The full moon was bright and shining, yet dim enough to look beautiful. He sat on the porch of his country home, a worried look. “What are you doing up so late?”, his wife said comfortably. 

“I can’t sleep. I'm worried that the mission will go wrong.”, he said with a trembling voice. 

“Tomorrow was bound to happen”, his wife told him with an angry sigh. He took a deep breath. The smell of the pollen and the lake immersed his surroundings. It brought him back to his early days, a distant memory of his dreams of becoming an astronaut. 

“Well come to bed soon”, his wife said, kissing him softly. He sighed, heading back to his country home.

Chapter 1

“I’m off to work” he yells to his family. 

“Good luck” his wife replies! Pulling off the driveway, he starts his 2-ton pickup truck engine. His wife leans on the edge of the doorway, shedding tears of sadness. 

“Don’t die, and I love you” she shakenly whispered. “-It is launch day folks! All systems are tes….-” he dims the radio and switches to another station. “-I REPEAT THE VIRUS IS SPREADING STAY INDOORS [BLARRR. BLARRR]-” he shuts the radio. It is the year 2045. NASA had just approved civilian missions to Mars, following the deadly COVID-19 variant, Thanatos. The virus kills its victim by eating its brain. The virus is incurable, and many hospitals are overwhelmed by the situation. The virus is transmitted through touch and in aerosols. The variant makes its victims mentally ill until they are braindead. 

He was an astronaut before, for the Space X Falcon missions back in 2030. NASA had hired him for a confidential mission to send civilians back to Mars in 2025. His mission was the first of many, so the technology was still new. NASA partnered with Space X again, to use their new civilian Starship. However, he would have to leave before his family and stay on Mars until they arrived. Getting his family on the waitlist was already hard, but getting them on Mars would take years or decades. 

He pulled into the barricaded checkpoint, the first of many. He gave the guard his passport and papers, with worry printed on his face. “What's with the worried face?” the guard asks skimming through his credentials. 

“Just worried about the launch, as usual”, he says with a fake smile. 

“Alright clear” the guard muffly shouts, through his mask. 

The 4-ton steel door opened, revealing the starship through the wired fences. He pulled up to the car destruction site, where his old 2020 pickup would be recycled. All passenger cars would need to be donated or destroyed, as no one would retrieve them. He enters the boarding room, instantly recognizing it. It was his old mission briefing room, still having flat-screen TVs and overhead lights. The room looked dull, with dangling electricity wires and the floors stripped of the old patterned carpet. There was one oval-shaped desk in the corner of the room. Behind it, was a lazy woman with a suit and a dark red skirt. 

“Crewwww, you may now boardddd,” she said with a sluggish but sassy tone. She opened the high-tech gate installed in front of the sliding doors.  

Chapter 2

The crew entered the changing room, seeing the suits used for the mission. They were lightweight, like the clothes they wore, but heavy enough to withstand the harsh conditions of space. Each suit had an emblem showing how many missions they had completed and a sewn badge of their names. The crew went through the final checkpoint and headed up the elevator. He checked his watch, 15:44 minutes. They put their helmets on, and the voice assistant greeted everyone. “Hello, let me guide you through the steps to activate the spacecraft.” the voice assistant read. 

“TURN OFF” he yelled at the voice assistant.

 “Most certainly, if you need any-” he clicked the manual shut-off switch for the assistant. The 4 pilots entered the vertical spacecraft through ladders laid from the boosters to the cockpit. 

“Welcome aboard this 18-month Space X flight service to Olympus Mons. Please take your seats and attach your suit to your seat.” the navigator said over the intercom. He looked around the spacecraft- it looked different from other spacecraft Space X made. Digital hologram screens surrounded the seats of the 4 crew members. The seats were arranged in a V formation, with the captain’s seat in the front. The seat was uncomfortable, with hard aluminum panels and nails that stuck out. The technology was buggy, and there was a delay after being touched. Nonetheless, it was usable, which was all he cared about.  

The display buzzed on “Testing testing” the commander tapped. The green ‘connected’ bar showed on the top right of the display. “We can hear you clearly,”  he said with a sigh. “Ahh good, let's get you spaceborne,” he replied. “Starting countdown, calibrating the systems,” the assistant happily said. The countdown slowly ticked down to zero, and the boosters ignited. The rocket-propelled forward pressing him and his crew onto their seats. Passengers started screaming, as they had never experienced this feeling before. 

“Boosters and first stage have disconnected successfully, continue the flight,” he reports.