Severn 6201.5

           That’s the thing about this city…

           As strange as it may seem to some, I like it here.

           My name is Johnathan. I live here with my mother and father and my older sister, Katelyn. She can be a bit of a pain sometimes, but I guess she is kind of cool at the same time. Katelyn is one of the popular kids in school, so her friends are always stopping by. She has been dating this douchebag, nicknamed, “Skull” because of a tattoo that he has on the top of his shaved head. It is supposed to be a skull with a serpent winding through the mouth and eye sockets, but to me, it looks more like a worm in an apple core. He said one of his buddies did it for him.

           My mom, Ella, spends her days gossiping with the neighborhood wives and swapping recipes. She knows everyone’s business, always thanks to a group email that her and her friends follow constantly. I swear, if my dad ever decided to stop off for a coffee on his way home, she would know before he finished paying.           

My dad, David, is an engineer that works at the local space station. His job is especially important, or so I am told. I really can’t say that I know much about it. He just leaves the planet once a week to check up on things and to make sure everything is in working order, then he returns home for another week.

Did I mention that we moved from Earth? It has been five years already since we left. The planet was falling apart and most of the vegetation was withering away. Even the wildlife was quickly becoming extinct. We boarded a shuttle along with fifty other passengers that were lucky enough to be able to afford it. The planet we live on now is Mars and the city that we live in is known as “Severn 6201.5”. All the cities are named, “Severn” after the first colonist to set foot on the planet, Johann Severn. He was a Swedish Astronaut back on Earth.  The number is the only thing that changes from one city to the next.

Each city is protected from the atmosphere of Mars by a force field that is also equipped with a holographic projector that gives the citizens the impression of a normal day and night cycle on Earth. The time is like Earth’s, but Mars does not have the blue skies and birds flying above, so the holograph makes life here more enjoyable.

The city is in a circular pattern with City Hall at the center. Each street goes straight out from City Hall with houses, churches, schools, or businesses on either side of the street. Each street is numbered starting from one to one hundred. If you were to look at it from above, it would resemble the Sun with a hundred rays of light shining outward.

Our Mayor, Lonnie Welch, seems like a decent guy, but I don’t see him doing much more than shaking hands with people and eating. He always has some type of food in his hand.

The food here on Mars is different than Earth as well. We can still get a few of the vegetables that are organically grown here, but for the most part, all the other food looks and smells identical. Only the taste is different. My mom tried to tell me that I was eating roast beef once, but I could tell by the taste that it was liver, and I hate liver. The drinks are all one color as well. At least you can tell which are cold drinks and which are hot by the steam.

Overall, Severn 6201.5 is a surprisingly good place to live. I have a few friends. When we want to meet, our parents need to drive us to the center of town where a park surrounds City Hall. If I can’t get a ride, the other option is to take the moving sidewalk. It works like a conveyer belt. There are two sidewalks: one going in each direction.

If you want to visit one of the other cities, it requires a special permit. This controls the number of people gathering in one location. For those who take shuttles off the surface to work at the space station, they need to go through a series of tests for identification before they can board.

Each citizen is given one car per family. Every vehicle is identical but will only open or start for the members of each individual family. The cars are run by solar power even though we don’t see the actual sun within the dome. The vehicle needs to be plugged in at home and a solar generator gathers energy from the sun then provides each city with free power.

Internet is a little different here on Mars too. We have towers in each city that link to the space station in orbit above the planet. The space station acts like a satellite that receives and transmits information to each colony. My dad said that eventually, they will be able to set up other space stations around the galaxy so we could communicate with other planets as well once colonies begin to spread. That would be so cool. Maybe we can even hook up online with aliens that are flying through space.

When my parents first told me that we were coming to Mars, I was angry at first because I did not want to leave all my friends behind. My best friend, Jimmy, came from a family that did not have a lot of money, so it was unlikely they would ever be able to leave. That broke my heart. After the anger faded away, I began to get nervous and scared. I started thinking that our shuttle was going to blow up or run out of fuel before we got there.

I remember when I was back at school on Earth and my teacher, Mrs. Rayburn, showed us video footage of Mars from NASA’s Rover. It showed a planet full of sand and rocks. I couldn’t imagine us ever living in a place like that. My dad assured me that it would not be much different than Earth. He showed me a booklet that he was given when they offered him a job on the space station. When I saw the pictures, I began to get excited. It looked better than the Earth that we were leaving behind.

Traveling through space was cool. I did not see many stars on Earth because of all the pollution, but here in outer space, there were billions of stars to be seen. I even saw a comet up close. Thousands of small rocks followed behind a much larger rock. I got to see the moon as we flew past too. There were large craters that resembled two eyes and a mouth. My mom tried to tell me that was the man in the moon saying hello to us.

My best friend here in Severn 6201.5, is Jacob. His dad works with my dad on the space station. That was how we met originally. We were invited over for dinner one day and Jacob and I became instant friends. We get together almost every day at the park or have sleepovers at each other’s homes. Jacob has this cool game that we like to play. It is called, “Hover Ball”. The object of the game is to throw the Hover Ball toward an object then have it change direction with the push of a button on a remote control, and then circle the object as many times as possible without hitting anything. The person who can circle the object the most times in one play wins.

I still think of what life is like now on Earth and it makes me sad. I just keep praying that my friends aren’t suffering. We don’t have television here, so we don’t hear any news outside of our city unless we have a visitor from one of the other cities. Then, of course, there is my mom’s gossip line. In some ways, I think that not having television to watch has made families closer here. People get out and do things together instead of sitting in from of a TV all day long. The fact that we don’t hear or see all the violence and bad news that used to air on every news broadcast on Earth had made for a more peaceful community as well. Severn 3021.5 is my home and I look forward to growing up here. If you ever make it to Mars, look me up.