Author: Alastair Millar

“Look guys, I just wanted to say, like, thanks for being here. I needed it.” Mack had downed over a litre of the house distillate, and was slurring his words. “You okay, man?” I asked. I was the newbie on the work crew, but when Old Man Doug had suggested we join him for a drink at Marvin’s after work, to celebrate his 2000th shift, a bunch of us had agreed. It had been a long evening, and now just the three of us were left.

“No buddy, no I ain’t,” said my new friend. “You, you dunno what it’s like here. Hell, you only arrived last month! You’re just a baby Martian, bro!” He clapped me round the shoulders. “But, lemme tell you, lemme just tell you, it gets real lonely up here. Sally’s my rock, man. Always there when I get home, always bucks me up when I’m down, always helps me talk about stuff, get my head sorted. She grounds me, see? And I been looking after her too, right? Buying her things, being there, making an effort… I did all that. I thought, I really thought, we had a good thing goin’, ya know? Like, really good. Special. But now she tells me she don’t want kids. That she ain’t the right type for it. It’s like, she don’t want a family or summat. Or maybe just not with me, I dunno. It hurts. It hurts real bad.” He paused, and seemed to pull himself together. “Anyway, glad you guys are here, wanted you to know, you’re the best. I’m a gonna get home and sleep off this rocket juice. See y’all tomorrow.” After a few more boozy goodbyes, he wove his way to the door and into the night.

“Aww, poor guy,” I said. “That’s rough.”

“Kid,” said Doug, “you don’t know crap. That boy’s just made life choices. For a start, he’s got a wife back Earthside that he’s sending money to every payday. You think she’d like to hear this kind of talk? Damn fool, got a good woman waiting for him while he does three years here in Marsport, and he’s all ready to throw that away!”

“Whoa. I… didn’t know that.”

“It gets worse. That Sally? She’s a synth.”

“What? But he said she talks to him. And he buys her stuff.”

“Look, just because she ain’t real… doesn’t mean she doesn’t listen. But this is Mars, boy. The only way you’ll get a heart-to-heart with a synthetic is if you’re paying a monthly sub for MarsCorp Services’ ‘Companion’ package. And then he buys extra clothes for her from the company store. Which I guess is fine and dandy if you’ve got the spare credits – which he doesn’t. The ‘can’t have kids’ thing? Well, ’course not, she’s not human! He just doesn’t want to accept it! Besides, plastic or flesh, there’s words for women you have to pay to be with, and they ain’t nice ones.”

I sat back, and must have looked shocked.

“Hey, synths have their place, okay? They help keep people from boiling over, ’specially the long-termers. Hell, I’d be lying if I said I’d never sat and poured out my troubles to one.” He gestured towards the holograms that had been gyrating all night on the stage in the corner. “But dammit, his problems are worse than that. Right now his head’s so twisted up that if those strippers were real, he’d probably think they liked him, too!”

We laughed then, but later I realised he was teaching me how to survive Mars. Lesson learned, Old Man.