Dead on Mars

Chapter 120: Epilogue

Two months later.

“Buddy… Buddy!” Tang Yue held the red, plump tomatoes with welling tears as he sniffed. “After so long, I’m finally seeing you!”

Tang Yue carefully played with the tomato in his hand. It was cold and soft to the touch, and it lived up to being the excellent breed that Mai Dong had selected. The tomato’s color was bright and beautiful, its skin supple, and it gave off a unique freshness that only vegetables and fruits have.

Tang Yue was on the brink of tears.

To see a fellow buddy from Earth moistened his eyes.

“Buddy, you’re truly delicious!”

Tang Yue took a big bite of the tomato. This was the first time he had eaten fresh fruit since he had been stuck on Mars. The sweetness and juiciness exploded in his mouth, as a refreshing taste filled his heart. He couldn’t help but exclaim that this was the true meaning of life.

He had finally escaped the fate of eating endless amounts of compressed biscuits.

His tongue was swollen from months of eating hard biscuits. Now, just the sight of compressed biscuits disgusted him so much, he retched.

Tang Yue’s tomato planting project had finally succeeded. He and Tomcat had used the methane and liquid oxygen from the Eagle’s fuel reservoir to obtain water for the planting of the tomatoes. Tang Yue found every container he could in Kunlun Station and filled them with soil and fertilizer to plant tomatoes. There were a total of thirty stalks, and thankfully, all of them survived. After the OGS’s temperature control was fixed, Kunlun Station had become a plantation that seemed to enjoy spring all year round.

Of course, this also drained Tang Yue of all his feces.

Tang Yue finished the tomato and he licked his fingers, as though it was good to the last drop. Tomcat sat on the chair, holding a tomato with its head lowered in thought. It was a mystery as to what was on its mind.

Something worth mentioning was that Tomcat’s broken arm was fixed back. The joint and bearing had slipped off, so it wasn’t too serious. However, this left arm wasn’t as nimble as before.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Tang Yue carried a cup filled with brownish-yellow paste. It was the leftovers of the crushed compressed biscuits. Due to his severe ulcers, Tang Yue could no longer eat the hard biscuits, he could only drink them. As Tang Yue comforted himself that it was cereal, he drank down the biscuit paste.

“I’m thinking about the problem of preserving the tomatoes.” Tomcat tossed the tomato into the air and caught it. “Fresh tomatoes can’t be kept for long.”

“Have you thought of any good solutions?”

“Based on the present situation, drying them at low temperatures is the most suitable solution. There are negative temperatures outside Kunlun Station, and there’s a lack of oxygen, so the fruits wouldn’t be oxidized,” Tomcat said. “We can store the tomatoes we harvest in the garage. They should be able to last for quite a while… Of course, we can also try pickling them. That way, they will taste better, but does Kunlun Station have sugar?”

“Would white sugar work? I recently found a bottle of it. I have no idea who left it behind,” Tang Yue commented. “I’ve finished half of it, but there’s still half a bottle left.”

“We shall see.” Tomcat nodded. “Using sugar to pickle tomatoes would definitely be tastier than freezing them until they are hard. Have you had breakfast?”

Tang Yue was taken aback. “Yes.”

“Then get to work.” Tomcat pointed to the door.

“Damn it, ordering me around early in the morning.” Tang Yue grunted angrily, but he still donned on the Radiant Armor and secured the life support system before stretching his limbs and fingers. After confirming that the EVA suit was fine, he pressed the button on the airlock before opening the hatch.

“I’ll be heading out.” Tang Yue turned around.

Tomcat crossed its legs as it leisurely sat on the chair and waved its paw.

“Good luck!”

…

“Hey, Tang Yue, Mr. Cat, about the recording of human history, I think we can start working on it? We don’t have to finish everything. Let’s just do as much as we can. If we don’t know or are unaware of something, we can ask Mr. Cat,” Mai Dong said. “I still wish to leave something behind. I don’t want to spend the rest of the time doing nothing.”

Tang Yue thought for a moment. “I agree. After all, most of the work will be left to Tomcat for completion eventually.”

“Actually, it doesn’t matter whether you record this history or not. In this world, information itself is forever indestructible. From the first basic particle created during the Big Bang, until the Universe reaches a heat death or Big Crunch, there has been a pair of eyes silently observing everything,” Tomcat quipped.

“Whose eyes?”

“The Universe itself.” Tomcat pointed above. “This Universe is the most loyal spectator and recorder. The Earth may have vanished, but if an observer ten light-years away were to observe Earth, Earth would still exist for them. If someone were to observe the Earth from 4.6 billion light-years away, they would find that Earth was just born.

“Light carries information into far and unreachable places. As long as you stand within the light cone, you will see its birth, growth, destruction, and its ultimate fate.” Tomcat’s voice was heavy. It was talking about a reality that was grand and exceeded human imagination, leaving Mai Dong and Tang Yue astounded.

The girl fell silent for a moment. “Then, we can do it for ourselves, not for anyone else… This is the only thing I can do now. I don’t wish to waste my time.”

“Then, what do you prepare to use to record this information?” Tomcat asked.

“We discussed this before. The drafts will be recorded on hard disks,” Tang Yue suggested. “We will then transmit them in the form of electromagnetic waves, turning them into numbers. Then, we will accompany it with a Rosetta Stone that allows for interpretation and translation. How about that?”

“But electromagnetic waves would slowly attenuate with distance.”

“Didn’t you say that information itself is indestructible?” Tang Yue said. “From the moment we had such a thought, from the moment we start writing, and from the moment we send out the information, all the history we recorded would be firmly engraved into the Universe’s massive hard disk, right?”

Tomcat nodded.

“That’s why we don’t have to care about attenuation.” Tang Yue sat down beside Tomcat as he exchanged looks with Mai Dong. “What we are recording, is to view Earth and human civilization from a person’s point of view, from the point of view of a human being.”

Tomcat leaned against the chair and thought for a long while.

Finally, it nodded and shrugged. “Alright then.”

On 6 January 2053—the 179th sol since Earth disappeared—the only two surviving humans in the Universe began their recount and recording of the history of the Earth and human civilization.

Tang Yue sat at a desk and prepared a pen and some paper. He planned on writing a prologue.

Sunlight shone in through the windows.

Kunlun Station was silent, apart from the rustling sounds produced by the pen on paper.

“While I’m penning these words, I’m on a planet located more than a hundred million kilometers from my home. The sun here is a little smaller. There are clear skies once again. But with the change in seasons, the atmosphere’s tidal motions will once again stir up gales.

“I might be one of the few humans in human history who has completely transcended territory, nation, country, and even race, to view humans. In the words of a cat, this is a watchman.

“I’m different from the ISS astronauts. In their eyes, Earth is a blue planet they call home. I’m different from the astronauts on Apollo. In their eyes, Earth is a weak but beautiful marble. When I stand on these desert plains, Earth is just a tiny point of light to me. I was shocked by my first realization of the vastness of the Universe because there are thousands of tiny specks of light just like Earth.

“I’m the last man in this Universe.

“This probably imbues in me a power equivalent to God. I will give a verdict to certain people and certain matters, without giving any chance for an appeal in the future.

“I hope I can be fair and objective, at the very least, be fair and objective against my standards. After all, there is no standard of measurement on this uninhabited planet.

“To the Universe, fairness and objectivity probably don’t matter. But to a human, fairness, and objectivity is a form of morals. Such morals are as important as the cosmos.

“A human just needs an instant to recognize history, but history needs a thousand years to recognize a human.”