[ WP ] The death penalty has been replaced by a one way trip to Mars .

As a kid, I dreamed of going to the moon. It started out as a fantasy of becoming princess of the mice people, doling out moon-cheese to well dressed moon mice in three piece suits and ballgowns. Documentaries and books on astronauts developed a more accurate, if similarly inaccessible, aspiration of space travel. I could leave the pollution and dirt and crime of the city for good clean moon dust and canned oxygen. The stars I could never see on my street would stretch above me, every constellation clear through the visor of my helmet. 
 
 Mars, though? I never dreamed I'd be on my way there. 
 
 The pre-launch check is awfully fastidious for a glorified prison bus. A stern faced guard makes sure we are all strapped in correctly, tugging on our seat-belts. A bit like going on a roller coaster. A one way roller coaster to a penal colony on a desolate planet. 
 
 I'm not sure an isolated prison on another planet is more humanitarian than the death penalty. I even argued against it in my high school debate team, and won the round. I wonder if my lawyer did debate club. I wonder if I should have represented myself after all. 
 
 The doors seal shut. A robotic voice counts down the launch. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. The shuddering of my seat rattles my skull. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. The pressure of gravity and centrifugal force pushes all the wondering from my mind. All I can concentrate on now is breathing. I am breathing that canned air now, and will be for the rest of my life, and I'm told with good behavior I may even be allowed on the observation deck to see the Big and Little Dippers from a better angle than I ever had in Los Angeles. 
 
 
 
 
 

