RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist (@[email protected])

> 2503.28 /15 — Feather #Writever #Mars #SpaceOpera Today May Ri tested. Things she invented. A daughter she gave birth to. The Meadowbrook rickshaw climbed the sandy hill strewn with rocks, the huge hoop wheels and isolated suspension rolling over obstacles with aplomb. She drove the tractor legs with her reins, to minimize jostling the cart, and got to the solar array minutes earlier than by taking the road compressed into the Martian regolith. Marisela hopped out instantly, rolled upon landing to her feet, and rushed the blue and black panels. Though shy, she had taken to suit-qualification... like a duckling to water—a phrase the 4 Mars-year-old wouldn't understand, but her mother did. She stopped before touching, looked expectantly at her mother, her eyes gleaming in the coming sunset inside her glare-free helmet. May Ri's maker v3.2 made spacesuits, something they'd had to import from Earth—Mars was never meant to be isolated from EM Mars Corp. Bankruptcy changed things, maker manufacturing locks only making it worse. At May Ri's nod, her daughter climbed the array, giggling, full of energy. Mars-refined metal platforms were simple tech, even gimbaled ones; the array wasn't fragile, only the sweepers and cables. Marisela had trained and given promises. She was an inspector! The girl's suit was a first production suit, and the only one sized for a child. Colonial planners hadn't thought through the implications of *kids.* May Ri patted the emergency balloon as she vaulted out of the tall cart and plopped down on the sand. "What about this?" Her monkey girl pointed out a bent wire feather wiper over a windblown deposit of red five aisles in. May Ri noted it on the wrist-mounted book plate. The regolith crunched under her shoes. The wind whistled faintly, mixing with the hum of the comm. A massive dust devil spun in the distance, which was why they were here—not for testing the cart, tractor legs, or the pink-striped Mars-green suit her daughter wore. Danger of a planetary dust storm was no joke. With a doubled population and dome construction, array efficiency was paramount; the anti-static feathers were her idea to replace fans. Men prospected for Thorium, but aeolian monzonite deposits were rare. Finding the mineral deposits on metallic 16 Psyche proved difficult, but the effort searching for them and the *Robinson Crusoe* disaster had brought them the dented maker her echo group dissected. At the slow orbital speed required for an asteroid, the ship had flipped and disintegrated, leaving rather gruesome remains of the men and partially intact machinery scattered over kilometers cratered metallic rock. May Ri felt proud of her maker derivative. V4.1 had built a compact thorium reactor prototype (another restricted device). In a dust year, a working reactor would prevent starvation. Mars grit and dust clung to everything, compromising moving parts. Together the two identified five repairables and reattached a cable. In the dusk, illuminated by bluish noctilucent clouds, May Ri drove the cart along the "paved" road. Marisela swayed and hummed happily to herself. At their dome, May Li got her chance at exuberance: Randy had returned days early. She jumped into his arms, but knocked him over. Marisela said surprisingly dryly, "Momie's going to be making funny noises tonight." She quickly hid behind May Li's legs when she stood, peering apprehensively with green eyes as Randy smiled at her. It had been three months since his last visit, a lifetime ago to a kid. Taking a deep breath, May Ri knelt and and pointed at her daughter. "This is Marisela, a brave little girl who today completed her first Mars surface expedition in a plus-plus fashion, the first suit-qualified girl to do that, helping her mother at the Array." Randy scooted over. Pointing at him, she said, "This is Randolf, an illustrious Martian arbitrator and HR wunderkind, an all around loving fellow, and your Dadie." He reached out a hand. Marisela's reddened face screwed up in an expression May Ri couldn't predict, but when she reached out her little hand to his big one, she burst into wild giggles. They shook in the handshake ritual *du jour,* laughing, before she warned, "Momie loves you, so you keep her happy." Martian nisei, besides being hoppy little frogs, were surprisingly open. Precocious. They had no Decath ministers to shame them, girls and boys lived and slept communally most days, and fathers were absent. Nobody bothered—or had time—to teach gender roles, so no nisei acted as either. May Ri approved. *Which meant...!* "Marisela is suit-qualified. Take her on your next assignment to teach her your job." With ever fewer men, Mars needed women doing men's work. #RSMarsNeededWomen 15 [Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.] #BoostingIsSharing #gender #fiction #writer #author #sf #sff #sciencefiction #writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers #RSstory #microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory