Sharon D stared wildly around the waiting room.

Her eyes were pleading for something, anything, before her strangled voice rose, begging to the smug women behind the glass windows separating reception from the clients scattered in the seats around the stale room.

Susan D gasped. ”My car! My car! Why are they towing my car?”

Tears were streaming down her checks, unstopped and untouched. She didn’t brush them away and they did not touch the hearts of the perpetrators, only the other members of the waiting room.

”You parked in a thirty minute spot and you have been here an hour.” The taller, grimmer receptionist announced Susan D‘s crime to everyone, triumph in her tone.

“But, but, I need to pick my kids up from school. I have to leave now.”

A mere shrug followed from the self-assigned keeper of the social service parking lot.

“But what am I going to do? What am I going to do?” Her anxiety, always just below the surface for this client, was moving towards panic. Her hands were twitching.

” Your car can be picked up from Hank’s Tow Lot on Riverside.”

”When?” She was grasping at any solution. Mothers in the scattered chairs around the waiting room knew she was homeless, broke, living off $25 and $40 loans from family members, ex-boyfriends, fathers of her kids, and living in her car right now. It was a small city and everyone trapped in the broken down homes in the southeast section of town knew each others’ business, even if they didn’t interact.

In fact, everyone in that room, on both sides of the glass, expanding to all the social services staff behind the doors, in small offices and cubicles knew. But the staff also knew that her monthly check had been held up for incorrect reporting. That check Susan D had promised to the network outside the building, the borrowers and lenders.

We all heard the grind and bump as the tow truck hauled his prize out of the parking lot onto Market Street.

“When? When can I pick it up?” Her brain was spinning through scenarios that would get her to school and to her kids.

“As soon as you get there. The driver’s taking it straight there.”

Susan D. turned hurriedly to the door.

”You will need $70 cash or credit card to pick it up, though,” came from that same smug voice, our greeter at Social Services.

Howling, the client left the building.

What was my most heinous job? The three months I spent as an intake worker at social services, for sure. Susan D’s check wasn’t held up for a month for incorrect reporting on her part, but because the new data entry clerk incorrectly entered data. I learned later that they could have cut an emergency check if they had wanted. That is the Tale of all Things.

I had lived poor. The check in the mail is hopelessly meaningless. Standing in the lobby on Susan D’s really really bad day, I had been in my new position for two weeks, still very much on probation and not part of anyone’s team. I needed the job. I told myself this every morning as I got out of bed, got my two children on the school bus, got everything ready for my bedridden husband, emptied bedpan and urinal, set lunch on a tray, all in time to walk into my cubicle at 8:15am.

I learned the hard way, that rules, many rules, ran everything at my new employers, city public social services. My fourth day I was written up for being 15 minutes late, and was severely reprimanded. I still hadn’t realized I was working as a guard and our clients were prisoners, and that I was still on probation, so was treated and spoken to as a trustee, which put me somewhere between guard and prisoner. But soon this was clear.

Staff seemed to be out to get clients, catch them out. I learned Susan D was one of their “poster kids” for screwing up, being under the threat of having her kids removed. “We“ stirred her stew pot always. A missed check means 60 days minimum before the next check.

There were reasons for all rules. I just hated supporting bad things. For thirty days I felt shocked and intimidated, and felt pretty bad for everyone involved. The next thirty days I job hunted. The last thirty days, I became a member of the underground, a few staff who silently worked to try and make people feel valued.

Then a remarkable, beautiful revolution happened, I obtained a new job which validated me and I felt good about what I was trying to do to make a difference, to promote positive change. In the years after I left social services, I would see my former fellow guards around town. Each time, the person would grab my hand and say something to me in a lowered voice.

“You got out! You got out! You are so lucky! It has gotten so worse. You are so lucky!“

I wonder about this still; I took a job to help people, yet the philosophy of that institution broke my heart and nearly my spirit. Yet this isn’t the point, I could get out. While the treatment to me was shameful, the treatment of clients was reprehensible, cruel, mocking and unprofessional. I have spent two decades in mental health advocacy, without all those swell benefits which seem to keep people in jobs they hate. But I know how crucial it is to give care, consideration, respect and grace to everyone, but especially on those “worst days” in life.

Susan D awakened me to what could be tolerated and what should never be tolerated.

Day Seven Mars.

