Marilyn’s Martian Departure

The desert has a funny way of making the impossible look like just another Tuesday.

Out past the last cluster of Joshua trees, where the white sand meets the deep blue tilt of the atmosphere, a quiet morning was suddenly interrupted by a high-altitude house call. It wasn’t a glitch in the signal; it was a full-blown departure.

Floating just above the cracked earth, a fleet of candy-colored rockets prepped for launch. They were beautiful, hand-assembled machines—splashed with vibrant electric blues and heat-treated golds that looked less like cold steel and more like cosmic jewelry. At the center of it all, a massive red-starred heavy lifter shimmered with an iridescent sheen, its internal glow pulsing with a steady, rhythmic cyan light.

But the real star of the show was drifting closer to the ground in a custom-built transport bubble. Looking perfectly poised in a vibrant orange flight suit, she piloted the pink-hued glass craft with the effortless grace of someone who had done this a thousand times before. She didn't look back at the dust or the heat; she was focused on the horizon.

With a low-frequency thrum that felt like a gentle "goodbye" to the Mojave, the fleet began to rise. No smoke, no fire—just a clean transition into the infinite. One moment she was part of the landscape, and the next, she was just a fading glint of gold against the sky, leaving nothing behind but a lingering sense that the universe had just gotten a little more colorful.

Marilyn’s Martian Departure is available in The Cargo Bay