Good Friday

She was languidly picking the sachets from the cupboard, the strong painkiller had taken its toll; it had dulled her and made her a little sleepy, but it didn't matter, she could make this recipe even if she woke up from her sleep. It was a simple little recipe, a traditional dish, they always made it as a family for the first day of the Holiday.

The boys liked the idea when she suggested it; they laughed at how it would taste with egg powder, and she smiled at their gaiety, but another coughing fit took away her strength, and she staggered. Her best friend, Boris, jumped in first to support her light, emaciated body.

He would make it, he offered kindly, which of course she dismissed, saying that was women's business. They should rather finish installing the solar panels and start charging them, while she throws together the festive lunch in the tiny cabin called the kitchen, which was actually their accommodation, their entire living space.

She rested a little before she started; she sat down on the swivel chair and looked out the tiny window at the dead landscape covered in red dust. Why she came here, to this dead planet, she no longer remembers. Yes, yes, for the salary, which is fabulous, at least that's what the advertisement said; and in reality it is, and even more than that, only the price is too high.

Life is the price of the large sum, the bonuses sent home with which she helps her family, somehow to languish on the salted, useless lands, where not a single plant grows. Neither plants, nor trees, nor animals; The Great Depression took everything away, leaving nothing but devastated, burned-out farms, looted cities, and the ragged, starving masses who stood in line for days for the meager rations set by the state.

One day, however, the huge projector in the Main Square, which had gone dark during the days of misery, began to work again, and instead of the news broadcasts that had been broadcast before, only a single advertisement appeared on it, and it lit up day and night, writing the same text that workers were wanted for Mars.

It was a great sensation, everyone crowded around the hastily set up recruitment office, waiting for the soldiers arriving on the scene like children waiting for candy, but here they were not handing out anything, unless they were giving a physical fitness stamp on their wrists, which she was the only one in her entire family who managed to get.

After a few months of training, she was ready to go; and only when she was strapped into the spaceship's seat did she realize where she was going, but it was too late to back down, and she couldn't; the money was too much, the commission bonus was too high, the straps that bit into her shoulders through the spacesuit were too strong, her mother's tears were too salty, her brother's envy was too accusatory, and her sisters' laughter was too happy.

She was chosen; one of the few exceptions who didn't have to starve on Earth, beg, or become victims of organ dealers. She was chosen; how nice it sounded, how successful it seemed, but none of them knew what they had really been chosen for.

They were made to work day and night; perpetually in spacesuits, dirty, smelly, and hungry, they carved out rocks with machines, mined the ores needed for industry, or built bunkers to build a future base that would never arrive for them.

The porridge enriched with chitin powder, protein bars, and a weekly portion of dried fruit did not keep them healthy for long, and the radiation penetrated everything. There was hardly any water; they were given meager head rations, and there was always a slight aftertaste. She didn't even want to think about what the equipment, which also recycled the moisture released from their bodies into the system, didn't filter out.

They underwent a whole series of tests; on their one day off a week, they stood in line at the doctor's. Urine, blood, feces, saliva samples, psychological tests; mood swing reports, gamete extraction; fertilization for extra benefits, virus, vaccine testing. Bone density tests, oncologist, gynecologist, internist, heart surgeon, brain surgeon. Each of them asked a regiment of questions, took samples, cultured cells.

She lasted long enough, others dropped out sooner, but by now they all knew what they had been chosen for. They called it the Great Experiment among themselves, and they deluded themselves by saying that they were doing all this not just for their families, but for all mankind. They were the first, but not the last, to offer their bodies, unknowingly, to medical science, which meticulously and dispassionately tabulated and graphed the effects of space on the human body.

It didn't take a degree to know the effect without any tests, which had brought about the result in a few fleeting earthly months, and which was undesirable for them, but the scientists were provided with new and new experimental subjects by the overload of the crematoriums.

As she stared out the window at the desolate landscape, which she had never seen more strange, the infinite loneliness sat on the back of her neck, while she wondered how long it could be? Maybe only days, maybe weeks; certainly not months, she was sure of that. This would be her last holiday, her last Easter, her last Good Friday.

She dug a stimulant and a painkiller out of her pocket, and just threw them dryly into her mouth, gathered a little saliva, and swallowed it, then set about making egg noodles from egg powder, insect meal, and urine-smelling water, remembering her Grandma's recipe, which she now distributes to the boys working on her team.

Hungarian version/ magyarul: https://asfield.webnode.hu/a-s-field-nagypentek/