Parked under the shadow of a craggy wall and staring out at my stark surroundings, I am forced to assess the ridiculous situation I cast myself into during the past year. My excuse? One of building panic about my future, everyone’s future on home planet Earth, which was followed by a deep pure freezing fire of fright. I took a leap.

In my former world of one hundred-thirty degrees, of flooding swamps, a morass of disease, sinking worlds and half dead cities, I had conned my way into a private, secret, brave new world expedition of part scientists and part dilettantes. Basically we were those who were paid and those who had paid to get out of town, as we used to say in the West. We’d packed up the wagons and shot into space, deserting earth, to crash land on Mars, a distance of two hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles away. For what? Who said we were the chosen ones, other than we ourselves in our jockeying for a seat. How the hell did I think I was going to add to this half-ass plan to continue a species that had little to recommend for its' survival.

From the moment I began sleeping with the General I had only one thought, to save myself from the insanity of Earth. That is what had come over me, to make overtures and then abasements in order to leverage myself out of the apparently predestined flooding morass of a failed future for humanity. This is what had driven me towards this weirdly perverse and unjustifiable journey. Why had I thought I must survive at any and all costs, including that of making love to a giant revolting slug of a human being?

It had seemed a good idea at the time? At least it was the only idea that had any chance of happening. As billions of people died or strived to make sense of some small single trail to lift themselves halfway to surviving for that day or the next, or the week, my guy and his toady buddies had been planning something big, something truly beautiful, I’d see when the time came, he’d tell me close enough to the moment for me to pack a toothbrush and a good book for the ride.

The General was a pig, a slightly malleable pig, but his appetite was less about love and more towards proving he could escape, get to a new golf course in the sky, one to be located and built by his company on a near planet. That I was agreeable to being his co-pig, or at a least compliant courtesan, took close to the year to prove, to insert myself into his tiny notch of trusted supplicants out to flee the world they had already destroyed. I was over thirty, had been around a few too many blocks but knew my price was still high because I was more than just a pretty face. I had an intact and functioning uterus, ovaries and tubes, with no history of disease, drug use, as well as being college educated; both a breeder and a teacher. He’d even had me tutor his two older boys in Opus Martian, the language he’d hired linguist Justice Peabody, PhD to create for our new civilization; the man’s fee was simply an assigned cabin for himself and family on the very big, secret adventure being planned.

Dr. Peabody had been hard at work on Opus Martian for nearly two years before we launched. He’d worked to craft a “new” language which used all verbs and constants from American English, something comfortable for the General. His intent was to give our leader an advantage over our foreign friends on this voyage, and confident, the General declared that neither German nor Latin, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Korean, or any language but Opus Martian would be allowed once we landed and began building a new civilization with all who were the best of the old civilization.

And so the sons and I began to study Opus Martian three months prior to departure, ostensibly to be ahead, to be better, which was very important according to the males in this family. And while I encouraged the General to try it out, at least take thirty minutes before he collapsed on the couch at night, he maintained he was way too busy, too many important things needed to be taken care of before we launched, and all under the terrible strain of a heavy cover of secrecy. Once we are off the ground, he assured us, then he would crack the books, so to speak, just pick up the language, it would so beautiful, we would see. I refused to meet the eyes of his offspring; by then we were well aware of his face forward view of the world; he could not fail, things would change if needed, but he would not fail to be the best, the smartest, the craftiest.

“And besides,” he told us, “I will have Dr. Peabody, great man, as my tutor for the flight, all seven months and I’ll be more fluent than you can imagine.”

In the course of history few people so integral to the future success of a flight such as ours, sailing off the edge of the world so to speak, have missed launch time by as much as Dr. Peabody. Evidently, by his frantic message six hours after lift-off under cover of darkness, his alarm had failed to awaken him or his wife, or his four children and their partners and offspring. Basically, someone had set him wrong, and he was incredulous that we weren’t turning around and coming back for him.

“But the language,” he burbled, “General, it is still being perfected, I assume this is still important to you, I must be on that flight.”

“Listen, Doc, it is a helluva thing, but our goal was to escape detection and turning around and trying to land this thing now, well it is an impossibility. Really sorry, but in a way you have just been fired.”

