How to Mars

by David Ebenbach

  Trixie, in any case, is scanning her tablet now. Despite the “supporting character” thing, which has actually come up more than once, she’s always been the most addicted to what’s going on back home. She looks at Jenny and me. “This pregnancy is big,” she says. “People are rooting for you and Josh, though they think you’re a bit passive and flip-floppy—” she says this to me, and then turns to Jenny— “and nobody ever knows how you really feel about anything.” Trixie winces a little as she says it. “Anyway, there are also heaps of probability tables—sex of the baby, health of the baby—and betting pools. Wow—one place is taking odds on there being antennae! And what name the baby’s going to have, and weight and length, survival—” She breaks off and claps a hand over her mouth, just too late.

  Just then, Jenny has a contraction, and it’s a long one. It’s an intense squeeze. With my heart going very, very quickly, I hold Jenny’s hands and we do some mindfulness. I tell her to imagine a lake, a very still lake. We haven’t seen a lake of any kind for several years now, except on video screens. But luckily you don’t forget about them. She holds my hands and keeps her eyes closed and tries to picture that lake.

  When the contraction is over, I notice that Trixie’s tablet is away, and that nobody brings up the reality show anymore. Which is more the point. We’re here; us. This is what matters, where everything that matters goes one way or another.

  In the late afternoon we watch Parenthood. It’s a movie from Steve Martin’s transitional period, between silly and serious. It seems like it’s going to be right on the nose for our situation, but mostly it’s about how to not screw your kids up on a planet we haven’t touched in years. Maybe it feels more relevant from Jenny’s perspective. Me, I can barely follow it right now.

  In fact, neither of us can; Jenny is having contractions often. There’s pain and imagining lakes and panic that I try to keep to myself.

  I am dimly aware of Keanu Reeves bopping through his scenes. He was a young person once.

  Then Jenny’s water breaks. I don’t hear the pop, but there’s the flood.

  Lil and I did talk about having kids, of course. You don’t agree to get married without having talked about that. Or you shouldn’t, anyway. We called them our “future kids.” We almost believed in them, like they were already real.

  Which the car accident demonstrated they were not.

  Now that her water has broken, Jenny’s labor is more for real. Contractions are five minutes apart and Trixie and Nicole are paying closer attention to things. In a worried way? Just in a here-the-baby-comes kind of way? I can’t tell.

  “Everything’s okay, right?” I ask them, as I sit there with Jenny.

  “She’s apples, Dad,” Trixie says to me. That means she’s doing fine, which may or may not be truthful, and it’s also an example of the bit of color Trixie adds. The colloquialisms and her hair. I try to focus on that.

  “We’ll let you know if there’s anything to be concerned about,” Nicole says. Then she pulls her lucky Mardi Gras beads from her pocket and puts them around my neck.

  I try to be reassured.

  As we get further in, and Jenny’s actually starting to push, trying different positions on the chaise longue, I’m aware that Jenny is sort of receding from me. She’s going inside. She’s having to concentrate a lot on getting through labor, and so she has her eyes closed a lot of the time, especially when another wave hits, and, even when they’re open, her eyes are a little unfocused when they look at me, almost like, Hey, you—I feel like I’m supposed to know you, and you seem kind of nice, but I’m not so good with names right now. . . .

  Dinner comes and goes. I think I eat something, sitting with Jenny. Jenny doesn’t eat anything.

  There’s a movie playing, at least for a while, but it’s hard to know what it even is.

  I’ve had dreams about the birth, definitely. Usually I don’t remember my dreams, but I remember a lot of them about the birth. They are not hard to interpret. Sometimes it turns out Jenny was never pregnant at all—just bloating—and sometimes she gives birth and the baby is invisible or it flies away before I can see it, or it’s a chicken cutlet on a plate, uncooked.

  And sometimes Jenny dies.

  The pushing goes on for a long while, into the night. By now, Jenny definitely looks the way I would expect her to—but of course it’s not in any way a relief to see her look the way I would expect her to look: her face sweaty, curls of her hair sticking to her forehead, her light brown eyes shaky some of the time. I can’t tell exactly what’s happening for her. She moans and sometimes howls. But overall she’s further and further inside. Trixie and Nicole keep track of everything, and Jenny pushes. If I didn’t know she was giving birth, I would think something terrible was happening to her. And of course maybe something terrible is happening to her.

  “You okay, Dad?” Trixie says to me, her eyes concerned. Her maroon hair is a little sweaty, too.

  “Is it supposed to be like this?” I ask, clutching the beads around my neck.

  She and Nicole both tell me not to worry, but then I realize once again—in this moment it really hits me—that neither one of these are OB/GYN doctors. Destination Mars! didn’t send any of those, because we weren’t supposed to need any of those.

  “Have you ever been at a birth before?” I ask.

  “Of course,” Nicole says, but I know she means that she was at one or two, maybe, during her rotations.

