The sun was slowly going down over the capital of Mars. Elon was a big city. It had been built over several decades as it was originally a small outpost. Dome after dome it was built. And it showed. From above, one could see a big central dome, mostly made of glass surrounded by a plethora of smaller ones. Honestly it didn’t look that big, appearance were deceiving on Mars, as it was easier to dig down than make domes. But you couldn’t have a city completely underground. Sunshine was important. It wasn’t that warm on Mars, but still, walking around with the sun on your face was an important pleasure in life.

Kepler’s week was over, and his platoon was on the terrace of a bar, enjoying the last of the sun. Most of the training facilities were underground. They had a two-day weekend like most people.

It wasn’t a special moment. It was a nice one, but they talked about mundane things, as one does at the end of a long day. And soon, some began to leave, to see their families, to go on a date, or maybe just to go home. At some point, only Nox and Kepler were left. And maybe it was because the others had left, or maybe because it felt more intimate, they began talking. They had been talking of course, but they began to talk about more intimate stuff. The kind of talk you remember. Real talk.

They talked about their dreams, what they wanted to do with life. And it was easy to have dreams, but it was harder to go for it. But in the end, what was stopping you to try? Most people tended to make it sound hard to make it, and didn’t really try, so how could they know? But Nox and Kepler weren’t most people, and they dreamed big, on that they were similar. A friendship born of dreams.

Nox wanted to become a Martian General. He didn’t have any family and treasured the military. Truth be told, he wanted to be at the head of the military, or become renowned one way or another. It was good to have a clear goal, and it clearly helped him on those extra hard days.

Kepler on the other hand didn’t really know if he wanted a career in the military. Honestly he wanted to make music. When he talked about it, you could see a spark in his eyes, in the way he got excited to talk about it. He was producing music on his time off, and had a few thousands views on his most ‘popular’ song. Honestly it wasn’t much, but it was something far more important. It was a start.

And so they talked, about dreams, how to make it. The sun was long gone by the time they decided to split. Kepler felt better than he had for a while, his worries lessened, his mood improved. Life felt good.

He had one worry he didn’t talk with Nox about, and it was a silly worry, in a sense; less grand. He had to go see his dad. He didn’t have to, but he agreed to it, and he knew it had to be done at some point, so why not get it over with ? Kepler mentally connected to the internet to buy a ticket for tomorrow morning. A part of him knew that if he didn’t do it now he’d probably not go at all.

He slowly came home to his small apartment, a small studio in truth, and plugged himself in for the night. Like most people he did it every night even though the internal batteries could last a month or two, but everyone had heard stories about people who forgot for a prolonged period of time and somehow the ‘low battery’ alarm hadn’t gone off. Apparently it was a painful way to die, albeit extremely rare.

Kepler woke up later than usual the next day and was soon on his way to the Elon Space port. It was the biggest Space port on Mars and there were always ships going in and out all day round.

It always felt weird being away from the platoon to him. They had been together for 2 years now, and he wasn’t used to solitude anymore. He soon saw the civilian entrance of the space port and entered. There were no people except travelers here, as everything was automated long ago. Like all others he simply went in front of a small opening, like a locker, but bigger, big enough to go inside to lay down and did just that.

Once inside he linked his ticket to the sleep cabin as it was called and a computer managed the rest. He could feel it moving, but barely. A ping soon alerted him that he was on board space shuttle T76A12 and a takeoff countdown could be seen in front of him.

He slept through the flight, most of it at least, and soon arrived in Tharsis. Compared to the Capital, Elon, it was pretty small. Mars didn’t really have a country side, there were cities, nothing, or automated farms. But you couldn’t really visit those, unless you worked in that field.

Kepler stepped out of his sleeping pod and came out directly in the space port terminus. It had already been transported off the shuttle. He walked out to the local tube transportation system and entered his dads address.

Soon he was in the right neighborhood, only a small distance away. His dad’s home and lab was the only building built into the outer dome wall, as he had wanted access to the exterior for some experiments. It didn’t look like much from this side, and one could almost mistake it for a maintenance door. But upon closer look it was a better looking door, and one could see a few windows dotting the wall.

Kepler walked up to the door and accepted the scan of allowed individuals. The door unlocked and he walked in. It was exactly as he remembered it, albeit with more dust. It looked like no one had used the space since a few weeks, except the kitchen, where some unwashed dishes were laid out.

“Hello? Dad?” Kepler asked out loud, not really hoping for much. Well, he definitely wasn’t in the living room, the dust layer intact.

He walked deeper and more importantly towards his fathers lab. Knocking on the door, he soon entered.

“Dad? Where are you?” No answer. Could he be out? That would be unlucky. Kepler walked into the lab proper.

He could see various projects lying around, mostly robot modifications, but also some kind of generator looking machines. The place was an organized mess. Messy piles of different stuff all around, but neatly separated into clearly defined sections. The largest project was in a far corner. It was a big box with big power lines going into it.

Through the large window giving a view of the Martian landscape, one could see more power lines going out that seemed connected to the box from the outside, and in the distance a small construction. It was hard to tell how big it was from here, but it didn’t seem all that big.

Maybe he was over there? Plus he was curious what it was, so he headed to the airlock, donned a power suit, and went out. The power suit was slim, but airtight, with a backpack containing a jetpack. A helmet also unpacked automatically to form around his head. It was more for the difference in pressure than air tightness, as he had some internal oxygen reserves for his brain. Feeling ready, Kepler headed out and quickly flew over.

