Mars Chain Gang by Colin Alexander
from Dystopia: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
It was never gonna be astronauts.
Armstrong-types wanna come home to ticker tape parades, and nobody’s coming back from Mars.
It needed to be lifers, ‘cause what are we gonna lose; they’d already put us on the Moon.
Everything on Earth’d gotten too expensive, but after spinning up reactors and hydroponics, the Moon became the cheapest place to house us, staring at a distant green-blue dot.
Know how expensive they made it to call home from the Moon? How much bone and muscle atrophies without gravity? No. ‘Cause nobody gives a shit once you’re behind bars.
Die breaking Moon rocks, or take a one way ticket to Mars?
Not a question, really.
They didn’t get us to Mars on one big, beautiful, high-tech ship. It was hundreds of Mars jalopies, ‘cause who cares about losing “cargo”; only one needed to make it.
‘Course, they hadn’t thought it through. Space jalopies weren’t built like prisons. Just a few guards, and we’d been given tools to farm.
Sharp tools.
That’s why the doors on Mars don’t have locks or bars. That’s why the fruit on Mars tastes so goddamn sweet.
That’s why when Earth calls, we let the phone ring and ring.
This story appears as part of Dystopia, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series.
Bio
Colin Alexander is an attorney and writer living in San Francisco. He’s previously been published in TheMolotovCocktail, ShotgunHoney, Radon Journal, and Havok, writing crime fiction, science fiction, and horror. While he has written for money in the past, he now primarily writes for revenge. He can be found on Bluesky (@colincalexander.bsky.social).
PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.
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Wow! I will definitely be following this author. It's like what Total Recall turned out to be at the end. Like penal colonies that turn out nicer than where they were sent from.