Final Project

Erin M.

Legislator:  Robert Junell, Representative

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Neo Hades 7

All right, story of my life, other kids turn thirteen and they get a big party, maybe a trip to the lunar parks, lots of fun all around, but I turn thirteen and guess what I get.  Go on, guess.  Give up?  A one way ticket to Mars.  Most families move to another continent, sometimes even to the Sub Surface cities or the Ocean parks, but no, my parents manage to find jobs on Mars.  The new colony, Neo Hades 7, needed a new mechanic (my mom), and a new teacher (my dad).  They also managed to find a job for my brother so that he could come, too.  It’s not as though I adored the broken down planet Earth had become, I just didn’t like the idea of roughing it out on the Red Dud.  All right, I’ll give the pioneers some credit, not all of the colonies failed, but two out of ten doesn’t seem like a very high success rate to me.  The only other colony still functioning is Neo Hades 3.  No, Neo Hades 4.  Well, either 3 or 4, I can’t remember which, but it doesn’t matter.  We were moving to Mars and that was final.  So, after a week (yes, an entire week spent cooped up in tiny space ship with Cliff and April driving me crazy), we got to the Red Dud, I mean, Neo Hades 7.  I was crabby, I was miserable, and I was generally in a bad mood.  I thought my life was over, but I was in for a bit of a surprise.

I was waiting in my room, busy being miserable, or I thought it was my room, when some girl barged in.

"Hey, you’re the new girl aren’t you?”

“Wow, you can see!  It’s a miracle!  Now, what are you doing here?"

“This my room too, you know.”

“Oh, great!”  I rolled my eyes and sighed heavily.

“You got a name or should I keep calling you New Girl?”

I gave her a look, but, since she didn’t go away, I sighed again and sat up.

“My name’s Wolfe Solis.”

“And mine’s Chivalry Norway.”

Several minutes stretched between us before the awkwardness got to me.

“You know, this is a great conversation, but I’m in the middle of a pity party right now, so if you’ll excuse me.”

Now she was rolling her eyes.  “All right, come on.”

“Where are we going?”  I asked as she reached down to help me up.

“I’m supposed to give you a tour of the colony.  It may seem big now, but soon you’ll know the place inside and out!”

I groaned and stood up.

“Okay, first of all, we are currently in the Bunkhouse.  The Bunkhouse is what we call our living quarters.  It was built inside the wall of a valley slope by the some of the first Martian explorers.”

I sighed heavily.  Just what I needed, a lecture in history.  Chivalry cocked an eye at me.

“Pay attention and you might learn something useful.”

We moved out into the hall.

“You, me, and five other kids are all on Cleaning detail.  Our job is to clean the Bunkhouse and most of the working stations.  Don’t worry,” she added.  “Cleaning detail ends as soon as you turn 15.”

“Wonderful, two years of playing maid,” I muttered under my breath.

“You’re thirteen, too?  Cool.”

I looked up and actually smiled.

Chivalry took a breath and continued.  “There are five levels to the Bunkhouse: the upper three levels are living quarters, the second from the bottom is dinning and recreation, and the last is vitals.  Each floor of the living quarters has thirty bedrooms that can each hold a maximum of four people – “

“Don’t tell me we have more room mates!”

“No!,” she laughed.  “Most of us have our own rooms.  The colony was designed to hold 360 people, but with you guys it’s now 61.”

“So what’s the deal with the room mates business?”

“That’s just at first so you don’t get lonely or anything.  One guy came up here and couldn’t handle it, so he . . . . killed himself.”

“Oh.”  Wow, I never thought anything that big ever happened in the colonies.  “I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s cool.  You didn’t know.”

We reached the Up-N-Down and Chivalry sent us to the fifth floor.

“We number the levels going down, so that the level closest to the surface is level one and the count increases as you go down.  Level four is dinning and recreation.  The Rec Hall where we go to eat our meals and to relax.  There’s a huge library, nothing very recent, but there’s also music and art, if you like, or sports.  We have huge courts for baseball, soccer, you name it we probably have it.”

“Swimming?”  I grinned.  Water was precious enough on Earth, but the colonists were supposed to be desperate for it.

Sure enough, Chivalry winced.  “No, not yet.  Julie says maybe in another five, ten years.”

“So how do we keep clean?”

“Wash clothes.  People on earth waste gallons of water. Even with the conservation laws, the average shower uses about thirty liters.  Using wash clothes, however, reduces it to about four liters.”

I made a face.  “Ewww.”

“You’ll get used to it,” she smiled.

“Eventually.”

We arrived at the fifth floor, or “Vitals,” as Chivalry called it.  There was a hall with ten doors leading off, and a set of double doors at the end.

“Everything necessary for our survival is on this floor.  Obviously there are back up systems on every floor and workstation, but this is where the main show is.  On the left side is Mike Jones, in charge of air circulation, Leo Nova, who monitors the temperature and pressure of all the buildings, Tristan Clay, who takes care of the water, Aimee Beau, communications expert, and Jim Fortay, our nutritionist and chef.  On the right is Julie Trebuchet, the commander, True Blud, our physician, Tony Tang, a psychologist, Shay Wen, a very good chaplain, she can convert anyone, and the last room is for Schooling.  That’s where Lucy Sunday nannies all the kids younger than five and where your dad will be teaching us.

“Us?  As in all of us?  All of the kids here?"

