Family

"Uhh, what time is it?" Mark asked as he came awake. His eyes refused to focus on the clock.

"Marcanyumber," came from his side.

He chuckled, "I'll get him."

"Um hum."

Sliding from the bed he staggered into the next room and collected his son. Even when he was huddling in the rover, the hab a hydrogen bomb, he still hadn't been as sleep deprived as he had been for the last three weeks. Parenthood was turning out to be an exercise in navigating life while barely conscious. Managing to get back into their room and bed he handed Ares off to his mother.

"Thankumm," Mindy mumbled as she gave her son her breast.

Mark cuddled next to them and smiled as Mindy drifted back to sleep. Ares suckled for about ten minutes before he too drifted off. Happiness didn't even come close to describing what he felt at that moment. Gently lifting his infant son from where he lay against the love of his life he took up a moist towelette and quickly wiped the slobber and milk from them both. Back in the nursery he swiftly changed his diaper and softly patted his son's back until a loud burp sounded. Ares had even woken. Mark took the towel from his shoulder, laid him down in the crib, and just stared. He and Mindy had made a whole new human, and he still had trouble wrapping his mind around that.

He could see his father and Mindy's mother clearly in his son's face. He prayed Ares had inherited his mother's intellect, and he hoped the boy had his father's courage. Downstairs, their parents slept on. Frank and Belle Watney had been forced to take the guest room by Deborah Park. She and Edwin had taken the den and converted it to a makeshift bedroom for the duration of their stay. Mark smiled. The fact that their parents got on well was a blessing he counted daily.

Their other family, their NASA family, was just as enamored of Ares as their parents were. Annie and Roberta visited at least every other day, Roberta demanding to hold Ares for her entire visit. The Martinez's had been by, and Ricks wife had given Mindy several very helpful hints on how to deal with infants. Beth and Chris had worn knowing smiles, and they chuckled at the red rimmed eyes of their friends during their visit. Even Director Sanders had come to deliver a large basket of food and a certificate for diaper service for year as a gift from the NASA family as a whole.

This was his reward, Mark thought. Surviving Mars, surviving Annie's use of him for her own plans, surviving the trails of dating in a very public forum, and just doing the right thing in general, for all of that Mindy and Ares were his reward.

And his responsibility.

That was never far from his mind.

The simple boy from outside Chicago had become a major player in the future of humanity, and the fact that that rested on his shoulders he could deal with, but now it had paled to insignificance. He had this tiny human to make the world safe for, he had his other half, his best part, sleeping in the next room, and he had the whole of humanity looking to him and his cohorts to prove that they were destined for greater things.

And they were, he was certain.

Elon had come by too. The next foundry was nearing completion, and Space X in concert with the Chinese, Corning, and GM had built an even more sophisticated foundry and garage system. It would be launched at Mars in a few months, and when fully operational would make twenty-four three foot on a side triangles every sol. They would be able to make structures from as small as sixteen feet in diameter to as large as they could want. Elon would go to Mars and walk in Schiaparelli crater in his lifetime.

He had even tried to temp Mark to go with him.

He had also understood the laughter that request had led to.

Mark thanked him for the offer, and he had told Elon what to see while he was on the Red Planet, but Mark had walked his last mile on Mars. That was for others now, classes full of them. He nodded to himself as he thought about the young, bright eyed, woefully ignorant candidates he saw every day. They ran sixty, forty in his estimation. Sixty percent would not have the stuff, the right stuff they used to call it, and would have other careers inside NASA, but forty percent would go to Mars and beyond.

And the Moon was back in play.

Thanks to Mindy's stroke of brilliance they had a method of construction that didn't require shipping everything to the destination. They were going to make glass on the moon too. The lunar soil presented some challenges as it was very different from Mars, but the people at Corning were certain they could make the chemistry work. Mankind's first conquest had sat unexplored for too long, now they would be coming back.

Ares gurgled in his sleep.

Mark smirked at a new though. Rich was screwed, he'd said it himself. Three days after they had brought Ares home Clara and Rich came for dinner. As Rich had gently but confidently taken the baby into his arms Clara had melted, and Rich saw it. "Hi, Ares, I'm your uncle Rich," he had said. "You're getting me into serious trouble right now, you know that?" Ares had just cooed and stared at Rich's face.

Yeah, Rich was screwed.

Soon there would be a new Purnell, and then others in his extended family. A family that was starting to become quite large. He had his parents and Mindy's, the crew and their families, Rich and Clara, Annie and Roberta, and Hannah, Janice and their friends. As he thought about it he had a profound realization. Humanity was his family. He had to show them, convince them that this, this being at peace, this sharing of love and friendship was what humanity was meant for. He and His Holiness had talked at length about it, but it hadn't crystalized into a coherent thought and mission until this moment.

He would work with the famous and influential that saw him as some sort of hero. He would use that fame and power to change the direction of human history. They could grow and explore, or they could stagnate, and he was determined that they do the former. Now, this point in time was the moment, and he, Mark Watney, would make it happen if he could. He just needed some help, and world peace would be nice.

His very capable friends and their new organization were already working on their own version of promoting peace. First they had deftly eliminated a small group of fanatics in a North African compound that had been playing with biological fire. Then they had decided to start making little changes and see where they led. To that end they had chosen a rising star in central African politics and shielded him from those that took offence at his promotion of freedom and equality. Mark's friends would make sure the young man's enemies would have a change of heart, or they would find an opportunity in a distant country, or they would simply disappear. The young man's career would skyrocket in the coming years, and Mark smirked at the thought of how he would react to his unseen and unknown protection if he knew.

His friend, Elon Musk, older and wiser from his decades of commercial space work, was as evangelical as Mark was about mankind's destiny. Mark would use him as Elon had used Mark, and together they would storm the halls of power and the stages of public media. Annie was already there. Working tirelessly the 'Bullet Proof Bitch', as she had become known in the press room, had created funding opportunities where none had existed before, she had schmoozed with Presidents and Prime Ministers, and she had been the face of NASA's obsession with manned and unmanned space exploration.

Then there was the Ares Five launch a few short months away. Live television from another planet was always a good public relations boost. The fact that they would, intentionally this time, leave behind four of their team on the planet to continue the work, and permanently colonize Mars, would be something Mark could use every time he spoke. The Sol system contained several possible homes for his species, and Mark was rapidly determining that they should inhabit all of them. The dark side of Mercury, the Moon, Mars, Ceres, Ganymede, Calisto, Europa, and further, Titan, Rhea, Iapetus, Dion, Tethys, and perhaps even Enceladus, and Mimas could hold a cache of homo sapiens. The moons of Neptune and Uranus would have to wait a generation or two, but they were on the list, and at the edge of the system Pluto, Charon, and the other Trans Neptunian minor planets beckoned them.

Beyond that lay the stars themselves. Currently realistically unreachable by people, they taunted the space agencies of earth. Plans were on the board for a robotic mission to study Alpha Centauri B and the planets around it for five years and then return. At thirty years for the round trip, it would be the second longest duration robotic mission ever, the first being the nearly immortal Opportunity rover.

They would do it, and he would make it happen. His favorite poem ran through his head, the last lines playing over and over.

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Mark smiled down at his son. "Oh, the things you will see and do, my boy," he whispered.

Credit: John Gillespie Magee, Jr