mike sucks at writing

this is a super long post, so i’m going to try to keep the description short. I heard someone in passing say, “I’ve never seen… before,” and i got to thinking that would be a great starter for a writing exercise; just fill in the blank.

the first word that came to my mind was ‘Earth.’ i have no idea why, but i went with it. what came out was a piece that is sort of a character summary for something that i’ve been wanting to write for a long time, called Venus.

enjoy:

My parents spent their honeymoon on the first civilian transport carrier from Earth to Mars. They met and fell in love during the company training program for the factory there. It was new; new factory, new colony. They got married 45 minutes before take-off by the new colony’s preacher. It made sense: married couples were given extra living and ration privileges because Universal Motors Corporation was looking for people to settle down in the colony. Families were more likely to stay.

They talked a lot about Earth. Mostly, they talked about how hard things were; no jobs left, no places to live, no money, no hope. I think they did it just to remind each other that they had nowhere to go. The factory was a hellish place, but when you have no options, you can tolerate anything. But, my mother would cry if anyone ever mentioned ‘river’ or ‘rain.’ More than once, I caught my father whispering to her as they stared at the glass dome of the public mess about clouds and wind.

They had pictures, of course, but so few that I had them all memorized before I could write my own name. I knew every tree and building; every face and color; every street and cloud. These were the only evidence I had of a place called Earth, but they lost their reality to me before I could ever appreciate them.

I left Mars a week after they died. The factory fire wiped out over half of the martian work force and the company wasted no time recruiting anyone and everyone already living in the colony to pick up the slack. I had spent 16 years watching them die, day by day, and I would have rather put a bullet in my head than follow them to that slow grave. To this day, i won’t even ride in a UMC scow. Some of the crews I’ve worked on–better crews than this one–I left after our first job, just because they were flying UMC. I know that once these freebooter crews get done with a ship they’re modified and patchworked together so bad that none of the original parts are left, but it’s a principle thing. And a paranoia thing. My dad used to say that he only caught half of the shitty workmanship that came out of that factory, and only half of that was ever corrected. I’m sure every other scow builder is just as bad, but at least Treq or Shiraberu didn’t have my dad to tell me for sure.

I’ve worked on a dozen crews and hitched a ride with a dozen more, but I’ve never seen Earth with my own eyes. Now that the sad wreck of the government has allowed corporate military forces to police beyond high orbit, it’s not safe for anyone who has bad breath, much less a criminal record, to come within half million kilometers. It’s more than that, though. Part of me thinks it’s fate. I just wasn’t meant to see it. It never fails that one crew just finished a job on Lunar Outpost before I jumped in with them, or another crew was in the middle of planning a high orbit smash-and-grab, but would get broken up before we had the chance. It was always something like that.

The other part of me knows that it’s my own fault. Somewhere in my head I don’t really want to see it. I’m afraid to. I’m afraid that I’ll get there and it’s nothing like my parents’ best memories. I’m afraid it looks sterile white and plastic, like the colony I left behind. More than that, though, I’m terrified that it would be more than what I’ve been told: more beautiful, more colorful, more peaceful. People like me aren’t welcome there. Not enough money for one thing; not enough respect for another. Not willing to roll over and take what I’m given and like it. Restless. Not willing to work in the ivory towers of corporate industry.

Eddie says that Earth is a prison planet without the prisons. He says that everyone there is enslaved. I asked him once why everyone is always smiling when you see picures or movies of Earth. Or even if you just ask someone about it, you can tell who’s been there because they always smile before they answer. “Brainwashing,” he said. Eddie’s the kind of guy who’s got an answer for everything, and most of the time he can make it sound so good that no one questions it. I question him all the time. He says that’s why he likes me, but I know it bothers the shit out of him.

He says after we pull the Venus job, we’ll have enough money to get fake identities and real passports. He says he’ll take me to Earth so that I can see the color and the shape of the jail cells there. I don’t want to go with him. He won’t understand why I want to see a river more than anything else on the whole planet; why I’ll want to stare at the clouds and the sky for hours and hours; or why I’ll turn my back and toss the pouch of ash I keep in my pocket into the valley wind.