Shaun Moss at TEDxNoosa talking about near future Mars mission ( subtext it could be you).
When I had gone into hyper-sleep, I hoping this was all some kind of elaborate hoax. You know threaten her with going to Earth. Pretend to do it. Wake her up a day later and she promises never to do it again. No, for my sins I was here. I looked at my phone. No reception, I would have to get an Earth sim. I heard it was expensive here. I felt awful. There's only one thing worse than going to a party and waking up the next day feeling like a herd of wildebeest have used you as a door mat. and that's waking up feeling like that, without the benefit of the afore mentioned party to soften the blow. I knew I was still a little space-lagged. Nothing pure water, sleep and a dump-truck full of Advil couldn't fix. I did remember Mom telling me that Aunt Catherine would be at the spaceport to meet me. I looked around. No Aunt Catherine.
F★★K, Earth! I thought.
F★★K was the name of the food bar to the left of the entrance area. No really, they had a F★★K bar on Earth as well! I spotted the familiar design in the corner near the signs marked taxis to the right and third left. Wow the 'F★★K' franchise went out all the way to Earth? I thought it was a Martian thing. It used the same cute asterisks on the logo as they did back home. I wanted to text my buds and say, 'They have F STAR STAR K on Earth as well bud!' except my phone was like totally useless. As the only point of familiarity in this strange land I went up to the F★★K booth and stood in stupid amazement looking at the menu. FLHK shake, FIEK energy drink, FARK detox, FERK ginseng cookies, yep everything like the F★★K they had back home except the prices were in some weird currency called face-coins. Problem, no phone meant no money. Grrr. I'm clearly not at my best.
I grabbed the robot behind the F★★K bar.
"Hey, Mindless Philosopher? What's the date, you overweight blob of grease?" Warning—I'm rude when tired, especially to things without feelings. Inanimate objects, beware.
This one wasn't going to be so easily intimidated by a deranged space-lagged human teenager.
"2116 June 25, miss," the machine answered. I got the feeling it got that a lot.
"Three months in space. CARP I've missed season 3042 of Game of Thrones." I hate binge-watching to catch up, it's so something my parents generation did. Did Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister's grand child Burt get burnt to a crisp like the 3041 season finale suggested? Now everyone else knew and I didn't. That wasn't the way things were supposed to be.
"Excuse me, miss, which ship did you just land on?" asked a polite quadruped robot with about three arms and at least one head.
"Err, the interplanetary colonial ship Boaty McBoatface," I said. I got that from my ticket.
"Might I have the pleasure of speaking to Miss Lilly Banks?"said the Robot lifting it's hat.
I paused for a second. "Yeah, I'm Lilly Banks. Or Scarlett Banks as autocorrect likes to call me. Who are you?"
"My name is Not Important. I work for your Aunt, Catherine Banks. She sent me here to collect you, madam."
"Call me Scarlett. Seriously, what's your name?" I asked, swinging around on the F★★K bar stool.
"It's literally Not Important. You can call me Mr. Important, but I'm happy being called 'Not' if madame wishes. Are these your bags?" The machine pointed to the string of bags behind me, spread out in a line like a train with me as the steam engine of the lost.
I looked down behind me. The autonomous cases stood like a huge conga line; they had followed my ticket all the way through arrivals.
"Wow, have you guys followed me all the way through duty free?" I asked.
One of the robot cases twitched in a nod of agreement.
"That duty free hall makes the warehouse area at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark look positively bijou. I could have been stuck in there for days. I'm lucky to be alive."
"Does miss have an assistant?" asked the robot.
"Err, no. Dad said it was cheaper to fire it on Mars and buy or hire a new one here than pay the extra flight costs," I lied.
"Very well, please accompany me to the car, miss. Would madam like me to carry her?" asked Important. Before I could say yes please, an airport wheelchair turned up and he presented it to me. I sat down. Bliss.
"Doesn't this much gravity get you down?" I asked.
Mr. Important didn't compute this clearly and ignored it.
We walked and wheeled to the spaceport exit.
"I notice madam has only the eleven suitcases and one autonomous trunk," said Not Important.
"Yeah," I said, feeling a bit guilty they didn't all match like everyone else's did.
"Twelve items of luggage is a little light for a twelve month stay on Earth, if madam will mind me saying," said Not Important. "Perhaps miss is thinking of returning to Mars in a couple of weeks?"
Hmm, that was everything I had.
***
A/N ** Hugs to Norizuki_Shuppet for the typographic suggestions to F**K looks mightly fine to me.