I’m working on my (hopefully) debut novel, about a troubled space cop named Dangerous Dan right now, about 1/10th of the way through. It is a space adventure, inspired, of course, by Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and the Great Prophet himself, Vonnegut. Obviously I don’t claim to be 1/10th as good as they, but we can dream.

This is a short selection. I’m still introducing the main characters and their environments.

Here I’m describing how the Martian colony came to be what it is. Enjoy!

The human race discovered that it was the only sentient form of life in its solar system at about the same time as the first aliens came around to politely mug us. Human scope took a great leap then. At one moment, humans were warring bitterly against each other over Earth resources, and the next they were hugging each other in mortal fear and fighting as one.

We have now adopted the much more civilized practice of financially ruining one another rather than the barbarian practice of hacking each other to bits. Some call it progress. Some say it is better to be dead than ruined. Only the ruined say the latter, though, and they’re famously maudlin.

In the course of repelling the first wave of muggers, Earth scientists captured and reverse engineered every piece of alien tech it possibly could. By war’s end, humans found themselves able to travel the heavens with relative ease, which led to manned exploration of the solar system. This, in turn, led to colonization attempts on anything that had a solid surface to stand on, and a few new kinds of celebrities.

Some planets had supported colonization very well. Others not so much. The colonists were nothing if not enterprising, however, seeing each and every planet as a giant ball of resources just waiting to be mined.

Of the colonized planets, Mars was the most heavily populated. It had a surface that one could stand on, a little water, and wasn’t too cold. Miners had flocked to it hoping to discover untold riches in gold or diamonds, but had limited success. What gold they found was barely valuable enough to pay for the process of mining it and shipping it off world. In short, Mars was exactly what it appeared to be from above: a giant ball of rust.

Not willing to give up so easily, the wealthy Earth businessmen who backed the colonies bought heaps of advertising and a fleet of lobbyists on Earth to tell the story of the first planetary gold rush. Books were written. Blockbuster movies were made. The tourism trade flourished, generating many thousands of times more money than any mining operation. Profits soared, weighed down only by the cost of the mining that the tourists had come to see and take part in in the first place.

As a result, the miners became adventure travel guides. They began to be paid not on the value of the minerals they mined, but on how miner-ish they looked. Geologists and engineers were fired, and hard men with lantern jaws were hired in their places. This was fortunate, as mining crews occasionally fought over the most scenic travel spots, and engineers are quite useless in a scuffle.

A few months ago, I devised a plan. Yes, a plan to go outside. Not only that, I planned to go outside, armed only with a few cleverly sewn bits of nylon fabric and a mound of pop tarts, and stay there for a few days. This weekend that plan was realized.

Having done my last hiking trip solo, I knew that to be a poor plan. Thankfully, my friends Chris and Brandon agreed to come along. The three of us piloted my car up to Vogel State Park on Friday. As the driver, I operated the wheely turny part and the pedal mechanisms. Chris navigated using his iPhone, and Brandon snored in the back seat.

Vogel State Park, or “The Vog,” as local refer to it, is quite lovely. It is situated in a narrow valley, has a very pretty lake, and is surrounded by trees.

It is also surrounded by bloodthirsty 500lb bears who would like nothing better than to bite my soft city ass off, but I’ll get to that later.

Once at Vogel, we paid for a hiking permit, a fishing license, and a parking permit, and checked our gear. I had all the essentials. Sleeping bag: check. Hiking poles: check. 16oz Bourbon: check. Red Crocs: check.

We shouldered our packs and headed up the road to the start of the Coosa Backcountry Trail, marked by the yellow blazes. If you don’t know what a blaze is, it’s a little patch of paint on a tree that shows a hiker which trail they’re on. These trails spiderweb through the backcountry, you see, and it can be confusing to navigate them even with a map. The blazes help a lot, usually. On this particular trail, however, the blazes came in as bewildering an array of colors as Crocs do.

We hiked three miles to West Wolf Creek, found a suitable site, and set up camp. It should be said, at this point, that the common wisdom is that one does not cook and eat one’s dinner in the same area as one’s tent. This is because food smells attract the aforementioned bloodthirsty bears, who will happily disembowel city dwellers and prance merrily on their innards.

For these reasons, we cooked and ate our dinner a suitable distance from our tents, then gathered around a fire as the light faded. Belly full and bedtime fast approaching, I happily nipped at my bourbon.

Brandon sipped coffee. Chris looked out into the distance, toward where we’d cooked dinner. “That,” he said, with admirable calm, “is a bear.”

We all looked. It was indeed a black bear, wandering around near where we’d cooked our dinner. Later, on retelling the story, many have asked me if it was big. I’ve only ever seen one wild bear. It looked to be the size of a schoolbus. He wandered back and forth over our cooking site, then disappeared into the woods. The three of us chatted excitedly, exchanging wild conjecture and ideas for hasty bear defense.

Brandon was in favor of sharp sticks. Chris wished he’d brought a gun. I suggested we appease the bear with sexual favors but was voted down. In any case, the bear had left the scene and did not return.

His memory, however, lived on in technicolor. Once in my sleeping bag, I began a long mockery of sleep. The wind blew in the trees, causing them to rub and creak together. Every little sound was the bear returning to slay me and my friends. Do bears like bourbon? I had no idea.

After a long, long while, it was day time. I had survived the night. We hiked in excellent weather and didn’t see any bears for the rest of the weekend, but I know they’re out there, waiting to kill me.