Marie," she said, "Men are a lot of things, but they are terrible at reading between the lines. Despite this, I suspect, what with one thing and another, that this grand-gestures-making-man who is having a very public romance with you has probably got the memo about not chasing strange tail, so you know what I think?"

"No?"

"I think you're trying to set yourself up to not be an injured party, since if he technically didn't cheat he's not a cheater. That's horse-shit. If he cheated, he's a cheater. If you are willing to forgive cheating, forgive it. If not, don't."

Marie's cheeks grew even redder, and she let out a weak laugh.

"Seriously, though. You're dancing around this like you're afraid to name what you want. If monogamy matters to you—and it sounds like it does—then you need to say that. Not in some roundabout, 'he probably gets it' way, but clearly. You're not protecting yourself by avoiding the conversation. You're just making sure you'll have more regrets if things go sideways."

Marie frowned, staring into her mug. "I just... I don't want to scare him off. I mean, it's already a lot. The distance, the uncertainty, Mars..." She trailed off, then glanced up at Vera. "What if I push too hard and it's the thing that breaks us?"

Vera raised an eyebrow. "And what if not saying anything is the thing that breaks you? Relationships don't fall apart because people set boundaries, Marie. They fall apart because people don't communicate. You're worried about scaring him off? Fine. But if you're too scared to say what you want, what does that say about where you two are now?"

Marie opened her mouth, then shut it again, biting her lip. Vera leaned forward, her voice softening just a fraction. "Look, I'm not saying it's easy. And yeah, you've got every right to be nervous. But if you're going to make this work, it has to be on terms you can actually live with. Don't you think you owe it to yourself—and him—to be honest?"

Marie sighed, standing. "I think you're probably right. Thank you for the talk—I think I needed it. Now, I'm going to go be a silly little worrywart in the privacy of reactor dome three, because I've got another algae bloom to deal with. You have been a big help."

Vera grinned. "Don't worry about it, kiddo. I'll always be here."