The bee flaps its wings in a blur, but only lifts off the ground a few centimeters before crashing back down a few seconds later. Its wings fall still as it rests on the ground, panting.
“You fucker. Why can’t you just fly already?” Val slams their tablet down on a table and turns to storm out of the lab. On their way out, they curtly ask Mer, their assistant, “Please euthanize all of batch 473c and have the computer do full autopsies and genetic analyses on all of them.”
“Val… Are you OK?”
“I know it’s only lunchtime, but I’m done. I just can’t today. I don’t know why we can’t design a single fucking bee that can fly for more than three fucking seconds in the current fucking Martian atmosphere. I mean, it’s only 0.38 G’s here, how hard could it be? We got the mosquitos working what, 100 years ago? And who cares about mosquitos? Everyone hates mosquitos. Why’d we even bother? But bees? Nooo, we have exactly zero functional bees in over a century of trying. And you know what? If we can’t get a bee going, and realistically, we’re running out of time to do it, but if we can’t create a bee that can survive on this rock, then we don’t have agriculture, and we’ll never leave the HABs, and we may even have to shut the colony down and leave Mars for good. I know you know all this. But I just… I… Shit. I’m sorry to dump all this on you, Mer. I need to go home. I’ll see you tomorrow. You know, what, no. Not tomorrow, maybe the day after. I need to get out in the field and clear my head. Can you manage everything for me while I’m out?”
“Of course. Take as much time as you need. Just let me know when you’ll be back, OK? And get some rest. Frankly, you’ve seemed kinda burned out for a while now. I’m worried about you.”
“Thanks. I’ll be fine. Really. I just need a break. See you in a couple days.”
—
Early the next morning, Val fired off a quick message to the whole biology team. “Good morning, everyone. I’m heading out to Crooked Canyon to collect some regolith samples from behind the hoodoos. Ping Mer if you need anything today, since the reception is basically zero out there. Cheers, Val.”
Next, Val skipped breakfast at the cafeteria and instead headed over to the main equipment bay by the airlocks. They reserved one of several single-seat rovers lined up in a neat row next to the airlocks. They did this by briefly hovering their palm over the scanner next to one of the dune-buggy-like vehicles. Then they walked over to the racks of EVA suits and grimaced briefly when they saw there were no EVAs left in their size.
Tresh, the equipment manager on duty, was seated on a stool nearby. They noticed Val looking through the EVAs and said, “Sorry. The racks are picked over today, mostly because of the big polar expedition that left a few days ago. Here, why don’t you try this Large instead. It’s the next size up, the closest we have for you right now.”
Val, like everyone on base most of the time, was wearing nothing when they arrived in the equipment bay. They grabbed socks and a thermal base layer top and bottom from a nearby shelf, pulled them on, and then slid into the EVA via the hatch in the back. Val remarked, “Hmm… It’s a bit baggy, and the finger dexterity leaves a lot to be desired, but it’ll do.“
Tresh responded, “Yup. Just be sure to use the autonomous driving setting and you’ll be fine unless you’re doing, I don’t know, field helmet repairs or evasive driving maneuvers or something. Do you need anything else?”
“Yes, could you hook up a Soil Scooper to the front of Rover 29 please?”
“Sure thing, Val. You heading out by yourself today?”
“Yeah, just scoping out some of the back corners of Crooked Canyon. I’ve gotta get out of the lab and clear my head. It’s been one of those weeks.”
“I hear you. How long will you be out there?”
“Eight or ten hours, max. I’ll probably be back in five or six. I’m just taking a few soil samples.”
Tresh disappeared into a back room momentarily and returned dragging a dark grey box with small wheels under each of the bottom corners. The box was about a cubic meter and looked heavy. Tresh popped open the latches along the upper rim, removed the lid, and lifted out the Automated Programmable Regolith Sample Collector with Rover Hitch, AKA the Soil Scooper. The Soil Scooper looked like a mini backhoe, with a little collection basin underneath the belly. Moments later, Tresh had it all connected to the rover’s front attachment platform. Then Tresh sat inside the rover for a few moments and poked some buttons.
“Rover checkout and departure checklist is complete. You’re good to go Val. Just bring it back here when you’re done. No need to turn off the rover today, as it’s fully charged, and that’ll last about 150 hours. Also, the onboard control systems don’t like being turned off. Oh, and the suit’s water supply is full. Do you have food?”
