JENNY GOES TO MARS!

'And how the Hell are they going to get you to Mars honey?' asked Jenny's mom who sounded like an angry American but wasn't angry or American.

'Gee Mom, I don't know, a rocket or something,' was Jenny's weak and equally Americanised reply.

'They don't use rockets anymore. They use shuttles,' snapped Jenny's mom.

'Well a shuttle then. I just want to go to Mars. What's the big deal?'

Jenny's mom's eyes flared.

'The big deal is that my seventeen year old daughter wants to go to a distant planet, has little chance of getting there, none of getting back, doesn't even know if she's going in a rocket or a shuttle and wants me to give her three thousand dollars to pay the Goddamn fare.'

'Rocket, shuttle, what's the difference? It's a spaceship. A spaceship is a spaceship. And I won't be leaving for ten years or something. I'll be like twenty seven. I'll have to train and stuff first and I'll pay you back the money and anyways, you spend thousands of dollars on stuff all the time.'

'What do I spend thousands of dollars on all the time?' demanded Jenny's mom. (Euros were not mentioned but were probably the currency under discussion.)

'I don't know. You got a fancy car and go to the stores in it. I want to go to Mars. Going to Mars is better than going to stores.'

Jenny had a good point and her mom knew it.

'Well if you want to die in outer space you can earn the frikkin fare yourself. The whole thing is a scam anyway. You won't be going anywhere. These guys are just going to vanish. It's the modelling school all over again.'

'I didn't want to go to that modelling school, you wanted me to go to that.'

Knowing that this point was also a good one, Jenny's mom said nothing. After a pause, Jenny stood up and spoke with the best approximation of steely determination she could muster. She declared that she would earn the Mars money herself and that she would leave the planet. She told her mom that there was nothing for her here. She said that no one friended her on Facebook or would even notice she was gone. Tears welled in Jenny's eyes as she declared, 'I'm not staying in this place!' and then she stormed out of the room.

****

Ten years later, Jenny found herself recalling that conversation. She'd since found fame as one of two females on a seven member crew, the first to leave Earth as part of a Kickstarter funded exploration of Mars. They wouldn't be doing much exploring though. They'd just be trying to stay alive, keeping the refrigerators working and staying underground to avoid the radiation and the dust. Jenny wondered if they'd brought enough toilet paper.

Despite a couple of hundred trolls plaguing her Twitter account, Jenny had enjoyed the fame of the last few years. She liked the attention and the compliments, the interviews and the photo shoots. Modelling school wouldn't have got her into so many magazines. And she actually had fans. Jenny never thought she would have fans. She still didn't have any real friends but she did have fans and they were crazy for her, waving her off and wishing her the best. They threw so many flowers as she boarded the Vanguard – that was the name of the shuttle. Jenny thought her mom would be pleased too but she wasn't. Jenny's mom was just quiet. She didn't speak a word in the weeks leading to Jenny's departure except to ask Jenny if she would be able to Skype. 'There's no internet in space mom,' Jenny answered. Her mom nodded.

So here was Jenny, looking at a blue ball getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and then vanishing, forever. She panicked momentarily or could feel herself beginning to panic but then she did the breathing exercise thing they showed her. She did it hard. She looked at the rest of the crew and no one was saying anything. Jenny didn't wonder what anyone else was thinking. She rarely wondered what other people thought. She didn't even wonder why she never wondered, she just never wondered. She lacked a sense of wonder. Even here, in outer space, she was not struck by wonder. She was just wondering about herself, the only thing she ever wondered about. She wondered if she'd be happy now that she'd finally gotten away from that blue ball and its confusing inhabitants. The rest of the crew didn't bother her. They had their own stuff going on. If anything, they were just like her. People who wanted off the Earth and away from humanity. The crew rarely made eye contact with each other and their conversation was utilitarian – 'pass me this,' 'activate that,' 'engaging thrusters,' that sort of thing.

Remembering the rest of the crew, Jenny decided to take a conversational plunge. She was more tense about it than she was about leaving her home planet. She raised her voice, kind of half looked at another of the astronauts and asked – 'do you think we're going to die?'

A murmured 'dunno,' and a shrug was the response.

'It would really suck to come all this way and just, like, die,' said Jenny.

Then Jenny looked out at space again. She didn't even see any stars as the Vanguard shot on through the darkness, oblivious to the cosmos and escaping life.

'I'm going to Mars,' Jenny muttered to herself.

'I'm going to Mars and I'm in outer space.'

Jenny clenched her fists and her nails sank into her palms like vicious teeth.

'I'm in outer space.'

'I'm in outer space.'

'I'm in outer space.'

'I'm in outer fucking space.'

