At the moment it looked like a bizarre turn of events. First fighting with a total stranger or imaginary construct whose name I had still never asked. In hindsight I realize two people of the opposite sex in a deserted hut on Mars would contend to primal activities by the strings of biology.

In the very early morning, before dawn, I woke in the uncomfortable guest bed. There was considerable space between she and I on the king-sized bed so when I rolled off she stayed fast asleep. The sensation of my feet hitting cold water shocked me out of my drowsy state. I shuddered and erected to my feet. Beyond the discomfort of my chilled feet and my soreness from the terrible mattress, I was suddenly aware of a severe pain in my lap area that I assumed was a need to pee. I had only kissed her before bed. So this was the only solution I could consider.

I trudged rigidly to the bathroom. I felt for the door and closed it behind me. Then I flipped on the lights and did my business. As I did my eyes were slow to adjust to the overhead light. My eyelashes cracked and pulled at each other like sucking tentacles. But eventually my eyelids dispersed when I found something considerably concerning out of the corner of my eye. The object of my worry was in the trashbin beside the toilet. It was a small device stick with a digital pink plus '+' sign on it. I was awake now. I leaned down and picked it out of the trash. I knew what this was. An old fashion pregnancy test. What the fuck?

My loins suddenly had wondered themselves if their soreness was beyond bladder strain. I then recongnized a sting in my forehead. All of a sudden, I felt I had made a terrible mistake. That, or I'd been used. Who was this psychopath in the guest bedroom? My breathing was getting heavy so I bent over the sink and looked at myself. Wait, I told myself. Don't jump to conclusions. She could already have been pregnant. If not she might have taken Plan B. It may have all been an accident. And the fact that I couldn't remember doing anything with this girl other than french kissing was no reason to jump to ideas of the "r" word. She wouldn't do that to me. I'd kill her if she did. My mind wandered. Or maybe I wouldn't have to. Perhaps she'd die of pregnancy or the fetus would be aborted prematurely due to the gravity on Mars. Yes, I thought, suddenly reassured, I had nothing to worry about.

I caught my breath and even grimaced a smile in the mirror. I laughed and exhaled finally.

Opening the door, my hand about to flick off the lights, I looked down at the water. It was like a clear Jell-O, the way it bobbled and shifted all over the floor. Reflected the lights with almost a menacing face. I studied it for quite some time. Just stood there, looking down. It's so real I thought. I could feel its wet chill at my feet. Could hear it ripple and splash against the walls and furniture. I could even smell and taste its almost chloric odor in the air. That's when I squatted down, and studied it close. I noticed something for the very first time. There were white specks floating all around underneath the surface. Swimming or floating. I couldn't determine. I hoped it was Martian dust. Because if it were something other than that, something – living -- like bacteria, that could mean considerable danger to our health.

I looked up at the bed. I thought of the girl getting sick. We had no anti-bacterial medication here in the hut. She would surely die if this were bacteria. I touched my hand to the water and lifted up my fingers. I looked at the tiny curves of my fingerprints. I watched to see if the white specks would aggregate and appear over them. It was hard to make out. I dipped both hands this time and cupped the water, lifting it up to the light. I stepped in the bathroom and let the water drain ever so slowly through the crevice where my hands parted. I watched the edge of the water slowly fall along my skin. Like a bathtub draining, I waited for signs of white aggregation. Sure enough, along an indentation of the skin on my right hand, a field of white specks built up to form a slightly noticable white line.

My eyes went wide. This could be microorganisms. If so. . . then now, either originally here or coming from the comets that provided the water in the first place, there was life on Mars. And it might kill us. I hoped only that it was salt. I had tasted salt before but the Martian land gave it a different smell if it was. I was afraid I couldn't trust my senses here. I'm losing my mind with uncertainty. Was my uncertainty warranted?

I looked at my wet hand. I realized, looking at it, then looking over my shoylder to the girl on the bed, then back at the water. . . this couldn't possibly be hallucination. This was real.

I felt a build up of emotion. In case it was anger, I would have to sit on it. If I was still angry in five minutes, I'd wake the girl up and start spitting profanities. Enough mind games. I wanted the truth from her Goddammit. I left the guestroom. I crossed the living room searching for food in the kitchen. I was starving. Then I found I was craving fresh produce. Surely the crops hanging by vines in the garden would be safe and dry from the flooding. I walked across the living room and passed through the side door. I grabbed the flashlight, and entered the garden.

I rummaged through the muddy water. I grabbed a towel from a side shelf and dried my hands. There was a peach tree genetically modified to produce beautiful large peaches with added magnesium to help with my nerve growth. I pulled one off the branch and bit so quickly into it that I not only showered my face with delicious peach juice, but also bit my lip in the process and bled. It stung like hell and I let slip the bitten peach from my fingers. It fell with a plop into the garden water. I wouldn't eat it now.

