On Mars there is a material lab. In the lab there is a garden hidden in an unused chamber. In the garden there is an artificial pond. In the pond there are lotus plants. The lotus plants and the garden are tended by an old couple for over two years now. They planted the lotus to warm the pond. The old woman bathes in the pond to soothe the fish scales growing on her back.

The old couple are let into the lab by a girl. They met on their plane from Earth and filled in paperwork together in line to the migration bureau. Then a month after they settled, the old woman found faint scales on her shoulder. On Earth when people grow scales they would bathe in freshwater marshes where lotus grow. On Mars there is no freshwater. The girl helped the old couple get into her lab. There is an empty, child-sized water tank with tunable temperature and acidity supplements. The couple starts tending to the tank every Sunday night when the other lab members leave the office for their rare break.

Over the months the tank grew living things, plants. The foliage and mud quickly covered the bottom. Some planktons turned the water scents and colors. The lotus had the hardest time growing in this condition, but in the second year the root started to cling on and the stem shot above the surface. The old woman’s scales grew faster or slower but never disappeared. At weekly meetings, the girl would explain that the tank is for a biochemical experiment. “It’s interesting that the surface shell strength is showing transition when there is no change. We should hold the isothermal annealing time and check the surface energy again,” she would point to the x-ray diffraction plots and say. The professor and the labmates would ask some tangential questions or fight their own theories.

One day the girl got an official letter saying her grandma’s familial VISA is approved and she will arrive 1 month later. The girl immediately asks all her friends and colleagues for advice about how to help grandma settle down. Grandma is her only relative but they haven’t been able to reach each other for over two years. Everyday after work, the girl prepares one item for grandma’s arrival: a room in her apartment, other Earth elders to meet, Mars living guides from grandma’s favorite website. She just needs a reunion gift. There is a personal recipe grandma makes on celebration days, a broth soup with pork ribs and lotus roots. The flavor and scene of eating this soup linger in the girl’s dream. The image of the soup appears bigger and bigger whenever she revisits the thought of grandma. The problem is that she can’t find cookable roots anywhere: Mars has harsh conditions for natural cultivation, Earth imports have stopped during the past two years. Her last hope was the old couple’s herbal lotus. Can I take a bit of the root, I really need it for my grandma, she asked them two weeks ago. They are not mature yet, they can’t be cooked right now, they told her. I can try to accelerate their growth with either radiation or chemical excitant, she suggested. You can’t speed up natural things like that, they repelled. Tonight grandma will come. The girl knows no other way of a gift. She decides to steal a bit, just a bit. It’s Sunday night, the couple is coming in 4 hours. The girl opens Geogebra on her laptop and clicks “start recording.” A light starts flashing in the wet lab. Holding the paper and a few radishes she follows the light in.

(See the continuation in chapter 1)