Dead on Mars

Tang Yue sat amidst the feces pile, using scissors to cut open the vacuum packaging of the feces. Due to dehydration and low temperatures, the feces in the package were dry and brittle. They crumbled like sand from a gentle prod even though they appeared hard.

At his age, he had never expected to be fortunate enough to be in such close proximity with his feces. In the past, Tang Yue had been the kind of person who flushed and left after doing the deed. He was a rather heartless person who had never even looked back.

After Tang Yue poured the dehydrated feces in the vacuum packaging into a metal tray, he realized he could tell from the remnants, what he had eaten that day. Food rich in crude fiber wasn’t digestible and would be expelled along with the feces. There was a period when Tang Yue had often eaten canned vegetables; hence, undigested crude fiber could often be found in the feces from that period.

Tang Yue wore two masks, and thankfully, as the feces had been dehydrated for quite some time, there wasn’t much smell to them.

“The smell of shit mainly comes from 3-methylindole or skatole. When such things are smeared on your clothes, you will smell like a piece of shit,” Tomcat muttered as it sat by the side helping crush the feces.

Tang Yue felt that its interest was more on the feces themselves.

“Tang Yue, look at this piece of shit. There’s a long thing inside here… Is that a roundworm? Ah, no. It’s some undigested crude fiber…

“Tang Yue, were you eating vegetables that day? I see the remains of a vegetable leaf. This is a waste of food, do you understand? I think you can still eat those leaves if you take them out.

“Tang Yue, is there a problem with your digestive system…”

Tang Yue smacked his hands and turned around.

He had just stuffed a rolled-up glove into Tomcat’s mouth.

It was finally over.

“Human feces are traditional fertilizer. They’re rich in elements like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium. They’re very suitable for planting vegetables, and can provide tomatoes with sufficient nutrients.” Mai Dong’s voice sounded in the earpiece. “Tang Yue, you need to rehydrate the dried feces, which means adding water and stirring sufficiently. Then, you will need to mix them with the soil you retrieved.”

Rehydrate…

Tang Yue’s forehead began to perspire.

Although Mai Dong described it in a very academic manner, wasn’t this an act of… stirring shit?

Tang Yue looked at the metal pick in his hand. The usage of a long object was determined by who wielded it. If it were in the hands of Harry Potter, it would be a powerful wand. And in the hands of Tang Yue… it was a shit-stirring stick.

One’s background determined everything.

Tang Yue got Tomcat to bring over the chilled water from before. Mai Dong didn’t say how much water was to be used. All she said was “add the water to make the feces soft and thin enough. The stickiness should be around that of porridge, like curry that had a little too much water.”

“Following that, add the feces into the substrate soil, just like pouring curry over rice.”

Such an analogy was truly apt.

Tang Yue didn’t want to eat curry rice for the rest of his life.

As it was only a test plantation, Mai Dong and Tang Yue didn’t plan on using all the tomato seeds. It would be terrible if they failed. Tang Yue decided to plant about ten tomato seeds in the first batch to determine the viability of the plan. It wasn’t too late to grow the remaining vegetable seeds if they were certain of success.

Therefore, the soil and feces were prepared according to ten tomato plants, so Tang Yue still had plenty of shit on hand… On this desolate Mars, shit was indeed a rare valuable resource.

Tang Yue imagined that in a primitive agricultural civilization on Mars, shit would definitely be something to be vied for. Perhaps someone could become rich from hoarding shit.

Tomcat and Tang Yue wore their helmets as though they were facing a formidable enemy.

Tomcat held the water trough that was filled with ice water.

Tang Yue held a metal rod, with a huge beaker in front of him. Inside the beaker were mysterious powder and lumpy material which were dark brown in color.

“Are you ready?” Tomcat’s eyes wore a determined look.

“I’m ready.” Tang Yue nodded.

Tomcat tilted the water trough, pouring the water into the beaker. As the feces in the cup met water, the water immediately became turbid. Black residues mixed with the bubbles that swirled to the surface as the feces rapidly absorbed the water. The dry powder and feces became sticky again, like a container of mud. Tang Yue held his breath as he inserted the metal rod into the shit, stirring it with great vigor.

Tang Yue comforted himself that this was a happy job as a nightman.

“Tang Yue, just imagine it as black sesame paste,” Mai Dong suggested.

Tang Yue and Tomcat held their breaths.

“Lady, please stop saying a word. You have already brought harm to curry rice. Please don’t spread your harm to sesame paste!”

…

Mai Dong was wearing blue work clothes with a matching cap. She was floating in the Crystal core module, and in front of her was a screen that connected to Kunlun Station’s communications system. There was a dense array of control panels around her.

Mai Dong never dared to switch off the communications system, afraid that Tomcat and Tang Yue would vanish like Earth.

Only by seeing that man and cat did Mai Dong know that she was still alive.

Living alone in the space station was a boring life. Even though the Universe was huge and endless, being stuck in a tiny space station left one claustrophobic. The Crystal core module was the biggest and most spacious module on the United Space Station, but it only took a few large strides to cover it. The other modules were more passages than rooms. Passing through those cylindrical passages made it feel like traversing a maze or being in an ant tunnel.

Mai Dong’s daily life was very regular. Physical training, eating, checking on the space station, taking care of her plant samples, and finally sleep. She slept five to six hours a day. Being in near-Mars orbit, it was difficult to tell night from day, so Mai Dong often suffered from insomnia.

After all the research work had been canceled, the girl used the free time to rest and entertain herself. There were plenty of movies, music, and video games in the space station. There was even a special edition of the Sony Playstation 10. It was brought over by Thomp—every astronaut was allowed a quota for personal belongings. Apart from the necessary supplies and research equipment, the scientific team was permitted to bring toys, photo albums, and even vinyl records as long as they didn’t violate safety protocol.

To kill the boredom of their long journey, most people took entertainment equipment, for example, a few terabytes of movies and music. Apart from Max who was a crazy mathematician. He had taken a bunch of paper, claiming that he would crack Goldbach’s conjecture on the journey to Mars.

Of course, he threw this bold claim to the back of his mind once he got on board. He began happily playing The Elder Scrolls and Call of Duty with Old Wang.

Mai Dong didn’t play games, so she used her spare time to listen to music and watch movies—there were many classic movies on the space station. The girl wasn’t very interested in the dazzling special effects of Hollywood movies. Ever since Earth had vanished, Mai Dong had been repeatedly watching Gone with the Wind, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and other BBC documentaries, imagining that the blue planet was still about a hundred million kilometers away.