  “Relax, Dad,” Trixie says to me, and then she makes significant eyes and points her head back at Jenny. As in, Don’t upset her. “Let’s keep it upbeat,” she says.

  Okay, I think to myself. Okay.

  I step up. I get Jenny cool, wet Destination Mars! washcloths to put on her neck, and I hold her hand, and I talk to her about calm things. And inside I imagine her vanishing. No baby and no Jenny.

  It’s like I’m being reminded of Lil, but I realize that it’s actually the precariousness and fragility of everything, not Lil, that I’m being reminded of. Because what’s terrible about that, right now, is that that precariousness is all around and inside and through Jenny. Jenny who is brilliant and her eyes see everything and she’s beautiful to such an extent that she makes it hard to think about anything else when she’s around and who may be the most astounding fact about the universe, and this is coming from a person who’s seen more of that universe than a lot of other people. It’s that Jenny who’s in danger—and also this baby, who is still the future and not real yet. But, as hard as I’ve tried to stop myself, I have secretly started to believe in this future family. This endangered future family that isn’t real yet.

  There is some blood. There are Destination Mars! towels that aren’t very absorbent because of the enormous logos. I feel dizzy and uncertain and like I don’t know where I am. I glance at the windows and see how dark it is outside. Outside could be anyplace.

  “Ohhhhh . . .” Jenny says, a soft and plaintive moan. “It’s so difficult,” she says. “What am I doing?”

  Trixie and Nicole don’t manage a response, as they are working very hard on the situation, I can see. Moving quickly around Jenny, checking things, consulting with one another. They’re in motion.

  So I make sure that Jenny’s hand is in mine, and I try to make myself be completely with her, though I really, really want to fly away to somewhere where I never think about any possible futures at all. “We’re all here together,” I tell Jenny.

  Jenny’s eyes open. She squeezes my hand. This is a short moment between contractions, which are coming very frequently now. I see Jenny’s eyes, which are looking into mine. “Is that what you’re thinking?” she says. “That we’re all here together?”

  “Yes,” I say, which is true. I’m crying as I say it.

  And then a contraction hits, hits hard, and she’s all about pushing and making it through. She squeezes my hand very hard.

&nbs
p; When it passes, we are both crying, and our hands are almost one hand, all together.

  I am in the presence of the most precious everything that can be. And it’s an impossibility—it can’t be—and I know it.

  I turn to Trixie and whisper into her ear. I say, “Can we stop this? Can we just go back to before this?”

  Trixie takes my head in both of her hands, looks at me very close. “Shut up, you drongo,” she says. But I see that there are tears in her eyes.

  After the next push, Nicole says, “Do we have a mirror?”

  I’m wondering what’s gone wrong, and Stefan, who must be nearby, runs off and grabs a mirror. Later it will turn out that he’d ripped it right out of the bathroom wall and we’ll have to bolt it back up. But he comes back with the mirror.

  “Hold it there,” Nicole directs him.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. I yell it.

  Stefan’s eyes widen as he sees directly what we’re now seeing in the mirror.

  “What’s happening?” I say. Because what is happening? I see blood and, in my mind, headlights. And in a whisper, I ask again, “Can we stop?”

  “This is called crowning,” Nicole says. “This is your baby. This is the top of your baby’s head.”

  Wait. I can’t tell what I’m seeing at all. “That’s the baby’s head?”

  The doctors nod.

  “You mean nothing’s wrong?” I say.

  “Focus,” Trixie says, giving me a little smack on the shoulder. There are tears in her eyes—but they’re—I think they’re happy ones? “You’re about to become a father.” She points.

  Wait.

  I see it. What Nicole said—I see the dome of the baby’s head. Really? I am crying very profusely now. Jenny is, too. And I’m almost understanding what’s going on.

  Right now, at Jenny’s side, holding her, staring into the mirror, I can just begin to see what’s crowning.

  A voice in my head says, Well—would you look at that.

  “I think everything’s okay,” I say to Jenny, in enormous astonishment. “Oh, my God. I love you.”

  “It’s okay?” she asks. “You love me?”

  I nod. “I think we’re having a child.”

  At that, everybody around laughs. Everyone is happy. And, catching up, Jenny laughs, too—a big one.

  Which turns out to be enough to do it.

  Laughter is enough, at least today, at least here, to complete this labor. To bring, with a sudden movement, a world into a world. To make something both old and new. To make the entire universe a garden—a new one, seen countless times in the past and also never seen before, a garden fruitful and forgiving—and to hold us together in it.

  What You Can’t Do (Part Three)

  (Section 4 of the unofficial Destination Mars! handbook, as written by the founder of Destination Mars!)

  Subsection 4:3: Post-Natal Concerns

  But let’s just say that the baby manages to get born, and that the mother doesn’t die in the process, and that the baby is reasonably healthy. And that you haven’t destroyed your mini-community in the process. That combination of outcomes is obviously unlikely, but let’s say it all manages to happen somehow. Well, guess what? Your problems are just beginning.