JUST JENNY

Jenny was glad to have finally found a reason for being. She'd had trouble finding any reason but was actively searching. Her lack of interest in just about everything had isolated her. She was always on the periphery of conversations at her school, simulating interest and nodding and pretending to laugh or gasp at the right times but never truly engaging. She was no one's best friend or worst enemy. She was just Jenny. 'Oh, it's just Jenny', people said. Even her mother said it. Just Jenny, someone adults kept alive and healthy to see what might become of her. Well, she had decided what she was going to become and, my oh my, what she became.

Despite her persistence, Jenny's online forum contributions and Facebook posts always went unacknowledged. That is until Aarzam from Luton (a place in England) started responding to her because she responded to him. He kept going on about God and justice and all this stuff and Jenny asked him what he was talking about. What followed was a correspondence that lasted for months. Jenny didn't really care what they were talking about, the important thing was that they were talking. Jenny never had a point of view on anything so she consciously decided to adopt Aarzam's point of view on everything. Not everyone agreed with Aarzam, in fact some people thought he was crazy or evil, but he got people's attention and attention was something Jenny craved.

Anyhoo, as the girl in question would put it herself, this all led to Jenny being stopped at the airport and asked to step into a back room to answer some questions. She told them, flatly (everything she said came out flatly) that her destination was Syria and that she was joining her boyfriend. The airport security were nonplussed by this strange girl in a homemade burka fashioned from a bed sheet dyed black. Things became even more confusing when they asked Jenny where she was from. South County Dublin was the answer but her accent was clearly United States. She told them her 'mom' spoke like that too. She was asked if her 'mom' was American. 'I don't think so', Jenny said. They asked Jenny if she had ever been to the United States. Jenny said she hadn't. They asked Jenny why she had an American accent. Jenny wasn't aware that she had an American accent and said it might be because she 'watched a lot of shows'.

So, like, anyways, things turned into a really big deal. Aarzam had been seen in a viral where a non-unionised freelance journalist got beheaded. Jenny became the opposite of famous, infamous, for a while but then she just became famous when she renounced her newfound beliefs and ran a mini-marathon in aid of something, she wasn't quite sure what. This was all on the advice of an agent Jenny's mother employed. 'We're going to need someone to handle this Goddamn fucking shit storm', was Jenny's mother's reasoning.

The newspapers and the TV went crazy and spoke to the other kids in Jenny's school and they said that she always seemed like she was keeping secrets. Jenny didn't know they thought that about her. It was kind of cool. Better than boring. Jenny went from being 'Just Jenny' to 'Jihad Jenny' in the space of a few days. Some professor guy called Schlemp wanted to talk to her for a book he was writing called 'Online Anomie International: Islamic Extremism and the Search for Likes'. They were going to make a movie too with Saoirse Ronan acting as Jenny. 'She's OK I guess, she's kind of old though', Jenny told Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show. Ryan asked Jenny if she'd lift her burka and give the audience a peek at her pretty face. Jenny did. There was a big round of applause and then Ryan gave everyone a hamper of beauty products.

Jenny's mother was really happy with how the whole thing panned out but she was 'really pissed' at first. There was silence in the car when she picked Jenny up from the airport but then she suddenly exploded. She screamed and slapped her open palm against the steering wheel.

'How the fucking motherfuck did you wind up facebooking with a bunch of Wahhabi crazies?'

'Jeez Mom, take it easy. I don't even know what Wahbabbi or whatever is. I just made friends with a Muslim boy is all. What's the big deal?'

'Just made friends with a Muslim boy?' Jenny's mother repeated, emphasising her incredulity.

'Yeah', said Jenny, 'he kind of like listened to me'.

'And what the heck were you saying that made him listen to you honey?'

'I dunno', replied Jenny, her voice trailing off. 'Just stuff I guess, ...just, y'know, ...stuff.'

JENNY TALKS TO MOM

'I just don't feel the same way other people do about stuff', said Jenny sadly.

'People don't have to agree about everything', Jenny's mother reassured.

'No Mom', said Jenny testily, 'I mean I don't feel like others feel. I don't have feelings like them.'

'Feelings?' Jenny's mother intoned.

'Yeah, people feel things. They really feel things. They fall really hard in love for each other and feel really strongly about wars and stuff. They go crazy. I don't have those feelings, at least not so much.'

'And how does that make you feel honey?'

Jenny glanced up at her mother. Their eyes briefly met to acknowledge the irony. Then Jenny dropped her head again.

'I guess it makes me feel lonely. I guess that's the only feeling I have. The lonely feeling.'

Jenny's mother looked at her sad daughter. A curtain of hair spilled from Jenny's head onto the table, hiding her face. Was she crying under there? Jenny's mother would have pitied her daughter if she could have but she could not. 

'I guess it runs in the family', Jenny's mother said with a sigh as she turned on the juicer and annihilated the conversation with the sound of whirring blades.