The first time this happened, I thought Basalt was going to crash into me, but now I know he is racing past. There’s the dog barking, right on cue, the sound of his panting getting louder as he closes in. I close my eyes and tilt my head back like a sunflower to the sky, letting the sun’s heat soak into my skin and turn the darkness into the deep pink of my eyelids.

I breathe in deep and for a few moments even believe that the crisp, fresh air is filling my lungs. I can even taste the salt on my lips and feel the grains of sand between my toes. Maybe the stuff they’re really investigating here is so top secret, having a totally separate space is There are labs here already, but those are filmed during the show. But what would be the point of hiding a lab? Unless everyone here is in on the secret apart from me. Filling it with equipment would be easy if someone on the crew here is in on the secret. Excavating a level down before the base was populated would be simple. There isn’t enough room in the base proper to set up anything too complex, but perhaps there’s another layer below us that I haven’t been told about. Unless I haven’t been told everything about what Principia is actually for.

If he was shipping back more than he was sending, I could understand that, but not the other way around. If Travis is right, what could he be shipping here? It’s not like there’s a town to sell contraband to. There are so many places on Earth where he could dump it for a fraction of the cost. He could be shipping toxic waste here and nobody could do a damn thing about it. There’s no plan for a utopia here, and not just because no one can agree on what that would be. We’re not bloody children anymore, thinking that Mars could be a place free of the social struggles of Earth. Has exclusive rights he can do what he likes here.

All Good Things by Emma Newman