It was farther than he initially thought, and when he arrived he could see that the building was slightly bigger than expected. Nothing huge though. From the outside it seemed like the size of a conference hall that could fit about 50 sitting people. He saw no windows. Walking around it, he finally found the entrance, it was an airlock that seemed to have been added after the other building rather than planned into it.

It seemed to be the same security system as the house and recognized him, letting him through. Maybe his dad was here? Where else would he be? It was rare for his dad to leave his lab.

Air rushed around him as the airlock pressurized the room before opening the other door. It was smaller than expected inside, either the walls were extremely thick, or there were machinery hidden behind the walls. Kepler’s helmet folded back into his backpack, and he ventured inside.

In the middle of the room was something strange, a bubble of some kind of hologram, it looked small in the room, slightly taller than him. It depicted nature like it used to be on earth. Trees in the wind, grass swinging to the winds whims, even a mountain in the distance.

Kepler looked around, apart from the hologram in the middle, there was nothing in here. He saw a door in the wall and walked towards it, maybe that's where he was hiding. He opened it and saw the machinery that was around the room. That seemed to be a lot of machinery. He walked around the area but found no trace of his dad.

Kepler debated calling his dad or waiting for him to surprise him. But he felt committed to the surprise. He walked back into the main room, deciding to wait a bit at least. The hologram looked real enough, and he was curious.

Walking towards it, he tried to see if his hand would interfere with it like normal holograms. But his hand kept going without disturbing the hologram. It felt like it was inside it now. Huh. Curious how far he could take it, he decided to step right into it.

Suddenly it felt like he was in the place depicted by the hologram. He turned his head and saw a small bubble depicting the room he was in seconds before. This wasn’t a hologram ! Did his father create a virtual room ? Or ? What was going on here. Maybe he was still in the room, and it simply had changed his perception of it, like some kind of virtual reality but without connecting your brain to it?

Kepler was thinking hard what it could be, it was very well-made at least, and felt real. He was so engrossed that he almost missed the robot standing still a few meters away. How had he missed it? But it stood perfectly still, some kind of guard robot from the looks of it. It was armed with a sword. It resembled the ones they used in the military for training, but more sophisticated.

Weird, why would you have a guard robot here? And how wide was this fake space he was in? Kepler decided to test it out and started walking, after a few steps, he was expecting to feel the wall of the room and slowed down, he continued slowly with his hands in front of him.

Anytime now, anytime. He slowly continued, but the expected hardness of a wall never came, after a while he looked back and saw that the bubble was fairly far, he would be outside the weird room if he was there. But it seemed he wasn’t, but that was simply impossible. Had his dad created space? Was that even possible?

More questions, but no answers, maybe it was time to just call his dad. He started to walk back, full in thought when something happened, he didn’t register at first, but the bubble seemed to bend like a fluid, not retaining it’s shape, parts of it flickering, others deforming. But the most alarming thing was that it seemed to shrink !

Kepler started running at it, panicked, why exactly he couldn’t say, but maybe that was the terrifying thing, he had no idea what would happen if that bubble disappeared. Before he could reach it, the remaining bubble imploded, and an explosion shook the whole area, Kepler was sent flying back through the air. He landed on his feet, and glided a few meters in the dirt before coming to a stop. The shock wave had hit him, but with a power suit on he was more than safe. It could withstand tremendous force.

He looked around, shocked to still see the green and lush landscape. If the bubble disappeared, why was he still here? Wasn’t this some hologram or something? Wasn’t the bubble the source of it all? Something foreign responded, wind, wild and free blew, as it had all this time, but somehow Kepler hadn’t notice it before. There was no wind on Mars, there was wind outside, but with the power suit and helmet on, you never felt it.

It was an alien feeling to him. And he stood there, lost, unable to understand exactly what had happened, where he was.

And he stopped, looked around and took it in, this beautiful but alien world, completely different from his own made of science and metal. He knew in the back of his head that this was how earth used to be, he had read about it, but standing here was something completely different.

It was beautiful, wild, free, all around him. There were no limits, no walls, no roof. It was beautiful but still, it unsettled him somewhat. So much space. A scary amount for a Martian, for endless space was something to fear, usually. But it was different here, it wasn’t empty space, there were things all around.

It felt like a moment had passed when Kepler decided it was time to do something, and he began with something familiar. He tried calling his dad. An error he was not familiar with popped up in his head. ‘No network’ it said. That had never happened before.

So, no network, no weird bubble, there weren’t many options left. He pondered what to do for a while. He had no idea where the hell he was ! That was him main problem. So he decided. He had to know more about where he was.

Kepler started the jetpack and went straight up, and the wind was stronger here, but still he went up, soon he put his helmet back on, and continued, up.

Soon he was a few kilometers up, and the air was thinner, but with the suit and helmet on, it made no difference for him. And he looked and saw. It was a bright day on this planet, and it was a planet alright. He could see the very slight curvature on the horizon, the forest going forever in the distance, the mountains, still hiding what lay behind them.

Somehow before he tried this, he was sure there would be a limit, an invisible roof of some kind that would stop him. Show him that this place was artificial somehow, fake, and that he was somehow still on Mars. It had all been in the back of his head, a certainty that this wasn’t real. Created, somehow. But that certainty was being chipped at the higher he went.

He turned, and saw something, far on the horizon, he zoomed in as much as he could with his eyes, but it was extremely far. Still, he was sure of what it was. Buildings.

Kepler landed some time later, after having had a good look around. And he had tons of questions, none with an answer. But there was one which echoed the loudest in his brain.

Where the hell was he?