Our leader hung up on the good doctor as he started to sputter some threat or something. What could he threaten? We were gone, we’d escaped, and no one was going to tell us what to do, how to do it, etc. etc. The General grumbled about what had started to sound like ungratefulness by the good doctor. There on Day One Martian Flight, we just blew it all off. Several crowded cabins were euphoric when they learned there had been a sudden cancellation and six full size staterooms had suddenly become open to the highest bidders.

What highest bidders? This is a question I’ve asked myself here on Day Seven Mars. What did they have to promise to gain further luxury on this flight of fantasy. Unrequited loyalty signed on a legal document that threatened nothing less than “walking the plank” once we got to Mars? Sacrifice of their oldest child? What did they pay, cash, gold, access, eternal obeisance?

As his sons’ tutor I was now called upon as the single Opus Martian expert among the four hundred paying and being paid members of Starship Magnificent, as he’d christened it with a bottle of brandy just before we’d all marched aboard that two-thirty a.m. I set up classes, study groups, tutorials, online testing, and by day one hundred I had the General, under some hard angling, announce that from now on all social times and meal times were to be conducted entirely in Opus Martian. Conversation had to begin, even if over the most basic of subjects, eating, sleeping and gossiping.

“We must began full preparations for our future, fellow citizens,” he pompously boomed over the speaker system. I began to avoid the eyes of my students, all 398 of them whenever we were not in classes. By now the rumors were more than whispers, everyone was fully cognizant that our leader was not learning Opus Martian.

My favorite book from high school was Animal Farm, and the line that provided me with an unequivocally wise view of the human world was “all animal are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” This was truly the guiding principal of the General.

I didn’t ask him he was intending to learn Opus Martian, because he’d already said he’d learn it right away, beautifully, remember, once it was needed. He said this at the dinner table on Day One Hundred Fifteen Martian Flight, his eyes fixated on the downturned heads of his sons. “And if early on after we land I need translators, well Sean and Stan can handle that for me until things move along.”

We all stared at him. Living in close quarters after all these months formality had begun to slip.

“Don’t look at me like that! I’ve said all along that for the duration of the journey, and the first few months once we land, English will have to be the formal dialect; I can’t risk being misunderstood in negotiations. And all our agreement documents, signed and sealed, are also in English. Once we’ve transitioned, maybe next year or so, we’ll begin the final leap into Opus Martian. We have to ensure the stability of the civilization before we make such demands on our systems. Listen,” he murmured, crumpling his napkin and rising up from the table, leaving his reconstituted beef steak and boxed powered potatoes congealing on his plate. “Listen, I don’t need you three to increase the tension on this vessel by questioning me and my decisions. I’ve lost my appetite, something I need to stay the course, in case you haven’t noticed. Stop worrying about something that doesn’t concern you.”

He could fire me, but could he fire his sons? Ironically I began to worry about my future in a different way then, and began looking at my fellow passengers seeking perhaps companions or comfort or conspirators?

What can I say, it had become a very long flight. When I was ten my family took one of the last affordable cross-continental commercial airline flights, and we were all required to wear a mask for the health of us and the other passengers and crew. That flight had been six hours long but lasted at least a week in my mind. This flight, even without the masks was becoming like years in duration. I should note that the only reason we were not wearing masks is that everyone had been required to spend a month in quarantine before lift off, and even then temperatures and swabs were taken as each person waited in the cavernous airplane hanger six hours before loading.

Basically we were all a healthy group who were wearing poorly on others, even without the language issue.

Why had we made the language issue so central to the flight? Was it just the General’s idea to keep us busy, to give us little tasks and hurdles to go through so we didn’t sit down and demand a solid game plan for when we came down on Mars? He and his five chosen “cabinet” members appeared to be shuffling cards and reshuffling them.

Maybe if Dr. Peabody had caught the flight what happened wouldn’t have happened. As a highly respected linguist and so central to the success of our new civilization, he could have been a better influence on the General and provided that smooth transition to fluency for our leader that the rest of us spent seven months perfecting. The final week, shrunken Mars looking up at us circling and navigating for the right spot to come down upon, 394 passengers and crew suddenly began speaking Opus Martian day and night. It was like we had a secret language of our own, completely separate and unintelligible to the intelligentsia. We almost became drunk over it, jokes bursting out without provocation or rational, songs being created and sung at dinner time in Opus Martian.

We were Martians, people declared, we should at least sound like Martians.

