CRACKED: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories by J. Posthumus (read after txt) 📕

Breathing hard from the work, Sallie leaned the pitchfork against the free-standing table in the center of the room, careful to avoid knocking the grow lights. Thirty-eight percent of the gravity of Earth meant he needed to work harder in the ARED—or Advanced Resistive Exercise Device—room. He shouldn’t be winded from stirring dirt. He stabbed the next vacuum-sealed cube and slit the casing lengthwise.

Nine down, only one more to go.

In order to ship the compost, NASA dehydrated it for the long voyage from Earth to Mars. They’d received one barrel of poultry feed and one brick of mulch and manure for the last ten monthly supply shipments, along with tools, replacement items, and human food. They even shipped toilet paper. They had the use measured down to the minimum.

So far, the colonists received enough to cover the room in several inches of the stuff. NASA had been planning chickens on Mars for years.

He’d give it all a good soak to reconstitute it with water from the H2O collection unit that held melted permafrost so it could be used as rocket fuel on the return trip to Earth and filtered to use inside. Future plants would break down the nutrients more easily after reconstitution. Then he could inoculate the soil and start introducing the bacteria that would eventually help break down the organic material, essentially growing topsoil on Mars. He upended the package, spreading dried fibrous matter over the ferrous dust. It reminded him of glitter art projects back in grade school.

The higher-ups had granted him permission to take an Instagram Selfie with the poultry and save it to the memory banks so it would be uploaded to his page the minute it got within range of Earth WIFI. The astro-fan girls would love it.

Hashtag: Save the Planet.

He snort-laughed at his own joke.

“Catching a cold, Sallie?” Aashi Das, Educator Mission Specialist, interrupted his pre-dawn musings. Her footsteps rustled against the reinforced planking that covered the Martian surface in the halls between rooms, quiet enough to be socked. Where Sallie lived dangerously by creating newsworthy gimmicks to the chagrin of NASA, Aashi lived dangerously by wearing socks and leaving her boots in her room.

“Always gotta sneak up on a guy.” He straightened and turned toward her. It was early for her. Most of the crew didn’t get up until 0600. “You know shit glitter makes me sneeze.”

She laughed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. They all wore the same blue jumpsuits, but she wore hers best. She stood about seven centimeters shorter than he was; she was one of the youngest crewmen. “I can never figure out why you call it that,” she said.

“Eh, never mind,” he said, his mouth twisting in a sardonic grin. He’d had a pretty miserable childhood. Craft days in Kindergarten were the happiest memories he had.

Six months ago, when he’d stepped off the transport, Aashi had been the first to call him Sallie. The name didn’t have the same connotation in Mumbai as it did in Riverside, Iowa. When she said it, she had been burying potato pieces in dirt, and her dark brown eyes sparkled. Van Morrison’s ancient classic, Brown Eyed Girl, flooded his brain. It had been as cheesy as a movie scene, weird enough that he’d checked his oxygen saturation levels on his wrist monitor, certain something had malfunctioned. After that, he couldn’t bring himself to object, so the nickname stuck. She didn’t know it, but she was most of the reason he hadn’t requested transfer back to Texas.

Aashi cleared her throat and put her hands on her hips. “Lost in thought?”

“Something like that. How’s your fodder system?”

Aashi dropped her hands and dipped her chin. “The bins are assembled, and I’ve hung the set of grow lights over the last few. I’ll start the barley seeds soaking tonight and put them in the first bin tomorrow. Then, I’ll start another batch soaking and move the first bins down. They’ll get beneath the grow lights on day four. That should hurry their growth along. If everything goes well, in about seven days, we’ll have sprouted grains.”

“A fodder assembly line.”

She laughed. “Something like that.”

“That bit of green and extra protein will make a big difference to the birds’ diet. They’ll appreciate it.”

“Speaking of diet, I’m having curried rice for breakfast. Hungry?”

Sallie stopped to survey his work. The carbon matter covered the floor, still thick in some places. The chickens could do the rest of the work. “Bacon?”

Aashi shot him a look. “Is that a yes?”

“Bring on the curry.” He winked. “I’m going to start the watering cycle.” He followed her out into the hallway tube that led toward the shared living space. He could finish later. Little clouds of dust leapt into the air as he crossed to the cabinet at the back of the room and dropped his tools inside. He turned around.

Aashi flashed an okay sign and continued toward the commons. “See you in a minute.”

Sallie punched the cycle code into the keypad next to the opening. The doors slid closed and sealed with a hiss. It had taken him several weeks to drill all the holes in the bottoms of the latticework of PVC pipes that hung from the ceiling of the modified habitation module. Because hydrogen and oxygen could be volatile, the four-thousand-gallon H2O collection tank was set on one of the two rises about five hundred yards away. Beneath it, permafrost was melted by the RTG—or radio thermal generator. The warmed water was piped through the station for radiant heating. Even with less gravity, liquid flowed downhill. Aashi’s garden and his efforts to grow soil also utilized the gray water from the once-a-week showers and any other function.

After breakfast, he would mix the final compost package in and inoculate the soil. The chickens would need one day of adjustment in their mobile coop before he let them out on the dirt surface of the ag-module and closed the doors behind him. They’d need dry bedding to scratch in, but