The atmosphere lay heavy upon the land and in many ways that ruined an otherwise beautiful thing. A lone figure sat, still against the rushing wind frolicking through the branches and leaves above. The air smelt damp, the moisture from a far-off storm laying like a wet blanket over the landscape scene. A solitary man with a solitary bench watching a dark-grey lake reflecting the angry power of the rolling storm on the horizon. A streak of light tore through the sky, splitting it open like an old wound. The man counted.

1 …

                2 …

                                3…

                                                4…

                                                                The thick air around the man erupted with the deafening, rippling roar of the skies. A mile left, the man estimated that the storm would be upon himself and his trusty bench in perhaps a half-hour, upon the power stations positioned in the distance perhaps minutes before that. He did not move, a mountain standing in defiance of the ferocity of nature. The clouds in the distance began to let loose their payloads, dark streaks peeling through the sky signaling the torrential wall of rain bearing down on the man.

The man turned his nose up into the air and sniffed, expectantly. The cold, stale, odorless air filled his lungs and he sighed, dejected. The man waited, perhaps for the storm to finally bear its full might upon him, or perhaps for nothing at all – there was nothing else to do.

 The sky blazed and roared violently so that even the trees trembled from the shockwaves that peeled through the air. The man did not seem to notice.

The calls of frightened birds whispered through the roaring skies and a thick scarf of birds fluttered overhead. The man did not seem to notice.

A curious caterpillar crawled its way up the side of the bench, paused briefly, seemingly jumped across the bench and back again only to nonchalantly continue its way. The man did not seem to notice.

The wind began to pick up and tear through the trembling trees, whipping through the man’s clothing, and lashing the man’s face with lake from the water. The man still sat, unmoved.

The storm in the distance tumbled furiously ever closer, darkening the skies as the clouds swallowed engulfed the sun in a thick blanket, leaving not one single silver lining above. A flash of light in the distance, not lightning. Everything seemed to stand still for an excruciatingly long moment as if time’s sandglass had frozen over. Finally, the man moved, and the earthly vision of the storm and lake vanished.

“Grid failure” a mechanical voice sounded through the empty room of the bio-hab. “Emergency power activated, rerouting power to life-support-based systems, auxiliary systems shut down.”

Dr. Leslie Grant rubbed his eyes trying to adjust to the harsh red emergency lights that now flooded his bio-hab observation deck. The hab trembled as the gusts of the approaching storm tore through the colony.

Dr. Grant stood up. “Open the observation shields.”

“That is ill-advised Dr. Grant, it is advisable to seek shelter further inside the bio-hab”

“Manual Override.” Dr. Grant said impatiently, glaring upwards at the bodiless voice. “Code: Hotel-Alpha-Yankee-Delta-Echo-November. Open the shields.”

No resistance from the mechanical voice, the shields for the observation bay opened revealing a moving wall of red rolling over the outskirts of the colony. Streaks of lightning peeled through the massive dust storm, the explosive roars that followed giving context to the force of these electrical surges.

The atmosphere lay heavy now upon the lands of Mars, and in many ways this triumph of terraforming had simply ruined what was otherwise a beautiful thing. Dr. Grant gazed at the refurbished hull of a mars rover standing in the center of the colony’s habs. A relic from a bygone age, pulled out of time from the sands where it had laid buried, the colonists used it as a monument for the perseverance of human engineering and ingenuity, and a celebration for the opportunity brought by the first colonies.

Dr. Leslie Grant waited, as many others did and would do across the Martian plane, whether taking comfort alone or in the arms of others it did not matter. There was not much else to do.

The storm finally arrived, and without so much a pause, the hab was torn open and the last thing Dr. Grant saw was the dark red of Mars.