Demitri! How’s it going, dude? Sorry I haven’t come and visit home yet, a lot has been going on here. School is going pretty good, classes are about what I expected, except I didn’t think I’d have to fight so hard every step of the way to get my hands dirty. Almost everything they want teach is academic, all I’m doing in most my classes is writing papers and finishing equations. I keep trying to bring up that I know what I’m doing and it’s extraneous but everyone’s insisting I sit through the same boring crap as everyone else. I got into this school by building my own Atlas reactor for godsake I think I know enough to skip a basic course in nuclear fusion. You are still checking on the reactor by the way, right? I know my parents said they would monitor the readings but if they show as much interest in maintaining it as they did in my building it, it could have already melted down by now. Which is a joke, it’s not going to. You CAN be in the same room as it without wearing lead.
Speaking of things you’re wrong about, the girls on Earth are not tripping all over themselves to form a line to me. In fact they’re boring, really boring. Like Kristiana boring (she still trying to sleep with our whole graduating class? Lol) Honestly I don’t get far enough along in a conversation with most of them to even bring up the fact that I’m from Mars. One told me my fashion sense is “mechanic chic” but that doesn’t sound like a complement to me, and I don’t think it is to them either. It’s about the same with everybody though; it’s been a bit of culture shock. I’m starting to realize how much of my social interaction on Mars was built on me having the common element of coming from Mars, now I don’t even have that.
In fact there was this one girl I met at the big assembly thingy the other day for that deep space exploration mission. (That I’m totally overqualified for btw, I’m so gonna get in). She’s a pilot with some kind of ranking awards that I guess are important. Anyways, I spent most of the seminar arguing with her about something. Then most of the walk to a pizza place she knew and then the whole meal, which was as good as she claimed, but seriously, she thought that Mars was full of people digging mines while wearing spacesuits and recycling our urine for drinking water. She apparently didn’t find my retort that all water gets recycled and it just takes longer to get back to you on Earth very convincing, which now that I say out loud isn’t very convincing, but come on! Ares City has had an air dome for like 200 years now. But yeah so this girl spent a good half hour looking through pics I had from Mars for the space suits and the clothing. The clothes. She has first hand access to knowledge from another planet and she wanted to know what we were wearing.
I talked to one of the people in the school who’s putting together the expedition. They’re talking a full crew with entire lab on site. This would be awesome, go on a full-fledged DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION with barely graduating. It’s about as legit as things come in the science world. That one chick from the assembly, whose name is Terra by the way, because a girl from Earth named Terra is about as original as things come on Earth, she wants on the mission to fly around where no pilot has gone before (which I forget why that’s relevant but anyway). I’m hoping we can find some alien artifacts out there. Which reminds me; I met a Zetsun the other day. His eyes were a little weird looking which I guess is from the chemicals in their upper atmosphere. He said the light was so weird there that the first settlers had to genetically modify their eyes to see properly. I’m honestly surprised the foreign humans still look as terran as they do. Back in the day when they were settling all these other planets I guess they were REALLY paranoid about what messing with DNA could do the human race long term so they were super selective about what got modified. From what I’ve heard some of the natural adaptations that have happened on the deep deep DEEP space colonies are even weirder then the genetic mods humans came up with. I still am looking for a ride far enough out to meet the Tufo though.
So if everything works out I’ll be heading out with a crew (you have no idea how it cool it is to say that) sometime next year, I’m really going to try to get out to Mars for a while before the mission takes off, they’re talking about being gone for a minimum of a year. Overall I feel like Earth isn’t as bad as I thought it would be and not nearly as good as you said it might be. This school is still totally worth it, though. I’ve even gotten lab time with the nano particle accelerator, which I know means probably nothing to you but trust me, it’s really cool, tell your friends; they’ll think your cooler by proxy. I know you can’t tell me a lot about where you are because it’s probably classified and all, but I hope you’re doing well. At least I can tell you about my job. Actually, come to think of that’s super selfish and therefore not helpful at all. Anyways.
Also my fish died the other day, I think the New York city air killed it. Oh yeah I finally got the hang of breathing here. I don’t care if humanity grew up on this planet; our lungs were not made to inhale this crap. Neither was Omnifish’s. I gave him a proper aquatic funeral, it was a small ceremony, friends and family only. A couple people in my building attended, apparently people on Earth don’t really keep fish as pets anymore so it was a bit of a novelty to everyone. That Terra chick said she was sorry she missed it, but she had this weird grin that made me think she really wanted to be there to laugh at me for shedding a tear for a fish. And to be clear, it was ONE tear, and the window was open. But lungs finally working (yay), I still feel weak-ish though. The supplements they gave me definitely increased my muscle mass, but it’s still weird, increased gravity messes with you in little ways. It’s one thing to not be able to lift a motorcycle anymore or something, but then stuff like, paper feeling heavier, that was weird.
Sorry if this all sound kind of scattered but I’m actually writing this over the course of the day. There’s a super hot chick from one of Jupiter’s moons sitting next to me in this class. Except she has a boyfriend. In that respect Mars and Earth are about the same.
Actually I just remembered, when you go check on my reactor (when, not if, I fed your dog that month you were deployed, I still say he hates me) could you send me that star map hanging above my bed in my room. If it costs a bunch don’t worry about it I just remember you saying military can send interplanetary mail for free so yeah. Try to use the key I left you when the ‘rents aren’t home though, I don’t want you to have to get caught in a conversation with them about my career choices like I have to EVERY TIME I see them. If I land this gig on the expedition then that’s got to prove something. You can’t score a fully funded mission to explore the unknown and STILL have your parents think you’ve got your head in the clouds and not take you seriously right?
So Earth food is kind of getting good. They eat like, a ton of meat, I guess compared to Earth, Mars is practically vegetarian. To be honest I’m not even sure how food gets in this city, they plant a bunch of trees and grass where they can but even if you made central park one giant farm I doubt it would feed all the people. I’m scared one day too many of them will flush at the same time and the billions of tons of waste will backfire and never mind I really don’t want to think about that anymore. I keep running into that Terra chick every time I go to that pizza place though. I need to find more pizza places. Not just to avoid her but in general. Cities are confusing, I mean it probably wasn’t that bad here back in the day when you just needed a street intersection and a floor number, but the city is so layered in towers I need directions in three dimensions, sometimes four, cause oh yeah they have ROTATING towers. It’s one thing if you can catch a cab to one of those things but if you have like no money or don’t know exactly where to go in the first place then walking around is like some horrible analogy of someone very small walking through a maze that’s very big, and moving, and I’m not sure where the minotaur analogy is but I’m sure I’ll find it.
I got the route to central park down as fast as I could though. Being around trees is about the only familiar thing to me around here. I do a lot of homework there and just hang out in general, they have HUGE trees out here man. I really want to see if I can find a way down to the Amazon, my parents said they’ve been a few times and it was amazing, as much animal life as plant life, too.
Alright so I think I’ve officially run out of letter-worthy things to write to you about, so, hope whatever thing it is your doing and will never be able to talk about is going well and that you’re having fun. You’re usually never gone for more than six or seven weeks at a time so I’ll hear back from you within a couple months? Hope to see ya sometime soon man.
-Quorbin.