Desert Redemption: Amir and Juliana's Quest for Power

The wind blasted through the cracks of the broken window. The desert's dust was relentless, and it found its way into everything. The cracked ceiling tiles rattled like loose teeth, the chipped windows rattled like wind chimes in a storm. Juliana's eyes fluttered open as she reached over to the digital clock on her bedside table. 0500 hours. She sat up slowly and rubbed her eyes, yawning.

"Amir," she called softly down the hall. "Wake up."

She shuffled out of bed and walked to the bathroom, turning on the light and splashing water on her face in the sink. Her hair was tangled from sleeping on it, and it took a moment for her to brush out the knots with her fingers. She pulled it back into a ponytail and dressed quickly in a tank top and shorts before walking into the kitchen with a yawn.

"Good morning," whispered Amir. He was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea in a red glass cup as he thumbed through his holy book under the dim light of an incandescent bulb. His beard had grown long since they left Mars City over a month ago, but he carefully kept it groomed so that only a slight bit covered his lips, chin, and cheeks. It made him look even more pious than he already did, though that wasn't hard given his apparel: brown pants with a matching tunic shirt, brown vest with white stitching on the edges, and sandals that went up to his knees. He looked like he just walked out of some desert village hundreds of years ago. He always wore this outfit while they travelled through treacherous territory where he could be mistaken for someone affiliated with one gang or another.

"Oh good," said Juliana as she sat down next to him with a bowl full of kibble for their small robot helper. "I overslept again."

"Everything will be fine," replied Amir before taking another sip from his cup with his free hand before setting it down on the table next to him. He closed his holy book and put it in his bag before looking up at Juliana with earnest eyes, as if reassuring her. "The robot is ready for today's journey."

"How much longer until we find enough scrap to fix our ship?" asked Juliana as she poured herself some coffee from their ancient kettle that sat on top of one of their many portable cooking units they used when they couldn't use their stove in their dilapidated home in this Martian city's abandoned suburbs. She'd always wanted to travel through space when she was growing up - she loved engineering and mechanics - but instead she ended up stuck here in this city after her parents were killed by gangsters who thought they had something valuable hidden away in their house, which turned out not to be true at all; they were poor farmers who settled here after Earth was destroyed centuries ago by warring factions of religious fundamentalists who fought each other until there was nothing left but ash on both sides of the planet's surface, leaving everyone else behind to die from starvation or radiation poisoning or whatever else might ail them from centuries of nuclear fallout drifting around in the atmosphere after detonating an atomic bomb somewhere around 150 years ago for some reason that no one remembered anymore because nearly everything about Earth was lost when the last remaining humans fled to Mars back when our sun started dying 150 years ago for no apparent reason whatsoever except for some paranoid scientists who said something about solar flares and magnetic fields being affected by nearby planets orbiting our sun being disrupted somehow by an unknown force located close to Earth's orbit around our sun; but anyway...

Juliana blinked back tears and took another swig of coffee before continuing: "What if we never find enough scrap? What if we can't get off this planet? What if we're stuck here forever?"