My name is Charlotte, and I'm going to turn 6 Martian years old tomorrow, but I'm 11 in Earth years.  My first memory is seeing Dad put on a puppet show for me.  I think maybe I was sitting on Mom's lap, and Dad had made these two puppets, I think they were called Phobos and Deimos, and they were these kind of goofy fuzzy animals that would argue about everything.  They always did it in a funny way, and I would laugh.  Dad would sit on the ground, cross-legged, and he would have a conversation with these two puppets.  One of them would have my Mom's voice, and one would have my Dad's voice, and I know this is kind of embarrassing but it took a little while before I realized why they had voices just like Mom and Dad.  I was little, ok?  I remember when I realized that Mom and Dad had been making the voices for them, and being a little disappointed.  But it was funny to watch them argue about things, and Dad try to explain things to them and they would never understand, and I would laugh and try to talk to them to make them understand but of course they never did.  Like one time they were arguing about why the painting on the wall would change, but really they were talking about the window that looked out on Mars Outside.  I didn't realize then that it was unusual for us to have a window, but anyway these two puppets thought it was a picture that kept changing, and arguing about who was changing it, and I shouted at them that it was just the wind Outside blowing the dust around.  Dad and Mom were really funny when they made the voices to those puppets, and then Dad would also play the straight man, trying to explain things to them and getting exasperated when they didn't understand.

The first time I remember seeing another child, was when I was introduced to William.  He was just walking down the hallway, and our door was open, so he just walked in and started talking to me.  William was a few years younger than I, but he acted older.  I was sitting on the floor, playing with toys that Dad made, and he started telling me everything that was wrong with them.  Like that the rover didn't have the right number of wheels.  I didn't know who he was, and I didn't like him criticizing my toys, and I think I started crying.  Mom tried to patch things up but I guess William decided I wasn't much fun and walked off.

It was an odd start because actually William and I ended up being friends later.  But I got off to a much better start with Sophie and Amelia.  They came running into the common room in Building 27, where I was playing with a doll that Mom and Dad had made me.  They just sat down next to me without even introducing themselves or saying their names or asking mine, and started cooing over how pretty my doll was.  We played for a while, and it wasn't until Mom showed up to check on me that she told me their names.  Mom knew everyone's names, I guess it was because she was the person who was in charge of helping new colonists get settled when they arrived on Mars.  She was the first person most people met on Mars, and she tried to make sure everyone got settled in well.

Sophie and Amelia had been born while their parents were living in Building 23, but then when Building 29 opened up some other people moved into it, and that opened up some spots in Building 27 where we were.  We were all still pretty young, a couple years old, maybe 5 Earth years in my case.  We spent a lot of time playing together in the common area, and sometimes William would come in but he didn't seem to enjoy it as much.  He was always reading, but he did come to the common area to read so I suppose he must have liked the company.  Sophie would try to get him to join sometimes, but when we played house he wanted to talk about how the filter unit of our house worked and the water recycler and all that other stuff, so I'm not sure he was really all that interested in how we were playing.  But he was usually a good sport about it when we needed a boy to do something.  He was pretty much every male character we needed, a villain or a husband or a son or also all the animals.  We learned not to ask him to play any animal that he didn't already know about, because he would always have to look up on his tablet what that animal was like and how it behaved and what it looked like.  He wouldn't play until he'd had a chance to find out that, like, the wolf marks its territory using urine and anal gland scents, and Amelia would laugh uncontrollably and Sophie would actually get scared he was going to piss on the furniture and shouted at him not to.  We eventually just learned to stick to horse or husband and not ask him to play any other parts.

Dad was supposed to be making video content about what life on Mars was like, that would get sent back to Earth to help with recruitment.  Sometimes he would let me appear in them, which was fun.  Somewhere there is a video of the two of us in suits Outside, with Building 3 shining in the dark behind us.  That was back when they were using artificial lighting to extend the plants growing period, before they started to have power shortages.  I wonder if we can still find that video.  Mom and Dad were always trying to make things more fun, organizing the New Year's parties (both kinds, Earth and Mars) and all the other holidays, so that the colony would be able to convince people to stay.  I think they found it kind of sad when most of the people left in the Evacuation.  Well, I know they did.  I guess they sort of felt like they had convinced all of these people to move here, and then they didn't like it, and they were responsible.  But really I think it was not their fault, it was just that we didn't have enough water and power.  I don't think people left because the holiday parties weren't fun enough.

I'm remembering now that they made some videos of every building, interviewing everyone about what they did and what life was like.  I think they also had to make some training videos for people, about how to do their jobs.  I wonder where those went to, they might actually be useful now.  I thought they were kind of dull back when I was little, but I guess now I would have a lot more reason to pay attention.

The only thing I feel like I actually learned to do before the Evacuation that is doing me any good now, is that my parents loved to cook and they taught me how to do it.  So really, I don't know if my school program actually taught me anything that has been useful.  Reading, I guess, although I am not that good at reading but it is useful to read recipes and such.  I guess I do use the math, to multiply the recipes up for 20 people.  But mostly I learned how to cook, including the part about reading recipes and multiplying them according to how many people you're serving, by doing it with Mom and Dad.  They had parties, and we would make the snacks or meals for them, and I helped them to cook the food.  It was fun, and exciting.  When we started singing recipes here a couple days ago, I immediately realized that Mom and Dad would have loved that, I wish we had done that together.

I'm going to stop talking about my parents all the time now, really I am.

I think the toughest part of cooking for everyone is the little ones.  They are so picky.  Elijah keeps saying that they will eat if we let them go hungry and don't give them any of the snacks until they eat some of the real food, and I guess they do eat eventually, but whenever we have a new plant to get them used to they get really upset.  Now that they're finally used to sweet potatoes, we're almost out until the next crop matures, so I'm worried we're going to have to go through it all again.  We've also got a bunch of garlic that's going to be ready soon, and I just know that Harper and Alexander are going to be fussy about it.  Maybe I can get Isabella to convince them to eat it, she seems to be pretty good at convincing people.  I guess she maybe had to put up with me being pretty awful company for the first few days after my parents...left, but she was always sunny and smiling.  It made me want to try to brighten up, knowing that she was trying so hard to cheer me up.  It's like I didn't want to disappoint her.  But I don't know if that kind of thing works on the littlest ones.

Lucas is kind of a problem sometimes, but I do appreciate his attitude at dinner.  When we first started eating sweet potatoes, and the littlest ones didn't like it because it was new, he was just like, "Well it's better than starving, isn't it?" and chowed down.  Also, I know that if Lucas says it tastes good, it must actually taste good, because that kid will tell you the truth if it tastes bad, you can count on that.  When we'd been making sweet potato soup for a few days and he said, "Hey this actually tastes good this time," I think Emma got kind of upset with him but I was really happy.  It means we're getting better.  Emma's a sweetheart but I'm not sure if she would actually tell me if it didn't taste good.  Noah's the opposite; if he really liked it he would say something like, "Well that wasn't the worst soup I've ever had, it actually smells better than Building 2.  Although that's where it's going eventually!"  If you want an honest opinion you go to Lucas.  Not that you'll have to; he will bring you an honest opinion regardless.

Well anyway, I guess that's enough for now.  Noah, I'm just going to warn you here, right after Oliver gets done reading this to everyone I'm going to ask you to help me find all of those training videos that my parents made.