Lisbet was not familiar with virtual reality beyond playing slasher games in her dorm room when she was in university. Using it to meet her husband unsettled her. She thought she was going to meet him in person. Accepting the current situation stretched her since the only purpose she’d known for VR was playing simulation games. She wasn’t aware that anyone used it for business meetings, or dating, or meeting their wife.

When she pulled the faceplate over her eyes, the first thing she saw was the barren wasteland of Mars. Red sand, black sky, and stars everywhere around her like glittering snowflakes suspended in the air. 

She turned around. There was a flat space ahead of her. It looked like a chessboard. She tried walking, knowing full well that she was walking on a treadmill that moved at her pace. No one walked on the surface of Mars without a spacesuit. As she got closer, she saw she was approaching two high-backed armchairs. 

Vantz was in one of the chairs. She got closer, she wasn’t sure what to make of what she saw. He was a man, but not a man.

That meant he had the shape of a man, but the head of a stag. He wore a gentleman’s suit coat with coattails, a vest, a pocket square, a watch chain, a white shirt, gray trousers, and gloves. He stood up when she got closer. His ears moved forward and backward as if he could hear her before he saw her. The antlers were something else—very tall. He was so tall that he appeared larger than life.

What he really looked like, if she was honest, was a spoiled rich man, playing a game by pulling a mounted deer head off the wall and placing it on his head as a joke.

Lisbet wasn’t sure what kind of a man would do that, but when he spoke, the deer head’s mouth moved.

“Welcome, Lisbet,” Vantz said, moving his hand in a circular motion that was definitely a greeting without touching her. “Please, have a seat.” 

He offered her an armchair and she hesitated to take the seat, feeling around herself for the chair that she had been sitting in before she put on her headset. As she wasn’t wearing a whole bodysuit meant to give her every sensation that the virtual world could give her, the chair did not feel like an armchair, but like the padded chair that was placed behind the treadmill.

He sat opposite her. “How was your journey?”

“From Earth?” she asked, looking at him and trying to understand what she was seeing. She knew Vantz did not want anyone to see his face. All that had been explained to her, but she didn’t know what to make of talking to a stag. It felt like talking to an NPC in a video game. She felt slightly absurd. “Uh…” she hesitated. “It was fine. Uneventful. I went to sleep there. I woke up here.”

“Nothing bothered you? Nothing woke you up part way?”

“No. Nothing.”

“The best kind of journey,” he intoned in a slight English accent. “And what do you think of your accommodations here?”

“They’re wonderful,” she said. Because of the situation with the bathroom, they were not as good as her father’s home back on Earth, but she knew that by Martian standards, they were excellent. Complaining would get her nowhere. She was a slave and only so much luxury was possible on the surface of Mars, even for the rich.

“I’m delighted to hear it,” he said, not with a smile. His face did not exactly smile since a deer was not capable of making emotional expressions with its mouth, but kindness touched his eyes. 

Was he pressing a button on his console to make his eyes look warm? 

“We have much to discuss,” he went on. “I have an agenda. It will take weeks to cover everything we need to go over. I have set aside one hour a day in which to meet with you for the next two weeks. I do apologize, but I have a great deal of work to do and I cannot spare more time than that. When my timer goes off, I will have to cut our conversation short.”

Lisbet nodded 

He continued, “I’ve set aside these two weeks as our honeymoon as far as the media is concerned, so no one will need anything from you other than the photographs of you in your wedding dress. A photographer will meet you on the seventieth floor tomorrow to get the shots. I sent Charcoal my recommendations after you sent me the photos of you trying on the wedding gowns. I have much to be pleased about in your presentation. You hold your shoulders correctly and will do well tomorrow modeling. Do not concern yourself overly about your hair or makeup. This is Mars and women are asked not to put products in their hair or on their faces that will need to be washed off with water or chemicals. Natural beauty is all the rage.” He glanced at her curiously. “Does that suit you?”

Lisbet walked her fingers down her thigh. “Sure. I have confidence in what a photographer can do to touch up the pictures after the fact.”

The stag raised an eyebrow. “You think you need to be touched up? You don’t.”

“Yeah, except you’ve seen me when? In the pictures my father used to advertise my sale? In the far away shots I used to send you pictures of me in wedding dresses? Yep, I’m sure those things left you with a really strong impression of what I really look like.” She tried to keep her voice light, but she was still distressed over how her life had been suddenly redone.

“I saw you when you were delivered,” he said soothingly. “I kissed you.”

Lisbet’s breath caught. “Oh. Of course.”

“I’ve seen you, and I do not think you need to be touched up. Besides, you are going to be the most famous beauty in history.” He turned his attention back to the floating agenda.

She gulped. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been trying to think of the correct way to tell you this. You couldn’t have been told anything to prepare you before you left Earth because the executives at Sleeping Beauty Inc. were trying to control the narrative about your departure. Honestly, I’m still struggling to find a way to broach the topic.”

“What? What are you saying?” she asked, clicking her dry tongue against dry teeth.

“Sleeping Beauty Inc. sent three Mammoth ships from Earth to Mars and you were the only person in cryostasis on any of them. Here on Mars, we sent ships to meet the armada transporting you, and when they arrived in Mars’ space, humanity had the first battle in space. You see those floating twisted hunks of metal in the sky?”

Lisbet remembered them and nodded her head.

“Well,” he continued, “they’re the gravestones of the losers. Our side won. You were delivered properly.”

“I don’t understand,” Lisbet murmured anxiously. “Why would anyone care if I was delivered? Who would want to stop me from being delivered so much that they’d go to war over it?”

“It wasn’t about you,” he said with an odd breath like he was trying to suppress a cough. “But you’re part of history now. How much do you know about Mars? 

“I know all about it,” she said confidently. Then she started sputtering off facts about how long each day was compared to an Earth day, what the temperature range was on the planet, what minerals were found in what geological formations, and more.

Vantz interrupted by clapping for her. “You’re a true scientist. I’m enchanted. How much do you know about life on Mars? How do human lives play out here?”

“Uh,” she muttered. “Uh… Not as much as I’d know if that story Sleeping Beauty Inc. is telling about our relationship was true. This is my first real conversation with a person from Mars.”

“Okay, let’s start small then. Do you know what there is to do for fun on a space station?” he asked briefly. “Have you traveled in space much? Do you know what space stations are like?”

“No. I’ve only lived on Earth,” Lisbet replied.

“Okay. Space stations are dark places,” he said as he pulled two golden balls from his pocket and started spinning them in the palm of his hand. “There isn’t much to do for fun. The people on board get stuck working shifts doing shipping and receiving. The work isn’t inspiring. Drugs are hard to come by. People watch a lot of TV and they have an insane amount of sex. People who live on space stations have four times more sex than people who live on Earth.”

Lisbet whistled.

Vantz chuckled. “Yeah, you weren’t expecting this to be our first conversation, but this is actually the first thing we need to talk about. Here on Mars, we have the same problem, except it’s worse. Mars is like a space station. There’s no atmosphere, very little sunlight, cold temperatures, and nothing fun to do. Except, we have a more challenging problem here on Mars than they do in outer space. Unlike a space station that only has so much floor space, nowhere to hide, and nowhere to run, we have nooks and crannies aplenty. We have miners and almost all the machinery on Mars is used for making more nooks and crannies. We have a collection of mining companies that are stripping the planet of its minerals and that’s fine. We don’t have a problem with that because that’s what humans are here for. The problem is that the mines get decommissioned and they get made into something called a pleasure palace. Have you heard of them?”