The brothers, Miles and Edward Clancy, were first-generation Martians, children of first settlers Evelyn and Miles Clancy Sr. Considering the station turnover, the brothers adopted the more radical term: ‘first-generation survivors.’

Not everyone is ready for permanent residency on Mars. They had no interest in geology like their parents. They didn’t care one way or the other if life existed billions of years ago on Mars. “You’d think they’d leave something behind besides rocks, some bones or something on one of those dry river beds, but no critters asleep in those beds,” declared Miles Clancy, the elder of the two offspring.

The Mars Station, the sprawling underground facility also known as Tunnel Town, wasn’t set up for traditional educational opportunities with prep schools and colleges for their youth to choose from, nor was it intended to. Mars was mostly about business. 

Most people assigned to the Mars Station rotated on and off the planet, and the few jobs Tunnel Town offered to those rare few who chose to stay and be full-time residents involved specialized technical training or building skills. Mars was the place to be if you liked digging holes in triple-digit sub-zero temperatures using heavy machinery in a low-gravity environment while dressed in a spacesuit. 

Not all kids took an interest in science, regardless of who their parents were. Ed Clancy was like that. He could exploit some basic engineering skills for running pipes and plumbing work, but aside from manual labor, he had limited opportunities on the red planet. Not that education was an issue on Mars. 

Terraforming the fourth planet from the Sun never took off as some once promised. The idea never got beyond the board game phase. It was a ruse, a fantasy, a pipedream someone in marketing came up with to sell the idea of settlements on Mars to NASA. The fictional projection played well with the media and got into people’s imaginations. There was never an actual program. The government never even ordered a study, let alone a plan. 

Terraforming was a term, a second Earth concept dreamed up on the backs of climate change disasters and successfully exploited to get some people interviews on TV. The science community never gave it serious consideration. Once you figured out what it would take to terraform a planet in terms of sheer effort and investment, size and scope, and Mars was all land mass too, no lakes or oceans, and not much atmosphere to work with either…  The enormity of such an endeavor meant it never garnered serious consideration. Cheaper to stay home and fix the Earth. 

Still, mankind went to Mars. Going to Mars without anyone dying took all of humanity’s know-how. But the notion of turning the red planet green, or blue, however grand and far-fetched perhaps helped spur enough interest to put a base on Mars. But that was as far as they got. So now they knew. Mars, at best, was a mining operation, while the Moon dominated off-planet manufacturing interests. 

Neither Miles nor Ed Clancy worked the mines, though they got by. They were locals who knew everyone and everything that went on in Tunnel Town. They also knew what was missing. Entertainment. 

Miles ran a poker game four nights a week, Thursdays through Sundays, that more than covered his expenses. The house dealt and took half the ante out of every pot. Miles played host and dealer. He was the man with the golden arm, like they called card dealers back in the old days, in Chicago, according to a novel Miles once read by Nelson Algren. And Ed Clancy could pick up a buck or two doing whatever. They grew red potatoes in their underground greenhouse, along with several other types of red potatoes. 

“Why call them greenhouses when the only thing we grow here is red?” Ed Clancy asked his brother. “We should call them red houses, don’t you think?”

“Their leaves are green,” Miles reminded him. 

But there was nothing green growing on the frozen red desert sands of Mars. 

Miles switched his helmet visor to binocular mode and scanned the horizon and rust-tinted hills to the north. “Where is he?” he asked, talking to himself out loud, which served his two purposes: to engage himself in thought, and to communicate with his brother, as was his manner. “He must be somewhere.”

“He’s out there,” Ed replied. “He’s either out there, or he’s out there and dead.” 

“Or drunk,” Miles added while flipping through the filters on his visor to better take out the annoying, pink, glaring light. “Old John loves his potato beer.” The sun was just coming up over the hills. He checked the weather posted on the lower right-hand corner of his visor. It read -167 degrees Fahrenheit. 

“That he does,” Ed agreed. He sat sidesaddle on his e-bike while his brother shuffled back and forth on the hardscrabble grounds, scouting the periphery of the compound. “So, what are you going to do when you find him?” Ed asked. 

“I’m going to kill him. What do you think I’m gonna do? The useless bum.”

“Really?”

“Damn right. You can’t let people steal from you.”

“Ya, but kill him? He just boosted your battery. You can’t kill a man for that.”

“Sure I can. They used to string guys up for horse stealing, right? What’s the difference?”

“Between a horse and a battery?”

“OK. Horses are worth more. But then, this ain’t exactly Earth and the old west, either.”

