Escape.

Camp MacKenzie King, CanaMars

00:00/Laurier 21, 2067 Post-ConfedII

Bed still not made. CanaMars lights brighter tonight. Makes plastrees look crisper. Workload unending. FirstMaster10 let all Digger18s go early today. FirstMaster10 has the biggest chip for Francos, especially pro-confed Francos. FirstMaster10 is Montranglo and Diggers SepQuebecers - not loved by Montranglos or CanaMardians. But know their role, that’s for sure. Crats expected replacements, but officetrons haven’t issued alert. Guess who’s filling in? Gaston says not to complain, there could be worse.
Roster posted last night, before Digger18 exodus. Gaston and I fared better last posting, last Turner – No, it was McGee 5th, or maybe 6th. Gaston helped out, made me look good. Not that I can’t fend for myself after a posting. I’m first generation CanaMardian, after all. I’ve breathed this shit all my life. Gaston is a Masker, but no one can tell.

14:02/Laurier 21, 2067 Post-ConfedII

Gaston has been reassigned. Who can read these logs aside from Digger18s? Up to me now. Maybe we’ll get this place fit for Canadians before it’s too late. Gaston had her doubts.

06:32/Trudeau 22, 2067 Post-ConfedII

Reports not posted since Laurier 21. Communications down since last month. FirstMaster10 lectured on morale. What morale? If Crats solve commlink problem, no morale issue! But that’s Digger18s job. Where are they? Back on Earth? AmeriMoon? Sleeping with the stars? CanaMars officials are unusually blasé, especially since the red storms have begun. Fake trees holding up. I miss Gaston.

Contributed by Sam Hancock
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She scuttled into the last open seat on the subway. Seconds later she regretted her choice. The man beside her stank of booze, sweat and dirty sandals. Wrinkling her nose, she stood up and moved as far away as she could. Everyone rode the train in agitated silence. A heat wave had gripped the city for weeks and even weather forecasters abandoned hope of relief. Her stop finally arrived. She walked home dreading her stifling apartment.

Once inside, her cluttered desk greeted her. Writing deadlines were circled in red on her calendar, but she couldn't sleep, eat, or write. Traffic roared past her windows, loitering groups of men guffawed in the streets. Her gaze rested on a car rental brochure.
Soon she was in a car, heading north to the cottage. She stopped at a grocery store for supplies, and the industrial wasteland quickly gave way to farms and woods. She turned onto the road she had known since childhood just as the sky became tinted with saffron and rose. The cottage was hidden from view until the road swept around a curve. As the tires crunched on the pea gravel driveway, her mother emerged, dishtowel in hand.

Moments later they sat together on the dock as night fell around them. She talked about her writing blocks and her frustration with the city she usually loved. The fresh air made her yawn. They watched bonfires across the lake.

The next morning, while stripping her bed, ideas danced through her mind.

Contributed by Heather Hewer
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Sonya returns for one last look – there must be a stray sock under the radiator, a bobby pin between the floorboards, an earring stuck to the back of a pillow. Nope. Nothing. The end of another season; the end of yet another affair. Sonya plays with the dust particles floating in the sunbeam. How fun it would be to be stirred by random motion, to surrender to force and get tricky with gravity. Frank was such a tightwad, she laughs. Look at him, sitting in the car, probably tapping his foot and counting the minutes he is wasting, spitting hard consonants onto the windshield.

Sonya’s switchblade is getting rusty. She should’ve known it was a piece of crap when she bought it at the import-export store on Yonge Street three years ago and the clerk suggested she pay $10 more for the one with the cross on it instead of the scratched gryphon-type logo. Oh well. Frank will just have to wait a little bit longer.

“Let’s see, who was I with in 2002? LJ. Who was that again? Oh, right. Lynda. Lynda with her pin-straight coif. It took 5 washings to get her red lipstick out of the pillowcases.”

“SC + FR 2005” she carves into the doorframe. Sonya Cunningham and Frank Redmond. Ugh. They’d be the couple that stands in the corner at a party and dissects other people’s outfits. Next year she’ll be more selective. A warmer-sounding name. Martha. Mathiu. Mahmoud. Soft names beginning with “M” promise gentle sensuality. Mmm.

Contributed by Heather Wiley
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Years ago I worked for a large magazine conglomerate. My magazine was a newsweekly and we were located on the seventh floor of a big office complex in downtown Toronto. Although the building was new, there were pervasive smells that would waft downstairs about once a week. At first we thought it was a fault in the ventilation system, that what we were smelling was the food court in the basement. It turned out that just above us were the offices of Chatelaine magazine, a mass-circulation monthly for women. Chatelaine, which continues to exist today and carries articles on raising children, fashion, careers, health and food. Once a week we’d smell osso bucco, pot roasts, new ideas in casseroles, chocolatey treats or soups, all whipped up in the “Chatelaine Test Kitchen,” boasted about in magazine copy. “These recipes were tested to perfection in the Chatelaine Test Kitchen.” One afternoon when we were smelling the cooking from the floor above one of the women on my staff lamented that no one had ever thought to create a Chatelaine Test Bedroom, where new techniques of a different sort could be tested to perfection.

Twenty years have passed and I recently returned to work at the same magazine conglomerate. I told one of the women at my lunch table today about the test kitchen and she said it still exists. Then I told here about the idea for a Chatelaine Test Bedroom. My new colleague nodded and said, “Let’s hope that it wouldn’t smell.”

Contributed by Jared Mitchell