Page 9 of Hidden
Yes, that's me talking from experience.
Toby has noticed his mistake and is suddenly very interested in the Pinnacle again.
"Do you know how old it is?" he asks and everybody turns to me, grateful for the distraction.
"About three million years. But that's estimated using Earth geochronology, so it could be a lot younger or a lot older than that. It's an imprecise science while we only have data of this one region and the few samples we had before the colony was established."
"Wow... that's old."
Toby walks the few remaining yards to the Pinnacle and touches the smooth stone. It almost looks like red marble, not the sandstone I had originally expected. The sandstone that the entire area is made of. The Pinnacle is the only structure here made from this strange stone. I'm sure nobody has ever seen it before, and so there is no name for it yet.
In my head, I've been calling it Martian Marble, but that's quite a mouthful.
Suddenly, an amber light flashes on the little screen inside my helmet. An incoming message.
"Guys, we need you back at the station," Jim's voice comes through the built-in headphones. "We've lost contact with Earth."
Month 3
Louise>>Control?
...
***
IT'S BEEN THREE WEEKSsince Cape Canaveral was swallowed by the ocean. Three weeks since the day Earth forgot about us.
When the wave hit the space centre, a lot of the electronics malfunctioned. Computers sent messages that were never intended to be sent. They made satellites crash and others shut down. We don't know if our contacts on Earth are still alive. It's been three weeks without news.
We should be grateful that they sent us one last message before the tsunami destroyed everything. Otherwise we might think that they simply didn't care about us anymore. No, it's me who would think that. The men think more rationally. But Han has made me see my abandonment issues. I can't stand to be away from the men anymore. If I'm not with one of them, I think that the worst has happened. That the virus returned, that they had an accident, or, on my worst days, that they were never really here.
We don't know if they can still see us from Earth. There are several satellites in the orbit around Mars, but while we have access to them, we're not sure if the same is true for our colleagues on Earth. If they don't, then they won't be able to watch us. The paranoid Louise likes that thought, but the rational one is worried by it. If they can't talk to us, and can't see the station on satellite images, how will they know that we're still alive? Are we completely hidden away now? Lost and forgotten?
As much as I'd like to think so, we're not completely self-sufficient yet. Food is the biggest problem. We're growing vegetables, but during the time I was alone on the station, a lot of the plants died. I just didn't have the time to keep all of them alive. They used to send us supplements from Earth to make up for the nutrients we can't get here, but now we'll have to do without those. At least they sent enough for the entire station when they sent my six men, so we have enough for several years.
We have our own water and get our energy from the sun, so those things are taken care of. But the biggest problem besides food is technology. If one of our machines fails, we don't have any spare ones to replace it with. We're stuck with the materials we already have. There was a plan in place to send new gadgets with every flight to Mars, but it looks like there won't be more in the near future. No more new settlers, either. It's just me and the guys, now.