“Yep, you’re right about that, partner,” his brother chided. “You read too much fiction. Still, a battery? What if he was just borrowing it?”

“I’m gonna kill him. Fuck him.”

“You’re kidding?”

“I’m not kidding. I’m tired of his shit. This ain’t the first time he borrowed my battery without asking.”

Old John was Tunnel Town’s oldest living resident. He was also the Mars Station chief engineer and custodian, and very popular among management and the residents. Though everyone suspected Old John had grown a bit daft over the years, his brain fried from radiation poisoning, the unfortunate toll an extended life on Mars collected. 

The sun broke the horizon and sent flares of pink light left and right in a spectacular show on the ambient alien planet. A shadow crept down along the ancient hills and vanished in lockstep with the rising sun. 

And then Miles stiffened, spotting a swirling dust cloud rising in a dry riverbed about 3 o’clock. He gave the disturbance greater scrutiny. What looked like someone kicking up dust on an e-bike riding around in circles, maybe a mile or two out on the flats, was his man.

“OK, there he is. I got him, the old fuck,” he said, tapping his helmet’s visor back to standard power. “Let’s get him.”

The two brothers took off on Ed Clancy’s e-bike since Miles’s bike was temporarily impaired. They barely made a sound as they kicked up sand, leaving the settlement. Miles pointed the way, and they shot out onto the broad, rocky Martian terrain. 

Old John, half drunk and wearing ruts in the soil, driving around in circles, looked delighted to share his work when he first noticed the brothers heading towards him. He welcomed the company. 

Miles got off the back of Ed’s bike and wandered into the middle of the broad circle Old John was cutting in the rose-colored sand. In most violent encounters between humans, aggressive youth is favored over the aged and feeble-minded every time, and no more so than on the planet Mars, where the reduced gravity can make even the least nimble of foot appear unrealistically athletic. 

Miles got up on his toes and started dancing in place like a prize fighter staying loose. He took his time getting his footing down. And then, once he timed John’s rotation, he took off running ahead of where John was going. John was slowing down to talk to him, unsuspecting of what Miles had in store for him, when Miles leaped feet first into the thin Martian air at Old John’s chest, when he could have chosen John’s head just as easily, and kicked him off his e-bike. 

Old John went flying and landed awkwardly, toppled over twice before sliding to an abrupt stop at the base of a flat Martian paving stone. Miles came down softly on one knee, and John’s bike skidded to a stop in the sand. 

“Hey, ow! What the hell? I think you broke my ribs,” the old man protested in vain, rubbing his side.

Miles strolled up to Old John, kicked him once more—in his butt this time, while the old guy was still down—and said, “You got something to say, you old fool? You’re lucky I don’t kill you. I could, you know. You steal my battery again, I will.” 

Miles wasn’t up for killing anybody, at least not that day. He just stood there, glaring down at Old John to make his point. “What the heck are you doing out here, anyway?” he asked him. 

Old John’s face lit up. He sat up rubbing his sore ribs, and stated proudly, “I’m making crop circles.” 

“Crop circles! You hear that, Ed? Crop circles,” Miles said. “Now, all you need are the crops.” He left Old John lying there, walked over to John’s bike lying in the dirt, and grabbed his battery, stuffing it into his backpack. He signaled to his brother. “OK, let’s go.”

“Hey, you can’t leave me out here like this,” Old John protested. “I’m making crop circles.”

“Sure we can,” Miles said. “Remember this before you steal my shit again.”

“Crop circles, like in The Green Hills of Mars?” Ed added, mocking the old guy and smiling at his brother. “The crazy ass.” 

The Clancy brothers took off back to their small town Mars settlement. 

Old John sat there in the ancient Martian dust sucking up radiation and watched them go. Lots of people called Old John crazy, but he showed up every day and did his job without complaints, never bothered anyone with his eccentricities, and was generally kind and polite to everyone he met. Occasionally, he’d steal your battery. 

John considered himself old school; the one who kept the faith. And if that made him crazy, then he was alright with that. He sat up and ran his tattered gloved hand through the dry red sand. Something sparkled and caught his eye, so he picked up a handful of sand and stared into his palm, but far from Old John to recognize pink diamonds for what they were, winking back at him. So, he tossed the sand down and clapped his hands diamonds free. 

And with that, Old John rose from the Martian soil and said with a fierce determination, “Someday, this will all be corn,” and started walking. He’d come back for his bike. His battery needed a new solenoid. He wondered what he could use to make a replacement as he started back to Tunnel Town. He checked his wrist meter for oxygen and picked up his pace, hoping he had enough pressure left to make it back to base.