“Not bringing any, besides the rations in the rover’s emergency kit, that is. I won’t be gone that long. I’ll just have a late lunch when I get back.”
“Gotcha. Have fun out there.”
Val climbed in, sat down behind the wheel, and said, “See you in a bit,” before closing the rover’s door.
Then Val said, “Rover 29, please pressurize and take me to Crooked Canyon, Sector 4, Quadrant 2. I’ll provide more specific instructions as we get closer to our final destination. Do you have a name you prefer to be called?”
A gentle voice came from a speaker in the dashboard area. “Will do. Rover 29 works, thank you. But my friends all call me Speedy… because I usually drive slower than they do. So it’s your call. And may I call you Val?”
“Thank you, Speedy. Yes, Val is fine.”
Speedy made a metallic clanking sound and the vents began hissing as the cabin pressurized. Then it slowly pulled forward and quietly rolled into one of the airlocks while Val double checked their helmet and EVA life support systems. Once inside the airlock, Val looked through Speedy’s side window and gave a clumsy thumbs up with the oversized EVA glove. Tresh returned the gesture with a touch of silliness, wobbling their thumb around as if it were too big too. Then Tresh hit a large red button, and the bay door swung shut with a loud thump. An LED light on Speedy’s dashboard blinked green, as did LEDs both inside and outside the airlock doors and another LED inside the helmet. The airlock depressurization process initiated.
The windshield quickly fogged over, and Speedy commented, “You wouldn’t think it would fog up like that, given the materials and physics involved, but somehow it always does. Now wait for it… wait for it… and watch this.” A half second later, the polycarbonate glass cleared up again. “Funny how that works, right? If you’re patient, you always get the clarity you need to better view the road ahead.” Less than a minute later, the hissing stopped too, and the rover was ready to roll.
Val responded flatly, “How profound. Uh, Speedy, I’m not really in a chatty mood today, so please limit conversation to necessary communications.”
“Understood. I hope you enjoy your journey.”
The outer bay doors opened, and the little rover rolled out of the airlock and sped away into the red, dusty expanse. Within a few minutes, the HAB was no longer visible from Speedy’s mirrors and rear video feed.
The ride was quiet and fairly smooth for the first half hour or so, as they followed a well-traveled road. The ride got bumpy and Speedy slowed down considerably when they diverted off the main road and continued overland toward the northeast. Crooked Canyon wasn’t far in Martian terms, about 70 kilometers from base, but it wasn’t frequently visited either. In fact, no one had visited Crooked Canyon in at least five Martian years, or ten Earth years. No one had reason to. It’s pretty enough, sure, but there were much more majestic destinations in nearly every other direction, and those didn’t require an uncomfortable two-hour offroad drive each way. Plus, the fossil digs, the anthropological artifact parks, and lots of other sightseeing of that kind were far to the west, with warm showers and hot meals included. But that’s not what Val was looking for. Crooked Canyon’s remote location and lack of traffic were precisely why Val chose it in the first place. They needed to be away from people today. Away from all of civilization, for that matter. They needed time and space alone. And maybe, if they were lucky, they’d find something to jolt them out of this funk.
Val kept the radio off and didn’t play any pods or books along the way. They wanted to think. However, their inner monologue kept running the same gloomy loop over and over: Why can’t we design a bee that can fly and pollinate even a single flower here on Mars? What are we missing? We’ve been terraforming for about two centuries now, and the atmospheric pressure, composition, and solar radiation are only a few decades away from being safe for humans without an EVA suit. We’ve estimated the wing sizes and beat frequencies required for insect flight given the current ambient air pressure, humidity ranges, and gravity. We’ve predicted the metabolisms and resources required for animal and plant life outside the HABs. In about a decade, we’re planning limited and controlled releases of flora and fauna genetically modified to survive on Mars. We’ve mapped the DNA sequences for every possible bee trait. We’ve modeled the neurons for every possible bee behavior. We’ve concocted all manner of mosquitos, gnats, and crawling insects that can live here just fine, at least indoors in controlled environments, which is a start. We even have the Mars worms, for crying out loud, and they’re doing great with transforming the regolith into arable soil in extreme temperatures. But we still don’t have a single Mars-adapted bee. What am I missing? What am I missing? What am I missing?
