The last garden on Mars

The crimson dust swirled outside the battered biodome as Jia tended the tomato vines, their emerald leaves defying Mars’ endless rust. Shaheen stood nearby, her fingers running over the velvety petals of the last chrysanthemums they had managed to coax from the tired soil.

“I never pictured the end coming so soon,” Shaheen murmured, half to herself. “The company projections, the colony plans – they all made Mars’ terraforming seem inevitable rather than this fragile experiment one dome breach away from oblivion.”

Jia clipped a ripe tomato and brought it over to Shaheen with a sad smile that still lit up her eyes. “Here – a reminder that even now, beauty endures.”

Shaheen took the fruit and turned it slowly, inspecting its flawless red skin. “How have we kept even this one dome alive so long past the others? Sheer luck? Or did our plants simply absorb all the hope and passion we poured into them daily?”

“A little of both, I’d wager,” Jia replied. She joined Shaheen in gazing out at the neat rows of greens wilting under the strain of overfiltration and depleting nutrients.

Beyond the biodome’s smudged glass, the abandoned colony outbuildings wore a thin cloak of dust. Further off loomed the vast blood-orange expanse of Mars to the horizon under a violet twilight sky. They were utterly alone here now.

But the botanical sanctuary they had built and tended together still endured for this one last moment – leaves ablaze in the artificial sunlight, flowers spreading their profusion of shapes and hues along the meandering garden paths. Vines heavy with strawberries, melons, peppers clung tenaciously to the remaining trellises.

A small breeze from struggling air recyclers swayed through wind chimes formed from old rover parts, producing a delicate melody over the steady oxygenator hum. Tiny hummingbirds imported all the way from Earth continued their energetic orbits of honeysuckle and sage.

Shaheen let her hair down from its scarf, the obsidian waves spilling well past her shoulders. Jia reached out to gently catch a lock between her brown fingers, a familiar gesture of affection.

“Seems like yesterday we opened that first crate of seeds they granted us for ‘recreational gardening’ purposes,” Shaheen reminisced with a bittersweet laugh.

Jia grinned back. “We showed them recreational! Before long, we had cultivated vegetables enough to supply half the colony.”

“And then the shutdown orders came through. The company cutbacks. Yet still…” Shaheen motioned around them.

“Still we carried on somehow, salvaging abandoned materials and ingeniously jury-rigging repairs,” Jia finished. “All to keep our little greenhouse thriving when all else failed. To shelter this small patch of green on a crimson world.”

Shaheen gave her a look full of warmth that now held a touch of sorrow. “This garden was our purpose, wasn’t it Jia? Our child in a way the harsh climate denied parents. So we fought tooth and nail for every extra hour of life support systems and grow lights and filtrations.”

Jia pulled a heavy memory storage drive from her pocket. Engraved on its side in intricate custom calligraphy were the names of every fruit, vegetable, and flower variety they had ever grown here.

Shaheen raised an appreciative eyebrow. “Our botanical ledger. The fruits of our many labors live on digitally, at least.”

“More than that – our whole lifetime of passion encoded symbolically!” Jia declared fervently. In her mind’s eye, she envisioned future human ventures across the stars stumbling on this encapsulated garden data. New colonists might then reboot the lush crops and flowers on distant lifesustaining planets thanks to their conserved legacy.

Shaheen meanwhile withdrew a creased photo printout from an interior pocket that showed the pair of them grinning in dusty spacesuits amid the first juvenile tomato plants years ago.

They stared soberly down at their frozen youthful faces, comparing those bright hopeful girls with the wearied but formidable women time and countless crises had shaped them into now. Jia gently took Shaheen’s hand, callused and nicked from countless gardening battles but still so warm and supple to her.

Without a word, Shaheen led Jia in a slow amble along the winding dirt pathways as they inspected and savored the sights of every plant like sorrowful friends come to bid each farewell.

Jia broke the meditative silence first. “I – I almost wish we could pack up seed batches and soil samples in an emergency shuttle. Seek out some new home to transplant this garden. I cannot bear leaving our life’s work just…abandoned to the elements.”

