[ WP ] The death penalty has been replaced by a one way trip to Mars .

The lander smashed into the ground and bounced back up into the air. Then it slammed back down, and bounced yet again. Five of us threw up the remains of our last meal in orbit, which made the following bounces particularly unpleasant. There were nicer, softer ways of doing the landings, but those cost more. And no one wanted to spend a damn cent on making us prisoners comfortable. We were here to terraform, not have a tea party. 
 
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 The bus from the appropriately-named New Sydney colony met us at the landing site just in time. We were only equipped with a four hour oxygen supply, and our ride arrived after about 3 hours and 45 minutes. We'd all talked nervously for the first hour, but fell silent to conserve our supplies as the gauges slowly sank closer to zero. We would n't be the first load of prisoners to suffocate to death after landing out of range or experiencing any number of problems. No one would notice, though: there was a constant stream of prisoner crews, and as the Warden put it,'spoilage' was unavoidable. 
 
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 The ride into town was quiet. I stared out the rover's porthole at the bleak red landscape. It was just like I remembered from watching the holo of the first landing, back when I was just a kid. Listening to Alyssa Meyerson's soft breathing and gasp of surprise when she first opened the door of the lander. It had seemed so exciting back then: a whole new world just waiting to be explored. Sure, it had been thoroughly mapped by satellites, and rovers had been there for at least a century, but there was just something about different back then about stepping onto that red dust and knowing that your species had conquered the stars. 40 years later, it looked exactly the same but was now just a desolate dustbowl of despair, only one step up from death. And even then, not a particularly big step. 
 
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 `` Enjoy what little air you can get,'' Adams roared. He was the man assigned to greet us at the gate into the sheltered city, and to send us back out into the nothingness. His face and chest were entirely tattooed with an intricate geometric pattern, but his skin was pale. They say that there are no tan men on Mars. `` Because you'll be breathing algae spew for the rest of your life.'' Adams gestured to the tanks strapped to the little vehicles that we were all assigned to. The New Sydney bubble was small, and a carefully balanced ecosystem. In the city itself, there was only room to replace 2 men who had died in the past week. Adams did n't specify how they had died, but his gruesome grin indicated that it had at least been entertaining for the survivors. The other 14 of us from this week's lander would be sent out to homesteads in'the desert.' There was plenty of room out there. 
 
 `` Each of you has been given a homestead kit.'' He pointed to the rest of the boxes. `` This includes enough starter algae to get a colony going for all of your basic needs. Your prepacked oxy supply will last you the week, which will be enough time to get your oxy capturer colony growing. For your food colony, you've been giving a four week supply of prepackaged meals. You'll live off of those until your crops start coming in. For after that, you've got your vitamin supplement.'' He tapped a big crate that would be full of pills. Eating slimy muck for the rest of my life did n't sound particularly great, but it was probably better than prison food anyway. Algae and bacterial colonies were the basis of everything growing here on Mars, slowly converting the atmosphere into something breathable. Once the job was done, we'd all probably be packed off to some other planet to do the same thing all over again. 
 
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 The car hummed softly on the way out to my designated site. The scientists had carefully mapped where algae blooms would be most helpful, ensuring that they would spread with maximum efficiency. I'd been assigned to a nice little spot just a day's drive from New Sydney, right on the slopes of Olympus Mons. Of course, in this sector of the planet it was nearly impossible *not* to be right near the massive old volcano. 
 
 My locator beeped. This was it. I stepped out of the rover and planted my feet firmly in the rusty red soil. It was nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the featureless plateau extending for miles around me. Well, I guess this was home now. 
 
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 The sun, no larger than a nickel here on Mars instead of the quarter-size sun you'd see from Earth, was setting. It dipped below the surface of the rocks, bathing the planet in a dull brown. We had n't created enough atmosphere to get a truly spectacular sunset yet, but maybe someday. I relaxed against a rock near my shelter, having set up my algae incubators and my little bubble home. Once the sun disappeared, I gazed up at the stars. There was a particularly bright spot up there that I knew was home. I wondered how many kids were down there staring back, hoping that someday they'd be where I was. 
 
 Beyond Earth, there were more stars than I'd ever seen in my entire life. Most of Earth was so polluted that you'd be lucky to glimpse a handful of the little pinpricks of light. But out here, there were practically more stars than darkness. And it was amazing. If only I could just show this to little ten year old me, hoping to someday be here. I'd tell him that he'd have a hard life, but that at least Mars was n't out of his grasp. 
 
 Maybe this would n't be so bad after all.
