Trash Picker on Mars In the dim time before dawn the woman clamped her metal fingers over a beer bottle. Her buckets overflowing with litter from a dying world, she sat and stared at the alien landscape of asphalt. The stars had all faded except for the one red light of Mars still defying the sun. The woman smiled at the mythical planet now defrocked of its canals and green men by Carl Sagan and the Legion of Reason. But still she dreamed. In her electric cart she glided over the red-gold deserts of ancient Barsoom— past the fairy towers of Grand Canal and the monoliths of Helium where a once great race of Martians lived, played and died— filling the canyons of Valles Marineris with the excess of their empty lives. Out of habit she picked up a fluted green shard, then laughed and flung it along with her buckets into the trash heap of lost Martians. Through the dark grottoes of Great Rift Valley she roved to the shores of Mare Sirenum, whose salty crust reminded her of past ruins and distant times when she could still cry. For a moment she stared at the sun, weak and small as it rose above Olympus Mons, igniting her in a ruddy glow. She was the Princess of Mars and there were still a few unhatched eggs inside her. And at the edge of Candor Chasm she bared her heart to the silent, scouring winds. Then into the dawn she drove to begin her new race of Martians. |