After another 90 minutes of the coccyx-bruising ride, and without making any progress with their inner monologue that stayed on repeat throughout the drive, Crooked Canyon finally loomed in the distance. As they approached, Val directed Speedy to a hidden back corner of the canyon, where they discovered the entrance to a slot canyon roughly 30 meters tall, not totally dissimilar to those found in deserts on Earth. The slot canyon wound around and seemed to go on and on forever, in places sometimes just barely wide enough for the rover to pass through, and in other places wide enough that you could even erect a small HAB. Judging by the lack of tire tracks, it’s likely that no wheeled vehicle had been back this far in the canyon before. Spindly whitish cement-like spires and uncannily crooked hoodoo towers of rock lined the terraced canyon walls. It looked as if a toddler with a shaky hand and a few red and brown crayons had drawn Bryce Canyon in Utah, in North America, back on Earth.
After driving another kilometer or so deeper into the canyon, Val told Speedy to stop. They put on their helmet, asked Speedy to depressurize the cabin, and gave Speedy and the scooper instructions for collecting samples around the canyon. Val’s part of the work more or less complete, they stepped out into the canyon, leaving footprints in the dusty, tan regolith.
Val mused aloud to Speedy, themself, or perhaps no one in particular, “It’s really a shame no one visits up here. It’s true the fossil digs out west are cool, and the artifacts are confounding, but these hoodoos are truly out of this world. Whatever that means on Mars, that is. People should come out here more often.” But those fun thoughts were quickly overtaken by the same gloom loop as before. That is, Val returned to thinking about their bungled bee designs. Val knew that their dark mood wasn’t just about their years of failed research. The other issue was that Mars would never be truly independent from Earth and Io and their pricy supply runs and awful politics… unless and until Martians create and sustain their own agricultural systems. And they’ll never do that at scale without pollinators. In short, no bees, no food, no future.
As Val scanned the canyon, they realized one of the shorter hoodoos was brown and yellow and shaped just like a yeast burger. Val nearly retched in their helmet at the thought. Maybe it was just the rough week they’d had, but in that moment, Val made a vow to themself that if they ever ate another yeast burger, they were leaving this god-forsaken planet at once and heading to Earth for good. Gravity, climate damage, and corporatocracy be damned.
“You know what, Speedy, listen up. And you too, you two Hoodoos,” they said while pointing at a pair of stringy white two-meter-tall hoodoos a few meters away as if they could hear them. “Screw it. I’m leaving for Earth. I can’t take it here anymore. I’m only trained to do one thing, making bees, and I’ve failed at it for over a decade, a Martian decade, which is about half a typical Earth career. What am I doing with my life? Nothing. I don’t even have nesting partners like most people my age, because I’ve so completely devoted myself to this evidently unsolvable problem. Hell, I barely have friends here, besides a few cordial work colleagues, and it’s not like I have family here either. Yes, that’s it. I’ll go to Earth, or maybe to New Vegas on Io. I’ll learn to wear clothes every day, pick a gender if I must (ew, maybe not that), go back to school for something actually useful to humanity, and leave all this behind. I bet there’s even time to catch next week’s empty supply shuttle on its way back to Earth.”
Val looked back at Speedy several meters away and realized that Speedy either didn’t hear or didn’t care, because Speedy didn’t respond. Oddly, and perhaps caused by the effort exerted by the two robots doing work collecting soil samples and data, or perhaps caused by a rare cloud passing in front of the sun right then and causing a sudden drop in temperature, Speedy’s windows had completely fogged over again. Was that a coincidence, or was Speedy trying to tell them something? Ultimately, Val decided that robots don’t make good travel companions, and that they truly were alone out here. Slightly out of breath from their lonely tirade moments ago in the thin pressurized air of the EVA suit, Val paused a moment, sighed, and then just quietly said to Speedy, to themself, and to no hoodoo in particular, “Shit.”
By this time, Speedy and the scooper had finished collecting the samples. There was nothing left to do in Crooked Canyon, but soil samples weren’t really the point of being there, as Val well knew. It’d only been about two and a half hours since they left the HAB, and Val didn’t feel quite ready to leave, especially knowing now that this might be their last trip off base before departing for Earth. That thought depressed them even more, but Val knew they couldn’t go on another day hoping for a miracle that was never going to come.
