Seeing Red

Seeing Red

Three months. Three short months was all it took for Kurt Crimson to realize something was terribly wrong. For one, the sky wasn’t supposed to be red. Dust was everywhere, choking, blinding dust storms worse than anything you can imagine. For some, living on Mars was a grand adventure. Kurt didn’t find it quite so exhilarating. 

Oh sure, everything was fine enough – the long, slow process of terraforming being completed some twenty-five years earlier, June 10th, 2050 for every other colonist, was just another normal day. 

“Got to get out,” Kurt muttered to himself. “I’ve had enough,” 

You see, for the last three months, Kurt had lived in Red Planet bliss. Ever since he first moved here, just to see what it was like, he vastly enjoyed it. Now he could find some peace to finally sit and finish his book, which until then had been five years of on-again, off-again, half-assed effort. It was just too crowded and noisy back on Earth, especially the damnable streets of Baltimore, which had gotten far worse since he graduated college forty years ago. 

“Can’t stand this place,” he grumbled. “So cold, too red…winds, dust, rocks.” Kurt lived in the town of Mount Carter, wrapped around the base of Olympus Mons. Don’t ask me why this place was settled near the largest volcano in the Solar System. Scientists had predicted the volcano was due to go dormant any day now. That hadn’t hindered settlers in the slightest. People can do crazy things when the mood takes them.

Maybe that’s why people avoided Kurt these days. He tended to sit on his front porch with a pickaxe across his lap, muttering incoherently to himself. Why did no one do anything? After all, the nutcase could be something potentially dangerous, right? Most people just stayed away from him, no harm done. 

“The book is shit, why bother? Why bother? Why bother? I ask him, what’s the point? Been so long, never going to finish, maybe I wasn’t mean to. Can’t I just go home? Earth, yes, Earth, need blue skies, blue water…”