I leant over to grab it. Waved my flashlight over the water and picked it out of a bed of green and yellow shrubbery. The giant liquid gelatin of water around me had been rippling and swaying through the drowned crops quietly. But as I caught the peach and snatched it up, I froze still as a section of water behind me splashed high and loud. At that same horrible instant, I felt a kick at my leg, and I fell on my knees with a great wave of water hitting my torso and face. I spit and dropped my flashlight. It disappeared under the water and all of a sudden I was on my knees, drenched in total darkness. Terror-stricken. And I froze. Knowing someone was behind me now. Intent to kill. I knew this. Because the same foot that kicked me, was brothers with the hand that pressed a cold butt of metal against the back of my head, pushing my head down, chin to chest. I heard a metal click, a cock of a hammer. I was at the mercy of a handgun. Finger tight around the trigger. I was scared to death.

The voice behind it was the epitome of desperation and starvation. "Are you alone?" said a man, voice corse from the cold.

I was too afraid to say anything. I waited to decide if this was really happening.

"Where is she?" he said, his voice a terrible, frantic whisper. "Answer me."

"Who?" Was all I said.

"The girl."

Moments like this were not my strong suit. High pressure executive decision making was never my forte and that may be because I've never amounted to much other than digging graves on Mars. Of other positions in my career I don't like to remind myself because I'm less proud of them.

The girl was someone I questioned but at this instant I was willing to protect her. This guy was no doubt the corpse who broke out of the grave. Why he wanted the girl, how he even knew about her, I did not know.

"What girl?"

"Don't play with me," he said ferociously. But then with a stick of sincerity, he added, "I may have a gun to your head but that's only to keep you quiet. I'm here to help you. Is she here?"

I was floored. Literally on my knees. Here to help me? My ass you are. "I've lived here alone for the longest time. Please, just take whatever you want and go."

"I've already seen her. Quit playing dumb. Is she sleeping or is she awake. Tell me or I will kill you before I check myself. I don't need you alive. I need her dead. Capishe?"

Honest enough. I shivered all of a sudden and had the urge to sneeze. "Alright. Don't kill me." That was priority uno. "She's sleeping."

"Good," he said. "I know who you are. I know why she's here. I know everything and any questions you may have will be answered once you do as I tell you. You're sure to be confused by a lot of things at this present time but believe me you're only going to get a load of lies from the girl. She's here on agenda from the compay. You are useless once you get her pregnant. Either a decoration or a nuisance, she'll decide once she's pregnant."

He was talking to fast for me. Not a lot of oxygen was going to my brain as it pulsed under the weight the metal gun placed on the other side of my skull. "Pregnant? Why would the company want her to get pregnant with me?"

"I'll give you the full details once you do as I tell you," he said. "I need you to go wake her up and lead her back here. I'm taking her into custody."

"What are you a cop?" I said. Was I really supposed to believe that?

"No, I've worked for the company and have been enlisted by American intelligence to take her back to Earth."

"What has she done?" I asked. "Is she a criminal?"

"She's escaped private property."

I was confused. "Whose private property?"

"No," he whispered, frustrated. "She hasn't escaped private property. She is private property."

"What do you mean? Does she have a possessive husband? Whose property is she?"

His answer changed everything. "She is property of the company's latest machine learning branch."

Machine learning? "What?" was all I said. But he need not answer. I had been away from Earth for a very long time it seems.

"You get it?" He said.

Sort of. "How?" I asked.

"It's a breakthrough in artificial reproduction," he said. "The company aims to specialize in new wet nurse technologies to allow pregnancy to be done outside of the female body after in vitro fertilization. But the technology is new and no nation on Earth has permitted free experimentation yet. Everyone from the company has been arrested on Earth for attempting to experiment on Martian soil. America especially doesn't like that."

I realized now that I must be out of my mind. This total stranger expected me to believe that I was in danger of being the first man to impregnate a robot. I sniped a joke. "Would I be considered an accomplice for impregnating the experiment?"

"Yes," he said dryly. "It's property of a publicly owned American company under Congressional investigation."

"If I see her then I'll tell her to take a hike."

"Are you bantering with me?"

Yes, I thought.

"You have two choices. Go get her or I will."

I thus remembered the gun to the back of my head was getting cold. "I'll go get her," I said. I felt the gun leave my skull and he let me stand to my feet and trudge through the darkness back to the living room. No flashlight in hand. I still hadn't seen the man's face.

But wait. I had one more question before this all went down. I turned and whispered in the darkness through the door, "Where'd the water come from?" I asked.

"Another experiment. Community on Mars," he said. "Now hurry the hell up."

I listened to him and hurried to the girl's room.