Val stared deeper into the canyon, its mysteries veiled in shadows. The sky was no longer visible in the section just steps beyond where they were standing. Val looked back at Speedy and its foggy windows. Minutes passed. Val deliberated, but was still unsure if going further into the canyon on foot was a good idea. Maybe they should just turn back.
On the other hand, what did they have to lose? If they’re going to Earth next week, they’ll likely never get another chance to explore this or any other Martian landscape, regardless of their career failures, their mood, or the size of their EVA suit. Finally, Val muttered “Fuck it,” and started walking deeper into the dark canyon ahead. Soon the canyon narrowed even further, barely wide enough for the EVA to fit through. After a while, a second path branched up and off to the left, requiring some scrambling in order to continue on. The EVA suit was too big for this kind of movement, but not so big that Val couldn’t manage some light scrambling in it, as long as the way didn’t get too intense. The boots fit pretty well, after all.
So Val headed up and across the ever narrowing canyon wall a few meters, tightly squeezing in between several hoodoos, bracing outward with their hands and feet pressed against two stable-looking hoodoos in a manageable chimney climbing technique. After that section, the canyon trail quickly became byzantine and much steeper and trickier to climb than Val had hoped, twisting around and up and down and through and behind. It’d be hard to find their way back, except for the footprints in the pristine regolith. However, the path was rocky at times, which meant no footprints, but Val felt they could still find their way home as long as it wasn’t dark. That said, going back down was going to be much more challenging than climbing up, especially with these dumb gloves with these enormous fingers. Val really hoped they’d find another, safer path back to Speedy. Disconcertingly, Val realized that if something happened, like a bad fall or a rock slide, it could be two or three days before they were found, even with the suit’s tracking capabilities. Val’s suit would run out of food and charge in that time, which would be fatal, regardless of any footprints and in-suit beacons. Val had never felt so alone, but something in them felt the need to press on. Val decided they just had to be extra careful and see this through, whatever it was they were doing. And yes, “it” was pretty dumb.
Val followed the little side canyon another couple hundred meters further before it branched again. Val took the right branch this time, which increased in elevation a dozen meters more. After yet another hundred meters or so of increasingly sketchy climbing, twisting, and winding, the canyon finally opened up into a sheltered box canyon. A dead end. The rim was cantilevered over much of the canyon, blocking a third of the sky. The canyon was roughly oval shaped, about 50 meters long and 20 to 30 meters wide. The walls were maybe 30 to 40 meters tall on all sides and too steep to climb without gear. There were a few large but lonely hoodoos spread about, casting eerie shadows on the canyon floor. It looked as though water may have flowed over the rim of the canyon eons before, but wind erosion sometimes carved rock in similar-looking ways, so it was hard to tell for certain. Val thought to themself, “How in the world am I going to get back now? For that matter, why did I put myself in this situation in the first place?” Val carefully walked the perimeter of the box canyon and verified that, yes, indeed, there was only one way out: the way they came in.
Val walked back to the entrance and looked up at the sun. At least it wouldn’t be dark for several hours yet. They thought to themself, “I’ve truly reached the end of the line. I can’t go any further. I’ll have to find a way to go back.” Wistfully, they kneeled down and picked up a handful of regolith. They held their arm out with the palm up and let the dusty particles slip through the puffy fingers of the too-large EVA suit glove. Within a few seconds, the final grains slipped through, leaving a dusty brown coating on the glove.
And that’s when it happened.
At first, Val wasn’t even sure what they were looking at. Because it was simply impossible. They blinked and looked again. A bee had landed on Val’s palm. It stood there, dead still, for two, maybe three seconds. And then it was gone.
“No, that’s impossible,” Val thought. “There hasn’t been life on Mars outside of a HAB in millions of years. Maybe billions. That was a hallucination. I’m tired and low blood-sugar. And also depressed and scared and likely having a mental breakdown. There are no bees on Mars. I’ve effectively proven throughout my career that bees can’t exist here, not in a HAB, and certainly not outside. Yes, that’s it. A hallucination. Because I’ve wanted to see a bee fly on Mars so badly for so long, and now I’m leaving as a complete failure. I created it in my head. It was probably just a bee-shaped reflection in my visor glass, caused by the sparkly cloud of dust I’d just dropped to the ground. Geesh, I really do need to get off this rock and back to a real civilization like Earth. I’m in a remote and dangerous corner of a dead planet, playing in the dirt, and hallucinating. Now that I think about it, maybe I should see a shrink before I leave Mars. It is a long trip, after all.
