Welcome Home
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I wrote this with ‘New Home’ by Austin Farwell playing on repeat and I think, perhaps, it enhances the story. Linked below, if you’d like it to accompany the reading:
Outer space is not as you would imagine it. Surely it’s not as I had imagined it. It looks nothing like the posters of the solar system I had on my bedroom wall growing up nor, is it like the ad I have pinned on my wall now - an advertisement from the time of my life when I was on Earth, brought with me on my voyage into the unknown. It’s postcard sized and colorful - on it is a sketch of Earth and Mars and a little silver ship traveling between the two perfectly round plants. A green man stands on Mars holding an American flag and is waving to the approaching passengers on the ship. Above the top, in a puffy print, reads: ‘Greetings Earthlings!’ and below that, ‘Welcome HOME”.
Space, as I’ve come to know her, is not bright and colorful. Nor is this place, The Hub, home, as much as we all would have liked it to be.
The advertisements that littered the internet, billboards, and radio back in 2050 did their job well. They convinced us that something glamourous awaited 142 million miles away, on Mars. They thoroughly plastered the entirely world with this project, The “Welcome Home” Project - polarizing the population between those who mistrusted the government’s plans completely and those who wouldn’t know a moments peace until they existed outside Earth’s orbit. You couldn’t escape hearing about it, talking about it or reading about it. Looking back it all seems much like a mad frenzy - fever dream at best.
And who is this ‘They’ that I talk about? The scientists who worked on the project? The engineers that signed, sealed and delivered a huge hunk of metal through space, to Mars? The investors who funded this exploration, seduced by the idea that their names would be associated with cutting edge science and listed in history books? Or the advertising firm that was hired to paint and draw and romanticize a life out of gravity? Who carries the most blame? ‘They’ that made it or ‘They’ that sold us on it?
Oversold and under delivered. The ones without anything left for us on Earth, the rich, the adventurous, and the lonely said goodbye to life as we knew it, all to be one of the first people to live on Mars. We also happen to be the last.
The ever looming ‘They’ planned that there would be five shuttles sent out into space, all within three months of one another until the first Hub was full. The Hub could fit 2,500 people, we would come 500 at a time and create our new community. Each shuttle group assimilating to the new laws of space before the next group arrived.
Long term, the plan was that after ten successful years of outer space bliss ‘They’ would create another Hub in space and fill that with an additional 2,500 and so on and so forth until the option of living between Earth or Mars would be similar to that of picking what state you wanted to reside in.
So popular was this idea of being hurled into space that they had to create a lottery to select who would go. You coughed up enough cash to add your name into the mix, and then you prayed to the same God who created this perfect planet we lived on that you could be one of the lucky few who got off it.
Never having won anything in my life, I was shocked when the notification popped up on my phone. “CONGRATS! Your New Home Awaits” it looked shockingly like a scam email. In a way, it was.
Wandering the Hub feels very similar to wandering a college - long, wide halls with large double doors leading to big rooms for worship, learning and recreational actives. Corridors and sitting spaces and great windows with tacky drapes peer out at the Red Planet. There’s a library and hospital and a place for the Peace Keepers to file their papers and, although they promised no crime, a small holding station. A clothing store with basic selections and a ‘spa’ where you could get your hair cut. No grocery stores, but allotted groceries were to show up at our doors once a week. By request and explanation you could ask for additional allowances. No place to eat out and no ‘fun’ shopping. There was a movie theater, something I found particularly exciting at the time.
On the walls of the college style halls are, hanging in beautiful, heavy frames, depictions of Earth. Grassy fields, and flowers and pets and people and homes and war scenes and still lakes and oceans with boats on the crest of a wave. I think it’s odd that ‘They’ would decorate a place where people went to escape Earth, with reminders of Earth. I digress.
Branching off from the main section of the Hub are separate wings for housing. Six of them in total, organized by last names containing rows and rows of doors that lead to little apartments. They seemed to go on for forever, the hallways and doors. The apartments are small and functional - simple furnishings that are all, mostly, identical to one another. Depending on the amount you wanted to shell out, some of the apartments are larger than others.
Everyone had been allowed to select the color on the walls of their new homes, the beddings and curtains. Carpet or hardwood? Gold or silver hardware? How many windows? No windows at all? We submitted our answers to the questionnaire concerning housing preferences via the USPS, a shockingly old school way to answer questions for the wave of the future. I didn’t make any selections, rather I wrote, “ANY” across the top of my page before mailing. Although the paperwork talked of a designer making these selections, it was probably an intern that chose the colors on my behalf. Or even maybe it was whatever they had an excess of that got painted and nailed and set in my apartment - soft blue bedding and curtains and creamy off white walls. All hardwood flooring except for my bedroom, which was soft white carpet. The kind of carpet that never vacuums well, but you can dig your toes into.
I am not sure how the inner workings of the Hub function. Power and water and how the automatic doors open or how the movie theater still played from the kiosk selection list, it’s all beyond me. There is no doubt that once my name was pulled in the lottery, I received this information in the thick packet that showed up at my home, which I never got around to reading. In the classes I took about going to Mars and the countless conversations with the ‘They’, I am sure I was told and simply didn’t pay attention. My assumption, at that time, was that since ‘They’ said it was going to work, it would. Why do I need to know how we have water in space? ‘They’ said that we would. Why would I question how we would be getting food? ‘They’ said we would have it.
Now, of course, I see how that was a wrong assumption. A bad plan of action. If I had known what was going to happen, would happen, I would have paid better attention. I wouldn’t have gone at all.
Officially, the first and only shuttle to the Hub and the Welcome Home project itself, is considered a failure. I know this only because the speakers were still connected to some control room on Earth when they announced it. Only a few of us had made it successfully into the Hub before an error code sounded and the great heavy doors closed and loudly locked. Metal grinding on metal - locking us in.
All of us stood in what I now refer to as the Base. A great room which was intended to hold all 2,500 of us for special announcements and gatherings - it’s lecture hall style seating with a stage and podium positioned in front of a large projector screen. We stood and stared at the words “Welcome HOME” in bright colors. The projector flickered on and off as we listened to the men, the ‘They’, speak into microphones they didn’t think we could hear.
I’ll spare you the details - when it all boiled down, ‘They’ announced that the mission was a failure with no anticipated survivors. I have no idea what exactly went on to prompt the emergency code, it sounded like they didn’t either. And, to the detriment of all 8 of us sitting in the Base, they weren’t coming back to the Hub to confirm this whole no survivors assumption.
Being one of the non-anticipated survivors this was extremely upsetting news, increasingly so as the hours and days and weeks wore on. Full realization of our situation came in pieces, burning in the back of our minds every waking second.
It’s now been two years since the first shuttle traveled the distance between Earth and Mars and the mission was deemed a loss.
My name is Theresa Wink, I am the last surviving participant of the Welcome Home project, and I am worried that something else has gotten into the Hub. It’s become increasingly clear that I am no longer alone.
