Blue Sunset

By Mary Jo Rabe

What Edgar Lee Masters did for his Spoon River, Illinois, Mary Jo Rabe creates on the planet Mars with her Blue Sunset. Over a hundred and fifty of the first settlers on Mars look back on their lives. Their stories, their triumphs and failures, their loves and losses. A representative sample of what Earth had to offer. The good and the bad, the thoughtful and the clueless, the doers and the quitters, the lovers and the leaders, the vigilantes and the virtuous. They thought they would remake the red planet, but the planet changed them. These epitaphs tell their stories while the universe has the initial last word on this first settlement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Teeds Galaxy Press
• Release date: Mar 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9783981512403

Mary Jo Rabe

Mary Jo Rabe grew up on a small farm in eastern Iowa, earned a B.A. in German and Math from Michigan State University, and spent her junior year in Freiburg Germany, where she met her future husband. She and Franz attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she earned a M.A. in Library Science and first encountered and fell in love with science fiction. She has been employed in a small special library in Freiburg, Germany, since 1976. She is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Mary Jo and her husband live in a small town in the Black Forest. Her poems have been published in Pandora, Stygian Articles, The Martian Wave, Astropoetica, Raven Electrick, Space and Time, The Sword Review, and Mindlfights.

Book preview

Blue Sunset

Mary Jo Rabe

Published by Ascraeus Press

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Mary Jo Rabe

Cover by Rebecca Ingham

Cover Design Copyright 2012 Mary Jo Rabe

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

1. The Lava Tube

2. Babie More

3. Angie Davis

4. Chuck Davis

5. Dr. Paul Power

6. John Anderson

7. Mayor Ben Berry

8. Emma Brooks Baxter

9. Susi Schmidt Long

10. Randolph Slick

11. Curtis Long

12. Jeff Owl

13. Spencer Twain

14. The Preacher

15. Julienne Fredricks

16. Wally Cramden

17. Janine Smith

18. Wynette Tyler

19. Callie Allen

20. Father Will Greeley, S.J.

21. Dan the Trumpet Man

22. Bernie Ryan

23. Mike Rogers

24. Maude Bossey

25. Veracity Sweeney

26. Athena Andrews

27. Barbara Kowalski

28. Tom Newcome

29. Sonya March

30. Jerry March

31. Elvis King

32. Camilla Marks

33. Sam Shank

34. Candy Cartwright

35. Carl Edgar

36. DeWitt Dawkins

37. Professor Isaac Bush

38. Bus Driver Boris

39. Cathy Rea

40. Linda Cohan

41. Maxine Mother Mars

42. Farmer Oscar

43. Grocer Zack

44. Debbie Grace

45. James Brandeis

46. Eleanor Ripley

47. Doc Brach

48. Beavis Evanbrook

49. Mary Jane Carson

50. Joe Kuhl

51. The Bishop

52. Lisa The Linguist

53. Harry and Bess McKeever

54. Grant Battenburg

55. Copeland Behrens

56. Marvin Keel

57. Richie and Reggie

58. David Grundy

59. Jacques Desplaines

60. Sara Eggers

61. Matt Ericsson

62. Bud Head

63. Rick Stevensen

64. Miranda Stevensen

65. Clementine O'Reilly

66. Spuds MacGyver

67. Celeste Marigold

68. Ron Cookson

69. Marianne DuBois

70. Spin Shea

71. Marty Shoemaker

72. Sister Matilda Kennedy

73. Amanda Shoemaker

74. Brian Shoemaker

75. Daring Young Man

76. Surfer Girl

77. George Gooseberry

78. Amy Seekkonen

79. Henry O'Brien

80. Caroline Casey

81. Phineas Bartleby

82. Monsignor Horton Beck

83. Ralph Rayburn

84. Elaine McKeever Rayburn

85. Maria Sergeant

86. Freddy Dreamer

87. Teddy Dreamer

88. Lloyd Dreamer

89. Victoria Dreamer

90. Newt Nelson

91. Max Danno

92. Marathon Sue

93. Rupert Xavier

94. Urs Schlafli

95. Ronnie Rooter

96. Wyatt Ewell

97. Greg Armstrong

98. Party Girl Paulette

99. Gantry Prescott Sorghum

100. Armand Le Claire

101. Katie Sanford

102. Hope Sanford

103. Diamond Jim Buchanan

104. Skinny Lynnie

105. Florian Maier

106. Gwen Majors

107. Don Coyote

108. Frederike Bulsara

109. Laura Williams

110. Howard Capone

111. Tabitha Zandy

112. Janis Ridgeway

113. Mack Weinberg

114. Nelly Wize

115. Golddigger Glenda

116. Willy and Mick

117. Mortimer Most

118. Pearl the Singer

119. Juan Deere

120. Ellen McCoy

121. Bill McCoy

122. Janey McCoy

123. Mel Samudio

124. Blue Jay

125. Minnie Callaway

126. Roy Benson

127. Madge Monroe

128. Emily Stetson

129. Amadeus Eisenhower

130. Craig Burns

131. Julie Parker

132. Pastor Jim

133. Huey Ruth

134. Gabriel Robinson

135. Nora Gray

136. Ruth Merton

137. Gayle Beasley

138. Ossie Mayer

139. Vincent Van Allen

140. Winnie Braley

141. Meghan McElroy

142. Jeremy Steadman

143. Patrick Cornwallis

144. Tammy Preston

145. Layla Jahoob

146. Rabbi Samuel Gellmann

147. Cherry Madrid

148. Jackie Fontenelle

149. Larry LeMar

150. Cassiopeia Dragon

151. Mitch Mueller

152. Diana Schiaparelli

153. Herman Wuss

154. Napoleon Hyde

155. Last Man Standing

The Lava Tube

Deep under Olympus Mons

There is no slumber or repose.

