Tuesday, June 15th, 2026. Zero hour, 9 am EST.

The world population holds its collective breath. Some of the world's population. Most of the world's population is indifferent, truth be told. These are hard times, and this mission is a naked attempt to inspire the increasingly un-inspirable. Humanity has, after all, thoroughly explored Mars via robot - years ago, now - and, of course, there's nothing up there of any note. Nothing of any material consequence to anyone down here, anyway, and what matters besides material consequence?

But a few are still tortured by optimism and child-like wonder and it's those few this is for. They are the ones projecting this scene in 3 dimensions from their iCubes, nervously changing the angles to catch every last detail.

What they see now is this: Lester Manly and his three crew mates, not important to this particular story, strapped to their seats, preparing to touch down on the red planet in t-minus five minutes.

What they can't see is this: Lester Manly desperately has to take a shit.

Manly realized this was the case about 30 minutes ago. The euphoria of a dream fulfilled and anticipation of pioneering steps was interrupted suddenly by a profound rush of cramping and a wave of heat. He clenched his stomach muscles, put his hand to his gut, bent forward, and grunted slightly before remembering the cameras capturing him from every angle and straitening back up, hopefully cool and composed.

"It will pass," he thought.

"I have trained for this," he thought.

"I am a finely tuned machine," he thought.

It did pass for a few minutes and he slipped back into euphoria.

He is 36 years old, a veteran of 3 vague and humiliating wars - wars with no names - an athlete and a scientist. He is trim and handsome. His wife is watching. His kids are watching. They are filled with pride and this makes him proud in a way he's never imagined possible.

He made up his mind to become an astronaut when he was eight years old, in 1998, after watching Armageddon with his father and everything since has pointed in that general direction.

He is thinking of that movie - of how much he'd wanted to be Ben Afleck and now he kind of WAS and of that Aerosmith song, which still makes him tear up for all that it represents to him - when the second pang hits, harder than the first.

"Goddammit, not now," he thought.

But it is now.

He could just shit, of course, he's equipped for that, technically speaking. But is he really going to fulfill his dream wearing a diaper full of excrement? Is he really going to defecate in front of 120 ultra-def 3D cameras?

No, that is not an option.

So he tries to ignore the pain, the internal heat, the sweat beading on his forehead, the implications of his own foul humanity in this moment of godlike mastery over space and time - less godlike, now that he really thinks about it, now that his thoughts are tainted by physical need.

Why are they doing this? For what end? Hurtling through space in this clumsy vessel, held together by screws that were likely made on a conveyor belt overseen by sick, sad, underpaid, brown skinned kids?

And now he feels claustrophobic in his space suit and aware of the cameras and of course his kids are going to notice that something's wrong - his wife definitely will - and when he gets home they'll celebrate this for a day and then he'll say something wrong and she'll be mad at him like he wasn't just on fucking Mars and this will all be behind him like ...