Shaheen gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze. “Wherever we traveled, we could never exactly recreate the unique conditions here. Every light angle and nutrient balance we cultivated so carefully to help each species thrive over the years. This soil with all its microbe colonies cultured from nothing…”

She waved a hand vaguely at their obsolete environmental rigs and plumbing sustaining it all marginally. “These obsolete machines we’ve personally willed to run years past expiry through ingenuity alone. The very light and ambience of this bubble of life we fought so relentlessly to swell to full ripeness.”

She stopped before a lush bed of chrysanthemums they had engineered to bloom emerald and violet, their fragile petals wavering gently amid the oxygenator breeze.

Kneeling, Shaheen carefully drew out the water gauge buried in the dark soil. The needle rested stubbornly at empty. Shaheen glanced up gravely at Jia behind her. “It seems this dream garden of ours has at last exhausted its resources.”

Jia felt tears well up that she rapidly suppressed. In her heart she had known the end was coming for some time. But having the gauges confirm the final silence awaited hurt more than she had braced for.

In pained silence she joined Shaheen harvesting the last ripe fruits and vegetables into their aprons before returning them to trembling soil. They gathered chrysanthemum seeds into paper packets and trimmed rosemary sprigs.

As they completed their sorrowful reaping, a blaring alarm resounded from the environmental station. Jia hurried over to the display panel now flashing critical red warnings from every system. Shaheen followed grimly behind.

“Carbon dioxide filtration offline,” Jia read bitterly. “Oxygen production failing. Water recycling shut down.”

She slammed a fist down hard on the unresponsive controls. “Thermal dysfunctional too. We will freeze come nightfall.”

Shaheen came up behind Jia to study the terminal readout for herself. Jia watched her love’s profile in anguish, fearing to speak what came next.

Finally Shaheen turned away from the dead station, her expression resolute. She drew Jia close with sudden fierceness. When she met Jia’s anxious eyes, her own tears had already flowed and dried unseen in those fleeting minutes turned away.

“No further repairs or life support extensions possible then,” she pronounced evenly. “Our hard-fought biological paradise now goes to join the rusty mechanized past.”

Jia clenched her fists, unwilling to surrender their Eden without a fight to the bitter end. “The emergency shuttle…” she began weakly.

But Shaheen was already solemnly shaking her head, long hair swaying gently. “That relic holds maybe twelve hours of support for its lone occupant before the cold or toxic atmosphere claims them. And you know the colony transmission arrays stand nonfunctional these long months now.”

Shaheen reached out to cradle Jia’s face tenderly between her worn hands.

“We nurtured this garden paradise together from first seedling to final fruit, Jia. Should we not then lay ourselves to rest here also when the time comes? To sleep eternally amid the plants we so loved in life?”

Jia closed her eyes tight against tears, clasping Shaheen’s hands hard over her own racing heart. Slowly her breath steadied as she listened to the dying breeze stir their wind chimes one final time. The hummingbirds continued flitting brightly through dying flowers nearby, unaware of what loomed.

At last Jia opened eyes now filled with sorrowful peace. She gazed out once more over every plant they had cultivated like beloved children through the long crimson seasons. Watched the oxygenator turbines slow their strained breathing to a dying wheeze on overtaxed filters.

“Together we transformed poison dust to verdant splendor against impossible odds here, beloved,” Jia spoke softly through tears. “So let Mars reclaim us also then when our vigilant light dims at last.”

Hand in hand, the two women retraced their winding garden path one final time as amber sunlight from the failing grow bulbs gradually faded crimson. They paused to lay bundles of sage and rosemary gently over withered tomato vines.

Before the darkened oxygenator bank, they drew close embraced. Behind them, emergency strobes threw blood shadows over wilted greens sagging under the weight of unpicked fruits. Yet still the weary garden clung doggedly to this last imitation of full summer.

As icy night fell fast outside, Shaheen and Jia’s lips met among the flowers in a parting taste of sweetness. Silently they held close as the failing heart of their beloved garden sanctuary slowed beat by beat until all finally lay still forever. The last garden on Mars embraced its faithful caretakers to quiet dust at ending of days.