Chapter 1: Red Dust and Neon Ghosts
Mars had been humanity’s first dream of escape.
By 2133, it was little more than a cosmic cul-de-sac — a cracked monument to ambition, left to collect dust and bad poetry.
The Youngston Gate had changed everything. Now ships skimmed the edges of the solar system in days, not years. Stars called louder than Mars ever could. The Red Planet, once sacred, became a punchline.
Mann’s Olympus Casino and Hotel clung to the slopes of Olympus Mons like a bad tattoo nobody could laser off, buzzing defiantly under a layer of drifting rust.
Named after Robert J. Mann — a man whose ego once rivaled the mountain itself — the casino was now a hospice for broken dreams. Its letters flickered in and out: “M _ _ N’S OL _ _ P _ _”, blinking like tired eyelids trying to stay awake during a boring sermon.
Inside, the smell of old synthetic whiskey, burnt insulation, and Red Velvet opioids poisoned the recycled air. Gravity stuttered just enough to make every step feel like drunken prayer. The carpet peeled, the walls wept condensation, and the neon wept more quietly still.
Most of Mars' remaining human inhabitants weren’t here for the scenery.
They lingered like soggy parade confetti — forgotten, grimy, and too much trouble to sweep away.
The last act of the night was a woman whose name had once meant something —
Elaine Moon.
Chapter 2: Reflections in a Cracked Mirror
Elaine Moon sat backstage under a bank of vanity lights that buzzed like tired flies.
The mirror showed not a starlet, not even a relic — but something more stubborn.
She was fifty-something — she'd stopped counting when years became background radiation.
Her fingers ached with old betrayals: high kicks performed for half-interested audiences, songs mouthed for drunk nostalgics, bows for ghosts.
Once, when Mars still sold dreams, Elaine had been electric — breathing messy life into AI legends who had been programmed to shine but never sweat.
She had been a bridge, a mockery, a prayer disguised as a punchline.
But nostalgia rots faster than hope on a dying planet.
Tonight, staring into the cracked mirror, she realized something different.
Elaine Moon had been a necessary lie.
Beneath the layer of foundation and forced grins, the truth stirred:
Sarah Glover.
She wiped away the makeup — not neatly, not delicately. Just wiped. Like peeling away a dead skin.
Sarah.
Who once sang real songs in ***** crater bars, drunk on cheap wine and younger lungs.
Who once believed her voice could make the stars ache.
She had been buried beneath years of survival.
Not tonight.
Sarah Glover stood up from the chair.
No fanfare.
No safety net.
Just her own cracked voice waiting to be used honestly, one last time.
Chapter 3: The Last Song on Mars
The stage was a rectangle of failing light floating above a swamp of dim, unbothered shadows.
Gravity sighed at every step, pulling unevenly at her boots.
The air smelled like old plastics trying to pretend they were still new.
Sarah — not Elaine, never again Elaine — stepped into the wan spotlight.
No announcement.
No persona.
She leaned into the mic, rough and real:
"I'm Sarah."
A few heads lifted, blinking slowly as if trying to remember if they should care.
She keyed the battered synth, its panels held together by duct tape and stubborn hope.
It coughed out a C-major chord like a mechanical death rattle.
And Sarah sang.
Her voice cracked like dry riverbeds.
It floated unevenly, stuttering against the stale casino air.
But it was alive.
"Dust forgets the footprints it holds.
Stars bleed themselves dry for nothing.
And still, we sing."
Her fingers fumbled the bridge, and she laughed — a real, sharp, unsweetened laugh — before weaving her voice back into the crumbling melody.
The casino lights dimmed as she finished —
like dying fireflies giving up the fight.
A single clumsy clap echoed from somewhere in the back, colliding awkwardly with the silence.
Sarah bowed — not to the burnouts, not to the ruins, not to the drunk ghosts of memory —
but to the stubborn ember inside herself that had refused to go out.
Behind her, Elaine Moon crumbled like the dust she had always imitated.
Ahead of her, Mars stretched on — empty, tired, waiting for nothing.
Sarah Glover stepped into the neon-soaked dark, the hum of dying signs trailing behind her like a broken lullaby.
Somewhere beyond the Youngston Gate, humanity sprinted into new mistakes.
But here, on a broken rock under a leaking sky,
one true voice had risen, trembled, and vanished.
And for once,
that was enough.
"Even ruins deserve a second song."
— Old Martian Saying
