The Beekeeper

Why would you remove the bees from their context?

I have planted marigold seeds in Martian soil.

Three ounces of Martian regolith simulant - made on Earth but molecularly and chemically identical to the dirt found on the red planet. Marigold seeds, because their blossoms are an excellent floral source for bees and other pollinators, because their roots strengthen soil and other plant life growing around them, and because their petals make excellent offerings for the Dead. I told Dad that I am interested in recording the mixture of terrestrial soil necessary to blend with Martian regolith because the data will be helpful when it comes to growing crops and sustaining pollinators in space and on other worlds. NASA has asked high-school science students across the country to participate in this experiment and record their findings, and I’m along for the ride too.

Dad hates this idea.

“Why would you remove the bees from their context?” he frowns. Quiet thunder. “We should take care of what we have here. There is nothing for us up there.”

He believes my experiment is blasphemous. That performing necromancy on a rusty, dead planet is anathema to the reverence he has for the sacred web of life on Earth. I don’t tell him that I don’t even know if marigolds will sprout in inert Martian soil. That I believe colonization led us to the precipice of climate destruction and that repeating mistakes on another planet will lead to the same result.

He won’t be around to witness our planet die. His grandchildren will inherit this maltreated Earth. Maybe they will inherit the stars, too.

Right now, I have no definitive conclusions. All I have is some red dirt, sleeping marigold seeds, and a bee-loud buzz in the base of my skull.

Dad’s a man of strong convictions. Here are some of them:

Interview coming soon. The first conversation did not go well. I will try again, when the planets align.