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As we talk, we hear the storm stop, and it feels as if all of Mars is holding its breath so sudden is the silence. It won’t be long before the snow blocking our exit begins to melt away. Not long before we must leave this paradise and return to the way things have been.

That night, I fall asleep in Marek’s arms, and in the morning we wake to the pale golden sunlight and a perfect sol for travel.

Marek and I look at each, and I feel my stomach plummet. “I guess this means we have to go back to the ship.”

He frowns. “Yes. We cannot avoid it any longer.”

Tears fill my eyes. “What does this mean for us?” I ask, already knowing the answer. I have seen what Marek’s role means to him. What this colony means to him.

He cannot speak the words, but I see the truth on his face, so I speak them for him. “This is it, isn’t it?”

He sighs. “I have always believed that the stability of the whole outweighs my personal needs or desires. After all, if the colony does not survive, the individual will not survive.”

His words feel cold. Clinical. I am reminded of the interviews he did on Earth. This is social media and news headliner Marek Volkav. This is not my Marek.

I squeeze my eyes closed and wait for him to finish breaking my heart.

He tilts my chin up with his finger, and I open my eyes to look at him. “But I realized something.”

My throat is dry. “What?”

“That there was no point to saving humanity, if we are not willing to fight for love.”

My stomach flutters.

“I will not let you go. Not now. Not ever. The rules I made were rooted in algorithms, not humanity. We cannot grow into something worthy of all this as a species if we do not embrace the purest parts of ourselves. What we have… this is what it was all for.”

My world clicks into place.

I can scarcely believe this joy I feel tumbling out of me, along with the fear I’ve been carrying this whole time. The desperate fear of losing Marek. It is what I have dreaded most.

But now, that fear is gone, replaced by hope. Love. Joy. Unbridled and unapologetic.

Marek and I make love all morning. Reveling in each other. Memorizing each other. We explore the other in the most intimate of ways, and I feel the deep and delicious ache of it as we climb into the truck to drive back to the ship.

I have never given myself to anyone the way I have given myself to Marek. I know it is the same with him.

The trip back is too short.

We stop often.

We kiss often.

And then we are home.

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22

MAREK

“I’m surprised to see people get so wildly excited about a possible bacterium on Mars when our own planet is crawling with undiscovered species.”

– George Schaller, Biologist

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