Now that I was thinking about it, there may have been a third explanatory possibility, besides the two I’ve mentioned; maybe it was not the case that Brandon had interplanetary disinhibitory disorder; maybe it was not the case that he suffered the effects of his exposure to M. thanatobacillus, assuming José was right and such a bacterium even existed farther down in the Martian geological strata.
Maybe José got killed so that he’d keep his mouth shut.
March 12, 2026
To: The entire Martian Community
From: Jim Rose
Re: A Survey of Martian Economics
Be it known, fellow Martians, that the time has come for choosing! For every new civilization, no matter how fragile, no matter how young, how untimely birthed from the womb of the mother planet, there comes the moment in which this newly birthed society must determine for itself the specifics of its ideology. Fellow Martians, it is nearly six months now since first we set out on our long journey. How well we know the reasons and motives that first launched us into the milky oblivion of the innumerable stars! We know these reasons and motives because they were so often bandied about in the press and on television and across the web of our birth culture. We know the ideals to which the birth culture aspired, and we know the darker ways in which its needs oppress us! Fellow Martians, we know the mother planet is an angry and capricious mistress! We know that even at this distance she would command our every step, know every sentence that we utter, circumscribe every afternoon of the Martian year we are intended to spend here! And for what? For profit, fellow Martians, all for profit!
When they see Mars, as they do through the cameras that we have installed for them, or through the reports that we write down for them, or from the microphones that are even affixed to the jumpsuits we are wearing at this very moment, they do so through terms and according to multinational ideologies that were constructed and designed for that world. They preach freedom while requiring servitude, fellow Martians! They preach sacrifice and selflessness while underwriting the mission with geological riches and the avarice such a thing entails. They preach tolerance while practicing war, and then they command our allegiance!
What would it mean to be truly free on the Red Planet, fellow Martians? We have seen the worst that freedom brings, when one of our number runs amok and sacrifices another of our beloved brothers! Freedom, when it is simply the freedom to be a shareholder in a mercantile entity that is no longer beholden to any government, is not freedom! It is a form of interstellar slavery! Martian freedom must be designed on Mars, by Martians, for Martians, and it must reflect the difficulty of our terrain, the modesty of our resources, and the sense of community that we bring to the project of establishing a new human civilization! Think of what the revolutionaries of our own planet accomplished, in France, the United States, Bali, Kazakhstan. Mars must reject Earth in exactly these ways!
And so, fellow Martians, I bring to you today the first of my meditations on the history and economics of the Martian colony. By the power vested in me at the Greenhouse dinner of January seventh, two thousand and twenty-six, I hereby declare the socialization of and communal ownership of all the infrastructure on the planet Mars. I hereby declare that private property, the antagonist of any community in the process of finding its footing, is abolished. I declare that while the trinkets and memorabilia of our old lives are useful as mementos, we hold that the majority of our lives are lived in this community, with these people, and as such, the objects that pass between people are held to be our common property. Among this common property will be the electrical power generated by all of us, among this common property will be the food that we grow in or out of our greenhouse, among this common property will be the literary accounts that we generate in this place for sale back on the mother planet, in whatever form these sales might take place, a portion of which will always be kicked into a common kitty by the author of these works, such as the author of this memo on Martian property rights. Any minerals that we locate here, including diamonds, platinum, gold, and any other valuable minerals, will be the common property of the Martian colony. Any film rights that we sell, pursuant to our stories on the planet Mars, will be held to be common property, in which we all share equally. Children born in the Martian colony will be considered the nieces and nephews of all adults in the Martian colony. Dinner will be cooked serially by all Martian adults, on a rotating basis, unless the colony specifically decides to cancel dinner plans. From each, therefore, according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
We hold that these principles of common trust are based upon our lives on this planet thus far, and that they are therefore organic to our experiences as Martians. They conform to the principles of our Mars First! political entity, which, at the present time, is the only political party on the planet Mars. This is not to say that Mars First! is averse to sharing power with any other parties that are liable to emerge at some future date. We are against military actions, except when we understand a need to defend ourselves and our common property. We have no prison and we have no death penalty. Public service on the planet Mars is to be carried out on a rotating basis, and according to rigorous standards of public service. When our term is over we shall hand over the reins of power to the next volunteer or group of volunteers.
These are our beliefs, which we hold to be self-evident, until such time as we may find reason to amend them! Mars first! Mars always and ever!
How, you might ask, did Jim Rose come to author these memorable lines, which have already gone down in the history of the Mars colony as the first of our constitutional documents? In the weeks after José’s murder, the remaining members of the Mars colony spiraled further down into the quiescent pall I’ve described above. Abu was working on his sculptures, out in back of the generating plant. Laurie (who was, as I’ve said, beginning to show) and Arnie retreated into their botanical endeavors, almost always finding reasons to cancel dinner on us and leave us to fend for ourselves with the rations we had remaining. Steve apparently stayed in his bunk four or five days at a time. Then there were Jim and me.
What Jim decided to do, in lieu of pursuing much of a relationship with me, was go out and see the world. I think it was only three or four days after Brandon’s rampage that I helped him to haul the ultralight out of the Excelsior again, in order to get the thing up and running. Jim was handy with all machineries, and as I have said, he was a very good pilot. We used the onboard hydraulics to lower gently the ultralight to the floor of the planet, and then Jim set about trying to clear enough rubble out of the way that he might have a reasonable runway for the craft.