“But wait…
“If it was a real bee, which is, of course, impossible, and obviously it was not a bee, but just saying, if it was, my helmet’s camera would have seen it too. Let’s have a quick look, just to be sure. Then I’m heading back to base, getting my head checked, and boarding that Earth shuttle. Yes, that’s it. I’ll check the video real quick and clear this up once and for all. And then I really do need to figure out how to get home and start packing.”
Val told the in-suit assistant to play back the video from the last three minutes in their helmet’s visor display. The video began playing. It showed Val’s point of view as they looked around the canyon walls, kneeled down to pick up a handful of regolith, let it drop through their EVA glove fingers, and a little cloud of dust danced around and below Val’s hand. This first minute of the video felt like it took twelve. And then, at long last, seemingly conjured out of thin air as if by magic, a bee appeared right in the center of Val’s palm.
Val paused the video and zoomed in. This was no dust cloud or visor reflection. It was, without question, a bee. The bee was unlike any other bees they’d ever seen, designed, or even imagined. But it was still quite clearly a bee, plain as day, right there in the middle of their palm, standing on their ridiculously floppy EVA gloves. It had a long, slender body, covered in fine, rusty red hairs. Almost a fuzzy fur, really, but with four or five thin, iridescent, green stripes along its abdomen. The wings were larger than that of any bee they’ve ever seen, not quite as large as a dragonfly’s, but maybe half that big. That’s several times larger than the wings of even the largest Earth bees. This was truly a bee not of earth origin.
Val unpaused the video. The bee turned its head toward the camera. Val swore it looked right at them for a second, right in their eyes, almost as if it was looking directly into Val’s soul. Val knew they’re just anthropomorphizing an insect, but still the feeling lingered. The bee wiggled its antennae back and forth, and then just as quickly as it had appeared moments earlier, it flew up and away toward the canyon rim and disappeared from the camera’s view.
That was no hallucination. That was a bee. A real bee. A native Martian bee. No, not native. Wild. A wild Martian bee. A real live, motherfucking Martian bee!!!
The questions began to flow wildly through Val’s mind too fast to control, like a flash flood flowing through an ancient alien slot canyon. How did the bee’s ancestors escape the lab? When did they escape the lab? Were they released in secret? From which lab at which HAB? How many are there now? How did they survive? How did they evolve and adapt? Where do they live? What is their range? How long do they live? Why haven’t we seen them before? What do they feed on? Where are all the flowers? How can we catch a bee to study it? Can we cultivate them to support Martian agriculture? Will anyone believe any of this? Do I even believe it? What do I do now? After a few minutes of this, Val realized that it was getting late, about five hours since they left, and they really were getting hungry now.
The gloom loop was gone, replaced by an entirely new line of thinking. Now Val thought, “I need to figure out how to get back to Speedy so we can drive back to the HAB. The down-climbing could get tricky, but that doesn’t matter. There’s so much work to do tomorrow. No, it can’t wait until morning. I’ll grab a yeast burger to go from the cafeteria and go straight to the lab. I need to analyze the video. I need to categorize the bee’s traits and map them to our DNA database. I need to organize a research expedition that’ll return to Crooked Canyon in, say, three or four days. We’ll set up our first outpost right in the canyon, probably back by where I parked the rover, in order to optimize our research efforts. I’ll need to recruit a research team to help me, though that will likely be the easy part. Everyone will want to be a part of this mission. It’s gonna be so much fun. This is so exciting. I’ll ask Mer tonight. They’ll join for sure. And I could ask Tam and Sunny. They love field research as much as I do. Maybe Tresh will want to manage our equipment and the Mobile HAB and the drone fleet. Speedy could be our lead transport vehicle and intelligent entity liaison. And I could ask Z to join us too. I always like working with Z, and, heck, I bet they’ll help me organize the rest of the team. Everyone likes Z, because they’re so flirty and persuasive and fun. I kinda like Z too, if I’m being honest, but there’s no time for that now. There’s so much work to do! This changes everything.”