It doesn’t seem that long ago, does it?

Now, though, there’s more than one settlement, with new owners coming in, redesigning the old housing units to look familiarly like ancestral homes on planet Earth.

Used to be we thought we’d start over.

Not anymore.

The humans have generally congregated into one or settlements while the exploration bots keep spreading across the planet, no need of houses or other reminders of a life they neither remember nor need to carry on for the sake of descendants.

We are one group, one “people,” but our requirements for stimulating sensory organs vastly different than algorithms designed to process sensor array input.

I am a farmer for us, making sure we have the energy sources for our various sets of states of energy.

This is my story.

I live in a small hut at the end of the hydroponic growth chambers.

I provide food and nourishment for those amongst us who eat through their mouths or mouth equivalents.

I also maintain a miniature factory that cranks out spare body parts for our robotic friends.

The medical staff handles the surgical procedures like replacing body parts for our biological friends, however much I’ve protested that I can easily handle those duties, having built a robotic surgeon from parts I manufactured myself, downloading new algorithms from my Earth-based social network of farmers, ranchers and DIYers who delve into self-sufficiency and other survivalist tactics appropriate to solar system explorers like myself.

As a farmer, my secondary duty is analysing soil samples to determine which chemical reactions I need to conquer in order to convert Martian soil into edible foodstuff palatable by crew members with a variety of tastes and preferences.

In other words, I’m an ecosystem expert, creating microorganisms from scratch that efficiently perform the soil conversions for me so I can concentrate on my main duties that feel like I have to pull a rabbit out of a hat or worse, water out of thin air.

Water, water, water.

Solar energy, though weaker on Mars than on Earth, is abundant, which makes water production easier than we first thought.

But, problems crop up all the time.

Most of us may be rational scientists and engineers but that doesn’t mean we’re always careful about conserving water.

We can talk about that later.

Lee is coming over to review my plans for tightly-regulated metabolism control which, I believe, will greatly reduce our dependence on water.

Designing microorganisms has given me insight into the mechanisms of the human body that we were just beginning to understand when we assigned humans a decade ago to train for this mission.

If only we knew then what I know now!

Redesigning a human from the inside out is my ultimate goal and will make our Mars settlements grow like weeds, if my calculations are correct (a quick shoutout to my buddies back home who let me borrow their supercomputers).

Will Lee allocate the supplies I need?

Here’s Lee.  Talk to you again soon.