Only one tiny little problem, no maybe two, with these declarations. First there were no Martians, we were merely immigrants to a dead planet. Second, every single person on board were speaking a made-up language, someone’s invention of Opus Martian with my accent, my understanding, learned in a couple of months of tutelage I’d had from its creator.

Dr. Peabody was supposed to be on this flight. How could he have missed it?!

Could there have been some sort of fraud, collusion, something that caused his alarm not to ring? Or him not to awaken to the ring? Out of everyone, his was the only household that had missed the flight.

But how ridiculous a thought. The entire trip could have been conducted in English, but then if it was in English for some of us, there were ten different languages spoken by other members. No. I could agree with the General, if we were to be united, we needed one language, and just making English that language would have led to an eventual revole.

I looked forward on Day Two Hundred Ten Flight to packing my bags and drinking my last cup of coffee from the cafeteria. I tried to not consider that once we landed, my coffee would always be from this cafeteria, or some such with the same freeze dried reconstituted brown gruel with flavoring and scent particles added for our pleasure.

Mussing on this, I was sharply and very unpleasantly interrupted by a loud blarring, buzzing pulsing noise and a wildly flashing redlight I had never seen before on the light above my door.

“Mayday, Mayday.” I think it was the General’s voice.

“Stay Calm and Carry On,” someone else said, I think it was his oldest son.

I went rushing through the crowded corridors, as no one understood the garbled English coming over the speaker.

What is it? I thrust myself into the private quarters, to be confronted with the red face thrashing furiously body of the General.

“That idiot,” he was screaming!

The son quickly explained as the five leaders stood shellshocked. Dr. Peabody had planned a pleasant surprise for all of us; he’d managed to convince an engineer to program in Opus Martian for the final set of instructions to land Magnificent Startship on the chosen Mars valley. Evidently he was certain that under seven months of his teaching, everyone would be fluent and it was be the last hurdle to transition.

Unfortunately he hadn’t shared this in time on that phone call.

Because the instructions were not only in Martian, but the engineers now were involved in a devil of time in trying to translate and navigate at the same time.

Why had we made language such a critical part of this trip, when our own leader had fought learning another language his entire life.

A rash man, an extremely red rash of a spoiled man. Would he finally pay for it?

Then I remembered Dr. Peabody’s instructions to me, one night as we studied together, perhaps after I'd confessed my growing nervousness about following the General into the unknown.

“There will always be a way out for you, dear girl. You just need to calmly push for it at the weigh station.”

Get it, weigh, not way, station.

So, I am sitting here, Day Seven on Mars, having survived by calmly walking through the paniced crowds to the room where we’d each been weighed as we arrived, to calculate our sum total weight as it would affect lift-off, navigation and landing.

It had become the seldom used “mail room” of the ship and on the PO Box assigned to Dr. Peabody a red button was flashing. I pushed it as suggestd, and a tube appeared, just the size for an average person, sliding me down into a three-seater aircraft and jetting me away from the Magnificent. It appeared programmed to steer me down to the surface and through the overhead shield, I stared in horror as the Starship smashed down in unholy glory, erupting in fire and destruction. I thought it was probably just about the time one of the engineers would have translated a flashing command to mean “pull up, you fool!”

I give myself until Day Fifteen on Mars, the longest anyone from Earth has spent on this planet. My goal is to leave some memorial to myself to be found sometime by someone, as the only survivor of Startship Magnificent. I’ve recorded a journal in the log of my small craft, with a thank you to Dr. Peabody. I have especially enjoyed the small snacks he had packed in preparation for something like this to occur.

I regret the vacuum packed whiskey ran out Day Three Mars. I'd been rash myself.

I haven’t heard or seen sign of any other survivors.

It’s over. Or nearly.

I’m breathing and contemplating the universe and trying to be very zen about this all. It was my own weird ego that demanded I be one of the survivors from earth. And for what? A few more days of life, less than if I’d stayed behind where I might have done something for humanity before I died.

Then I see it, even as I don’t believe it. Two Mars All Terrain vehicles, such as they’d sent up here thirty years ago. What is this? Are they still functioning.

Suddeny a horn is honking excitedly, crazily, and I began to wonder if I am crazy myself. Because as they get closer, I can only sit and say, stay calm and carry on, because it is that freakily lucky General and his two sons.

“We found you!” He declares, his sons cheering out their own hope. “Our ability to populate our new world is secured!”

“You’ve saved the human race, my dear.”