The ashen sky was falling, this is our acid rain, the poisonous remnants of glory bored by those who came before us.

Generations who when alive had an Earth they could call home, the offspring of the ones whose industrialisation of the fragile planet left it baron and inhospitable.

We’d inherited a world of darkness, the ever growing clouds of smog and decay, denying us the birthright of sunlight.

If not for the technological advances of the 22nd century our bodies would be just as plagued as what was left of nature. Synthetic solutions for organic life, as inauthentic as the world we had created on-top of this floating red rock.

By the end of 2090’s migration to Mars was in full swing, oxygen had been introduced to the atmosphere two decades prior, with the great barrier leaf initiative - a changing of the ecosystem of the planet, by forcing upon it organic life and chemical reactions to force the mass production of breathable air within a contained layer of of the surface of the planet.

Much as had happened on our ancestral home-world, humanity brought with it ingenuity, innovation, and war.

What had taken over a hundred and thirty years to build took only a decade to crumble and shatter.

Unlike with Earth, where life could sprout from the very place where death had preceded it, Mars was less forgiving for our transgressions. We may have deceived its chemical makeup with our lab produced oxygen, but physically it would remain hostile and brutalist in its approach to dealing with organic decay.

We fooled ourselves, the more aggressively we built it up, the harder we fell when the quakes started. The ground would rupture violently, gushing flammable gasses that upon reacting with our alien materials became molten lava like and burned for as long as they were in some sort of liquid form.

This land was stubborn, and unwilling to mould for us, it was like staring into a mirror at our own unwavering belief in ourselves, expect the planet was winning the staring contest.

Dry, desert like without the flowing sand, just a rage filled rock, who disconnected from it’s Sun was now suffocating us in a death trap our own making.

The smog and darkness would sit still in the air above our reach and after particularly hot periods we called our Summers would rain upon is lumps of onyx coloured snow - if inhaled would corrode the body from the inside in a matter of days, with no cure.

It was either constant overcast darkness or pitch black, there was no in-between unless you survived in the metro-dome cities, where you’d compete for survival, whether that be for a crumb or place to rest your head, a thousand others would lay claim to what you’d laid your eyes and heart’s desire on.

We deserved every second of it. Too afraid to call it quits, too hopeful and full of pride we survived through sheer spirit. The planet gave us no sustenance, just death on its surface, everything we had we had brought, built and produced in laboratories and clinics.

Stories were shared of how full of life Earth used to be, now we dreamt of this haven we’d never again call home, and we wasted away on the planet that would never allow us the mercy of calling it our home.

Mars.

The crimson planet of darkness humanity’s eventual final place of resting.

The red death.