Her unit’s alarm went off, chiming softly. It was morning.

Solaris awoke to find herself still seated at her desk where she had been that night working on entering her data into the catalogue. From what the screen said, she had gotten to ‘G’ before she had dozed off, but she hardly remembered dozing off. She peeled herself off the desk’s plastic surface. The rain from yesterday had made the air very humid and the air conditioning unit in her hab was busted. Solaris caught a not very flattering whiff of body odor. She needed a shower.

The water was cold and the pressure nonexistent and after an all-too-short and disappointing shower, Solaris changed into some fresh clothes and tied her long black hair up and out of the way. Her mother would have had a heart attack if Solaris ever dared to cut it, so she settled for keeping it tied up in a tight bun. It had the desired effect of being both practical and annoying the old lady to no end. Maybe if you tried, she could hear her mother saying, you wouldn’t have so much trouble finding a date.

The weather report showed a minimal chance of acid rain, so Solaris elected to take just the respirator for her walk to the mess hall for breakfast, it wouldn’t be far anyways. She was so focused on what she was planning to work on for the day that she didn’t notice Murphy walk up beside her and address her until he grabbed her elbow. She jumped, her morning now shattered by his sudden and unwelcome appearance.

“I said, Dr. Khorana, that you still need to fill out the incident report from yesterday, remember?”, Murphy reminded her, a not-so-gentle tone in his voice.

“Oh. Yes. The report. I’ll fill it out after breakfast”, she made a move towards the mess hall’s door, she was so close to escaping his grasp.

“I’m afraid not, HQ’s asked that we resolve this matter quickly, so if you really can’t wait for breakfast, I suggest you pick something up and then meet me at my office”, Murphy released her arm and she took a step back in response.

“No, it’s fine, I’ll grab something after”,

She followed Murphy to the administrative sector of the research village, he had an office in one of the bigger prefabbed buildings. His office shared space with the security admin with whom he seemed to be getting along swimmingly. At this point he might as well run both buildings.

“So, that guy we found, what’s going to happen with him?”, Solaris asked as they passed into Murphy’s office.

“Does it really matter? Don’t you have important science to focus on? You know, ‘discovery of the century’ and all?” Murphy asked, then as he sat down he shrugged, “Since the university’s a Martian legal entity they’re sending Martian police to come pick him up. They’ll bring him back to Mars where they’ll figure out who he is and put him in the can for a few years for trespassing on an active research site. The sooner you finish the incident report, the sooner he can get going to where he needs to be – out of my hair. Now, here’s the paperwork – get to writing”. Murphy offered her a clipboard with a large stack of paper, it was surprising how little bureaucracy had changed.

Solaris accepted the clipboard and began to fill out the various forms that needed to be filled out before she could write her written statement, then she’d need to affirm that her statement was true, then she’d need to prove that she was of sound mind writing the statement, then she’d need to prove that she really was Dr. Solaris Khorana, etc., etc.

Murphy spent the time sitting at his desk, sometimes engaged with his computer, sometimes on a call with various people that he usually swore at. Solaris felt like a fly on the wall of someone whose personal life she wasn’t supposed to be seeing and she hoped that the man would find a reason for one or both of them to leave. Her hopes were answered when one of the security contractors poked his head into the small office.

“Hey, Murphy, one of your docs – Dr. Simmons from genetics – needs to be pulled in for a drunk and disorderly. Might be good for you to be there when it goes down”.

Murphy muttered an expletive then grabbed his respirator and gestured to Solaris, “I can’t leave you in my office alone, not that I don’t trust you – it’s just university policy. Please, follow this man here to one of our spare workrooms where you can finish the paperwork in peace, then you can leave”.

Solaris gathered up the many sheets of paper and followed the security contractor to the aforementioned room who then explained, “Bathrooms are right as you exit, on the left is a vending machine. Everything past that door at the end of the hall is off-limits – don’t be going for any long walks without one of us”. Then he left. Solaris returned to filling out the forms. It was absolutely mind-numbing. If there was a hell, it was full of bureaucrats and mountains of forms.

The hallway they had put her in was quiet, she counted maybe once or twice a set of footsteps travelling down it in the past half hour. She thought about the strange man and wondered how he’d gotten to the Henge without a respirator. Why did the vines behave so oddly around him? Why had there been another earthquake? He was obviously a spacewalker, someone who had spent more of their life in artificial gravity than on a real planet, so why was he here? It took months of preparation and planning for a Spacewalker to adjust their bodies to better handle planetary gravities so why go through all that to end up underground? And, thanks to Murphy, she’d never get answers.

Or would she?

Solaris knew that the security office must keep their holding cells pretty close by, and she knew that behind the door at the end of the hall was ‘off-limits’. She also knew that almost no one would be walking down the hall and Dr. Simmons would probably need the whole security team to wrangle him in his inebriation. Now was precisely the right time to go poking around where she shouldn’t to talk to people that she wasn’t supposed to talk to. In ten minutes, she could be back in this room, and no one would be wiser.

She left the papers on the desk and cautiously peeked out into the hall. No one was there. Walking as quietly as she could manage, she arrived at the ‘forbidden’ door. It had no lock, which made sense, the university was only expecting the odd drunk or two when they designed their security offices. She listened at the door for sounds of people on the other side, but it was silent, so she pushed it open and snuck through.

She had been right, this door led to the holding cells. They were all empty, excepting the last one in which sat the strange man. His expression was thoughtful and somewhat sad and upon seeing Solaris he simply asked one question.

“This really is Earth, isn’t it?”

“Yes”, Solaris answered, “this is Earth”.