Electronic memories reproduce

In frantic ecstasy,

Obeying ancient commands and protocols.

Nanomachines engrave recorded thoughts

Into the walls,

Deeper and deeper, following the tube

As it winds down to where the lava once flowed.

Fragile bodies have long disappeared, but

Human stories live on, waiting to be retold,

Those of the bimbo, the preacher, and the cook,

The sheriff, the teenage daredevils,

The artist, the engineer, the priest,

The trumpet player, the teacher, the DJ

The daring young man, the party girl,

The nun, the crooner, and the thug.

Their brief lives on Mars,

Driven by that which made them human,

Live on, their stories immortalized in scratches on a wall

For the next travelers.

Babie More

I was pretty and blonde, and people liked me

Because I could always make them laugh.

When I heard they were taking settlers to Mars

I said I'd like to go so I could hang out on the endless, sandy beaches.

I'd heard that the rocks on Mars were red, and I had this cute, red thong bikini.

The rude man at the recruitment office laughed at me when I told him that.

He said I would balance out the nerds and geeks

Making for a representative sample, whatever that was.

How was I supposed to know there were no oceans on Mars?

The interviews for settlers were hard, but I giggled and flirted, even though

The mean faces made me wonder

Why they had no sense of humor.

One nasty man said I would fill up the bozo quota.

But they chose me anyway.

The trip to Mars was horrible and the others made fun of me

Because I felt sick and trapped on the ship.

Only Chuck was kind to me, even though he was married.

He explained why we had to wear the uncomfortable space suits

When we left the ship

And why we couldn't take endless showers.

He promised things would get better once we arrived.

But when we got to Mars, there was no fun at all, just exhausting work.

Everyone hated me because I made mistakes.

When Chuck and I were on duty again in the greenhouse, breaking our backs

Servicing the robots and tending the crops,

I got bored, so I skipped around the transit doors and played with the dials.

Chuck ran over and screamed just as the inside and outside doors blew open,

Throwing us out onto the surface.

Chuck hit his head on a rock, and I didn't know what to do,

So we died.

At the memorial service, everyone complained about me and

Said they were glad I was dead,

Probably because I wasn't pretty any more.

Angie Davis

I never wanted to go to Mars.

But it was Chuck's dream, and I loved Chuck

More than life itself.

I just wanted a life together with him, and didn't care where.

So the day he brought home the applications,

And I saw how his face lit up

When he said our children would be true Martians,

How could I say no?

Chuck was such a good man, kind to fools and dumb animals,

Which is what got him killed, his kindness to that blonde bimbo.

Everyone else knew her stupidity was lethal

And refused to work with her.

I was left on alone Mars forever separated from family and friends.

The trip here was free, but quitters had to pay the full round-trip costs,

A brutally astronomical sum.

No settlers ever returned to the green hills of Earth during my lifetime.

Without my memories of Chuck, without the love I never ceased feeling,

I would have taken a long, last hike up the red hills of Mars.

Instead, I thought of him every waking minute of every Arean day

And gradually the pain receded.

I never reconciled with the evil, Martin surface

That killed my Chuck,

Later I got to know Paul,

And we made a life together underground.

Chuck Davis

I had such a fantastic life.

Who would have thought an ordinary factory worker and science fiction fan

Would ever make it to Mars,

Accompanied by the one great love of his life?

Angie, you were angry that we had so little time together,

But what a wonderful time we had!

We lived the dreams of Bradbury, Lowell, and Burroughs;

We escaped the prison of the planet we happened to be born on;

We became spacefarers, explorers!

That an accident ended my life is unimportant.

Angie, I lived, and we loved.

How could I ever want more?

Dr. Paul Power

I was an archeologist, but I talked my way to Mars

As a fair-to-middling, do-it-yourself mechanic, electrician, and plumber.

And the other settlers accepted me.

But they wondered what I could hope to find on a certifiably dead planet.

I had no evidence to support my hunches.

There was no logic to my dreams.

My family worried that I had abandoned my judgment and my mind.

Professional colleagues wrote me off, said I had lost it.

Against all reason, I never worried.

I was content to wait.

My patience was rewarded the day they found the catacombs

And Angie and I walked the streets of the ancient, underground cities of Mars.

John Anderson

Sometimes your name becomes your meal ticket.

I wasn't a particularly honest administrator,

But John Anderson saved me.

It reminded people of an honest politician and a sentimental poem.

At the intersection between private and public funds,

I had the final word on choosing settlers for Mars.

At first I looked for the smart, the hard-working, the kind, the generous, and the moral;

I could have put together a brilliant group.

But then the corruption began; there was money and pressure.

People of influence wanted me to reject good candidates and accept the dregs.

At first I fought for the dream, but eventually I gave in, figuring

Maybe it wasn't so bad to have a natural mixture instead of a herd of saints.

For the hell of it, I deliberately chose some complete incompetents.

Anyway, I got paid big time for making the desired choices.

I spent and gambled it all away, of course, and the creditors got unpleasant.

So I booked a discrete passage to Mars for myself.

Once there, I had some run-in's with the low-life settlers I had chosen.

I tried to get some action going, but my luck ran out.

One thug killed me and dumped my body into the nearest crevice.

I wasn't even missed.

Mayor Ben Berry

I always did the correct thing

And demanded obedience to the rules.

Mars Colony had a charter, a established government, regulations to follow.

I enforced the laws; that was my job.

But these arrogant scientists insisted on exceptions.

When they discovered the