My name is Noah, I'm 7 years (or 13 Earth years) old, and I'm the first child on Mars who got here by following the rules, which I think is pretty funny really, and I've been trying to live it down ever since.  My parents were pretty straight arrows, and they put in for permission to get pregnant, unlike Olivia and Liam's parents, who all just had a kid and then said, "hey, I had a kid, sorry," but my parents were like, "mother Earth may I?"  But anyway, I digress.  Sorry, Oliver, you knew when you asked me to write something that I was gonna be like this.

So, my earliest memory is of a New Year's party, Mars New Year I think, and we were all in a big room in Building 20.  That's the warehouse, where they store the food when the annual production is at its peak because the daytime is longest, so we celebrate New Year's at the opposite time of year when the extra food stocks are getting to their lowest and there's the most space in Building 20.  It's pretty much just a big room with shelves, but they move them to the edge of the space and disassemble some of the shelves so there's more space for everyone to gather in one place.  It's pretty fun, I guess, if you like seeing adults get drunk on illegal hooch and then try to act sober when Oliver's dad is nearby.  Oliver's dad had to work really hard to act like he was fooled, sometimes, the man was a talented actor.  Mostly I remember several drunk and enthusiastic adults who I didn't know giving me hugs with big smiles on their faces, which was not how they normally acted around kids, you know?

Anyway, all I really remember from that evening was that there were a couple of older kids, Olivia and Liam, but for some reason I didn't get to talk to them much.  I figured out later in life that my parents were kind of weird about Olivia and Liam, because on the one hand they knew they were not approved beforehand and my parents did not approve of rule-breaking, but on the other hand if it hadn't been for Olivia and Liam forcing the issue I never would have been allowed, by the authorities back on Earth.  So they picked the best way to deal with any issue that makes you feel uncomfortable, and they just tried not to look at it so they wouldn't have to think about it.

I used to think it was my superpower to talk out loud about uncomfortable topics that other people were trying not to think about, but then Lucas came along a few years ago and put me to shame; that kid was at a funeral once and decided to say, out loud so everyone can hear it, "hey, aren't we all going to die eventually?  Pretty soon, for some people, huh, like the older ones?"  He was like 3 Earth years old at the time, and it got me in trouble with my own parents because they did not approve of me laughing at a funeral.  The kid has talent.

Fortunately after a couple more years I was able to meet you, Oliver, and also Emma and Ava, and now we are all one happy family here together on Mars, ready to die for each other.  Or at least, near each other.  Anyway, back to the early memories.  I remember the first time I taught a young Oliver how to cheat at school by looking up the answer keys, which they had put into a folder that they forgot to password protect.  It may not have helped my learning of the latest political patriotic and pro-social bullshit, but it did teach me how to secure computer files when I was saving pictures and taking notes on how to sneak around the underground tunnels.  Ha ha!  Just kidding, Earth snoops who are reading this!  Nothing but up-and-up from old Noah, here!  Earth is great.  I love to exceed my production quotas.

My dad worked in Building 2, the sewage treatment building, which I used to take an immature delight in calling a shitty job, thank goodness I am too responsible for that kind of humor any more, and mom worked in Building 24 with the other Admin types.  A.k.a. the people who don't really do anything, but they do create work for Building 2.  Allow me to note here how disappointed I was when I discovered that "number 2" was not a euphemism of Martian origin, based on Building 2, but was actually a phrase they used back on Earth as well.  But I digress.

I don't think I ever saw my dad actually at his job, and until a couple years ago I didn't really know much about it.  But then, at some point (I think actually it was after you asked me what my dad's job was like, Oliver), I started to pester him with questions because I realized I didn't really know much of anything about what he did.  My mom didn't really like hearing about it, which turned out to be a great way of short-circuiting her if she was about to ask me too many questions about what I was doing.  Ask Dad a question about work and she would exit the room.  As a result, whenever Mom got that look on her face like she was going to start trying to get in my head by asking me about my feelings or some crap, I would ask Dad a question about work, a different kind of crap.  So I ended up asking him about it a lot more than I would have otherwise, but it did turn out to be interesting sometimes.

Essentially his job was to make sure that the sewage got turned into something we could send to Building 3 to turn into "new soil", but there were a bunch of other parts.  It turns out that you can learn a lot about what is going on in the kitchens, and stomachs, of a population, by sampling their sewage.  For example, just how much illegally made alcohol are they drinking?  Are there any drugs showing up that were not approved for shipment to Mars?  Are there any new viruses or bacteria that have not been seen on Mars before?  Do they like the new type of food that was sent from Earth, or are they ditching it into the compost instead of processing it through their ass the normal way?  It was about two years ago that I realized my dad's job told him a lot more about what was going on in the Colony than Oliver's dad's job did, even though Oliver's dad was probably the one who needed to know it more.

Oliver I owe you an apology, I told you that your idea of us writing out our early memories sounded like a homework assignment, but actually I get to say 'shitty' and 'ass' a lot more than when I'm doing homework, and the filters don't even strip out those words when I hit Save.  It's the little things.

I remember Dad saying that they had to pay special attention right after holidays or other times when too much alcohol gets put into the sewage system, because it potentially could kill too much of the bacteria that do the actual sewage processing.  Basically he said that the "treatment" of sewage mostly consists of "feed it to the bacteria who actually break it down", so if too much alcohol gets dumped into the system at once and they're not prepared for it, there's a risk that it will kill too much of the bacteria.  They keep some of it in refrigeration (the bacteria, not the alcohol, well maybe they keep samples of both in refrigeration but in separate bottles hopefully).  That's in case they need to re-seed the system with more live bacteria, but it takes a few days for the bacteria to get up to a big enough population to do the job again, and they'd rather just dilute the flow with enough water when a bunch of alcohol comes through, so that it doesn't get to that point.  Of course when the water capacity of the Colony started to run low it was harder to do that.

So, now I am faced with a moral quandary.  Do I admit to Oliver that this whole idea of his has resulted in me remembering to find the refrigerated samples of bacteria and re-introduce them to the sewage system?  What if, when he reads this, he gets a big head because it validates his whole "let's do homework for fun" idea, and his ego becomes intolerable?  I suppose I shall just have to make sure to crush him at video games next time, like usual, so that he doesn't get too cocky.

I remember Dad saying once, not too long before the Evacuation, that he thought a lot of people were going to go, because he could tell they were all using up their hidden stores of hooch.  Mom didn't think most people would go, because they had done some sort of survey to ask people their intentions.  Which just shows, if someone's talking out their ass, they're probably telling it to you more honest than if they're talking out the other end.  Ok they probably don't shit out the alcohol so that sentence doesn't quite work, but I'm too fond of it to go back and rewrite it; I claim poetic license.  Anyway, it was pretty typical for Dad's job to give him a more accurate idea of what was going on with the Colony than Mom's job did, even though you would have thought the opposite would be true if you didn't know the details of how they both worked.

I've kind of made Mom sound like she wasn't much fun here, but that's not actually the case at all.  She was actually a really awesome mom, but usually in all of those ways involving affection and empathy and that other stuff I'm not so good at talking about, and that don't give you an excuse to say "ass".  But trust me, she was great.  But I don't really think I can talk about that now.

I guess I'm done now.  I think I need to go see if those refrigerated bacteria samples are still viable, now that writing this has made me remember it.  Nice one, Oliver.