Synopsis: "Don't you love us anymore?" My mother had been crying. I wish she wouldn't do that. "Of course I love you," I sighed. "Love's got nothing to do with it." "But to live the rest of your life there...to die there," she sniffed. "We wouldn't even be able to put flowers on your grave...and our grandchildren...we'd never get to see our precious grandchildren." My father just stood there with his arms folded with an empty expression on his face. "It'll be like going to prison, Jimmy! Dan, tell him! Say something!" "It's not like in prison," my father grimaced. "They feed you in prison." It tore me up inside to hear his voice crack. In his family, men weren't allowed to show emotion around women. "They'll feed me there too, Pa." "How?" he said. "How do you keep a hundred people alive without water, plants or animals?" He still used old-school information from clear back in his college days. Why hadn't he bothered to watch the video feeds yet? "There's lots of water, Pa," I said. "Huge rivers, frozen underground. The plants grow indoors. We're bringing animals with us too." "Oh, dear," my mother shook her head as she wiped her face and put a hand on my father's arm. "We shouldn't have moved from Oklahoma. I knew it would damage you, leaving your friends and all. Now, look at what you've gone and gotten yourself into." Oklahoma? That was when I was six! "No...Mom...this has nothing to do with anything you or Dad did. Hundreds of thousands of people applied for this job. It's an honor that they selected me to go. They'll pay me well, they already do." "The economy's strong right now, there are lots of jobs here on Earth," my father said. "You don't have to go clear to...to Mars to find work." I suddenly realized that I was folding my arms and glaring at them. In our family that's the posture of stubbornness. I looked aside and put my hands on my hips. No, that says, "You're all just stupid." I took my hands off my hips and let them drop to my sides while I looked up at the ceiling. No...that comes across as an eye-roll. I sighed and went back to folding my arms. "Hey, don't get frustrated with us, boy," my father's face had turned red by then. "We're not the ones...running away to Mars!"