“Yeah, everyone from five to fifteen.  We only have four hours of schooling each day, so he’ll probably have time to continue the local newspaper.  Don’t get any ideas, though, we have school everyday and after we finish with it, we have to back to cleaning.  Oh, and the room at the end of the hall is the kitchen.  Now, come on!”

I laughed and followed her down a hall to the left of the Up-N-Down.  She grabbed a scooter, I jumped on behind her, and we whizzed down the passageway.

“What’s with all the under ground?” I shouted above the wind.

“Protection,” she hollered back.  “The Martian atmosphere isn’t as strong or as thick as Earth’s, so we get a lot more radiation than usual on the surface.  By tunneling into the cliff the rock acts as a natural barrier against solar flares and cosmic radiation.”

“Ah.”  It made sense.

“What?”

“I said – Never mind.”

We got to a branching in the passageway and Chivalry slowed the scooter to a halt.

“Alright, I won’t take you all the way, ‘cuz you’ll see most of this tomorrow.  At the base of the cliff is a group of three domes.  The first dome we meet if we keep going strait is for recycling.  We recycle air, water, biological waste, and other waste, like empty cans, broken machines, and stuff like that.  If we go to the left there’s another branch off, to the right, but if you go past that you’ll be at the energy plant.  We use solar power and nuclear power, depending on the weather.  What we like to do is use solar power as much as possible, but it’s only good as long as the weather is clear and the sun is shining.  Nuclear power we use at night, when the solar panels are down, or during the dust storms.  We also store the solar power in batteries, just in case we ever have a problem with the nuclear power generator.  Um, if you take the branch to the right you’ll end up at the Engineering dome.  They specialize in mechanics, electronics, computers – the works.  They’re up twenty-four hours a day trying to figure out how to make this place run more efficiently and soon your mum will be joining them.  The last dome has our researching team.  We have three geologists, two meteorologist, two astronomers . . . .  Well, you get the picture.  The exploration team is also included under research, so your brother, . . . “

“Cliff,” I yawned.  She wasn’t boring or anything, but this girl could talk anyone’s ear off.

“Don’t worry,” she read my mind.  “I’m almost done.  Cliff will be working with Angie.  Explorers have the best jobs, every couple of days or so they get to head out into the wild and bring stuff back for the scientists.”

“Wait a moment.  You’re going to send my brother, the boy who only has one word in his vocabulary, out to the boonies with a girl for a partner?”

“Angie is probably about 26, hardly a girl.”

“Still.”  I looked at her and grinned.  “This should be very interesting.”

Chivalry giggled.  “Sounds like it.”

“So, what’s left?”

“Only the greenhouses.”

We chatted more on the way up to the gardens.  It turns out that the greenhouses were located at the top of the cliff so that they could get the most sunlight out of the day.  Not only were they on top of the cliff, they were circled by a huge track that was set down for a motorized mirror on a stick.  The mirror was programmed so that it angled as much of the sunlight as possible into the greenhouses.  I was pretty impressed.

“Lots of people work here, we try to get at least ten up here a day.  Sometimes there’s more.”

“More?”  Why would anyone want to work in the mud anymore than they have to?

“Yeah, I do, too, if I’m in the right mood for it.  It’s very calming.  A lot of people come here to relax instead of the Rec Hall.  We grow all sorts of stuff: tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, rice, strawberries, - “

“Strawberries?  I love strawberries!”  Especially with whipcream!

“Yeah, me too, but actually the wheat and the soybeans are among the most important, though.  Those and the peanuts.”

“Why?”

“Wheat puts out the most oxygen per square foot of any crop we have, and the soybeans and the peanuts are the only protein we have.  Well, besides the fish.”

“You mean we have fish, too?”

“Yup!”  She grinned and led me down another hall and suddenly we were overlooking huge fish tanks.  Well, not as big as the tanks in Sea World, but big nonetheless.

“You mean you have enough water for your pet fish, but not enough for a pool?”

Actually, I knew what the fish were for – I just wanted to tease her.  She clucked her tongue at me and rolled her eyes again.

“Sometimes, though, when Blue is in a good mood, we get to swim a little with the fish, but you can’t ever bug him about it, or he’ll never let you!”

I tried to put on a straight face and nod somberly, but failed miserably and both of us burst out laughing.  As soon as our giggling attack had subsided, Chivalry sighed and declared that it was probably time to head back to the Rec Hall.

“Why?”

“Because it’s dinner time, dufus!”

“Oh.”  Duh.  “So, that’s it?”

She grinned.  “I told you it was smaller than it looked!”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

So, it wasn’t all bad.  I managed to survive for at least a couple of years.  I’ve gone back to earth a few times, but the transition is really uncomfortable, so I stopped after a while.  Plus, I’ve gotten so that I enjoy my elbowroom.  Now, living on the colonies isn’t for everyone, but if you think you can rough it, then go for it.  All the elbowroom you could ever want.  And I’ve heard that Earth is sending up more materials soon, too.  Something about a new colony.  That’s cool.  I wonder if they’ll be sending up more boys, too.

Sources:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/mars/marsland.html 

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/mars/marssurf.html

http://bioscience.ksc.nasa.gov/oldals/plant/horticul.htm

http://science.nas.nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/designer/needs.html

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/News/2000/news-stationair.asp 

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2000/news-stationwater.asp

Last Updated:  09/10/01