  To state the obvious: we will not be there to help with all the challenges—medical, developmental, social—that will inevitably come up throughout childhood. You will be on your own, for that and for everything else. You will by necessity be making this parenting thing up as you go, with inadequate training, help, or supplies. What will your child need? Will you have it? Who knows?

  And then there’s the evolutionary question. Just consider for a minute the fact that we, as a species, evolved on Earth. Evolution being a system where babies are born (on Earth) and then subjected to environmental conditions (on Earth) and then the ones who are most fit to thrive (on Earth) reproduce, producing babies that are also likely to thrive (on Earth) and so on.If you make a baby on Mars, it will be on a planet it wasn’t designed to be on. Of course, you weren’t designed for it, either, but at least you had a choice. And we chose you. And you trained for it. If Darwin was right about survival of the fittest, just how fit will this baby be?

  Furthermore, if the child does find a way to adapt, it will be adapting to the environment of Mars. This isn’t dangerous, precisely—it will actually be pretty impressive—but it raises big questions. Like, what if this baby grows up and has more babies with other Mars-adapted people? This will send evolution in an entirely new direction: humans who are more fit for Mars than for Earth. Real Martians. That’s a big deal, and one we aren’t ready for. We doubt you are, either. Playing God may sound like fun, but is it? God’s telling silence over the past several millennia suggests a very different conclusion.

  Even Elton John thinks it’s a bad idea. (“Rocket Man,” anyone?)

  Anyway, assuming the baby is healthy and stays healthy, it will probably outlive you. And although we hope to send more people after you, what if we can’t make that happen? The baby—now an adult—will be alone on Mars. Can you imagine being alone on Mars? Well, maybe you can, a little. But entirely alone? It won’t be an easy thing, being on your own on a dangerous planet without guidance or support. In other words, what kind of life are you bringing this baby into?

  We do realize that many of the concerns listed in the subsections above—social dynamics, biological risks, the enormous issues that come up in raising a child—also apply on Earth. It’s a big deal, making a baby, no matter where you are. And in some sense there’s never enough help even on Earth. In some sense you’re always on your own. We don’t deny that this is the fundamental condition of being in the universe: trying to figure out what to do, on your own.

  But maybe you can escape that on Mars, if you just do what we tell you to do. And if you don’t do what we tell you not to do. After all, the stakes are higher than ever.

  The Block Universe Theory of Newborns

  Observations: Her

  APGAR score: 10 (out of 10)

  length: 19.25 inches

  weight: 2.7 pounds, which terrified me until I remembered that that was Mars weight; she would be 7.2 pounds on Earth

  Fingers and toes: all of them

  Overall:(if I could describe her in some sufficient way I would)

  Observation: Planets

  Earth:

  Still spinning.

  Mars:

  Still spinning.

  Observations

  Her face.

  Josh’s face.

  Observation: Family

  Is.

  Observation: Abandonment

  Life—making life, living life—is an abandonment. It means leaving life in the hands of life.

  Observation: Probability

  Unknowable. Which means you can’t know that things will go wrong.

  Observation: Knowledge

  Observations: Time

  Relativistic Physics is correct; time is.

  The past is still present. Which does not mean that the present is the past.

  We can’t see the future, but there apparently is one.

  They Called Her Able

  Amable (from the Spanish for lovable) was born on Mars and then she grew up on Mars.

  She was the first child to do either of those things.

  Lots of people thought it was impossible—thought she couldn’t get born, couldn’t live, couldn’t grow up. But she managed all of it pretty easily, or as easily as any of us do in our own circumstances.

  The child first rolled over on a rug made out of a space-age polymer that could feel like almost any woven textile you wanted it to. She learned to walk on the s
mooth floors of a habitation center that had been built by robots before any people were on that planet at all. She made her first crayon marks on that floor, too, using run-of-the-mill crayons that had been sent in a supply rocket. And she learned to walk outside, in a mini-spacesuit sent from Earth, over very uneven ground. Learning to walk in a spacesuit is no easy thing, either; it’s like you’re using your own body to get a puppet to walk. But she did that. And she learned to eat solid foods and then to feed herself sitting at a table in a dining dome, a moldable table that the adults remolded so that part of it was at her level and had a lip on it for spills. Children on Mars spill just like children on Earth.

  The child’s first word was mama. Because what did you expect?

  Her first pets were two goldfish that had accidentally been frozen solid on the way to Mars but had swum right back to life when they were accidentally thawed. Sometimes things happen like that.

  And maybe it’s that rebirth of the goldfish that explains the child’s optimism, which developed early and stayed with her all along. Or maybe it was being born into the role of a pioneer. Or maybe it was the lower gravity. Or maybe something else altogether; it would be foolish to believe anyone who claimed to understand these things completely.