DAY 1: The Rose Garden of Mars

Back in the MySpace days, I used to find inspiration from Discover's annual collection of their 100 most significant science stories; I would attempt to write a story of my own for every article, at a pace of one a day. Years later, in an attempt to reawaken my passion, I'm assuming the challenge again..., 

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 STORY 1: The Rose Garden of Mars

"There's a story in here somewhere," he muttered into the dirt. Jon looked past the readouts - green for environmental readings, blue for material analysis, red for spatial calibration - to the image of those robot fingers sifting that red clay from 300 million kilometers away. His fingers and thumb moved in tandem with the screen, eight minutes into their future; his fingertips now soundly brushed against each other, wiping phantom dust off finger joints. Noticing the sound, he stopped and turned off the hand-scan.
Erica, behind him, smirked, "You break it, you buy it." She waltzed over to the monitor that cascaded the barrage of incoming data. The Hartz Roller's 'fingers' were breaking down the Martian dust, identifying over 47 elements in a variety of isotopes and molecular combinations. Erica's eyes raced along the data, alive with excitement.  But her words were still for Jon. "You watch Christmas logs on TV, don't you?"
 The comment was enough to pull Jon's attention momentarily away from his task. "What's that?"
"You're watching dirt. Yeah, you're the first living being to ever see that dirt, but it's just dirt. Your story is over here; look at all these rare metals. At this rate, two scoops of dirt could restock every cell phone on Earth-" Erica pointed at the screen. "-right there! That isotope's never been found outside of a lab. And look how much of our friends Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus that Hartz's practically tripping over out there. How much more of a footprint do you need?"
 "Something in the shape of a footprint, maybe?" Jon shrugged, as he continued fiddling with the monitor knobs. "That's all exciting stuff, I give you that. The computers will tell me all about it later. But they can't tell me about..." Jon's voice trailed off, his concentration on his adjustments. "Can you grab my lucky pen over there, please?"
Erica picked up Jon's "lucky" pen, constructed from pieces of the prototype model of the Hartz Roller. Jon held the pen up against the screen and asked Erica, "Do you know what color Mars is?"
 "I reject your trick question, and say 'red'."
 "Yes, red- but what kind?" The screen was noticeably greener, and still shifting. "Most people think of adobe brick, georgia clay..." On the screen, the shading of the fingers was starting to sync with the lucky pen. "...but that's like saying earth is brown. Of course it is, from far away..."
 The fingers began to slow down; Jon made his final strokes. "...but not from up close.,. Okay, Erica - does that look like brick?"
Erica looked at the red velvet dust, with hints of purple and clear crystal that caught the light. "They look like rose. Ground up rose petals."
 Jon pondered this, and studied the monitor. "Rose pebbles. It's not a new lifeform, but... it's catchy." He turned to face her inevitable retort, and was greeted with the sight of her staring in wondrous silence. Over her gaze, Jon could see the reflection of rose pebbles running through the robot's now-still fingers.

 When it was over, Erica let out a sigh and said, "This won't prove anything to them; it's nothing but dust." Jon smirked, "...but aren't we all?"


Based on the Discover magazine article, "New Signs of Long-Gone Life on Mars", January 2014