The Red Planet Pup

Doby woke up in his hovering doghouse and sniffed the morning.

He sniffed again.

The morning smelled like nothing.

Everything in the Mars dome of 3066 was smooth and clean and quiet. The glass ceiling arched far above him, pale pink with sunrise. Flying cars hummed past it like slow bees. The floor was soft and silver, and it never got mud on it, because there was no mud.

Robo-Cat floated in through the window hatch, holding a bowl in his paws. The kibble inside glowed orange, like tiny warm lights.

"Breakfast, Doby," said Robo-Cat. "Flavor setting: Beef. Certified delicious."

Doby sniffed the bowl. His ears went down, just a little.

"It doesn't smell like beef."

"It smells like nothing," said Robo-Cat, "which is very clean."

"Beef isn't supposed to be clean. Beef is supposed to be beefy."

Robo-Cat's whisker-lights blinked. "Noted. Logging complaint number four hundred and twelve."

"You don't have to count them."

"I know," said Robo-Cat. "Counting them is my hobby."

Doby ate the kibble anyway. It was warm in his mouth, but it was light as air, like biting into a little sun that wasn't really there. He swallowed and licked the bowl and thought, not for the first time, that something was missing. He didn't know what. He only knew his nose was bored.

"Park time!" he barked, and bounced off the floating bed, down, down, out the hatch.

The zero-gravity park was Doby's favorite place in the dome, even though it was mostly metal. Dogs floated there in slow loops, chasing laser dots that zoomed along the walls. The lasers were fast and red and bright.

They were also, Doby thought, kind of boring. But he chased them anyway.

A red dot shot past his nose. He kicked off a rail and flew after it.

"Slow down!" Robo-Cat zipped behind him, tail propellers whirring. "The park rules say—"

"Rules can't smell either! I checked!"

"That's not— that doesn't even mean anything—Doby, the wall!"

Doby turned. The wall was very close.

THUMP.

He bounced off a hover-doghouse and tumbled tail-over-ears through the air. Above him, something clattered. A hatch on the old storage chute had shaken loose, and a box tumbled out, spinning slowly through the air until it bumped to a stop on the floor.

Doby caught a rail with one paw, flipped, and landed on his feet, mostly. He trotted over.

The box was dusty. Nothing in the dome was ever dusty. Doby pressed his nose to it. Dust smelled like — something! Old and papery and a little bit sweet. His tail wagged for the first time all day.

"You knocked a box out of Old Storage," said Robo-Cat, peering down at it. "Congratulations. Now we are in trouble."

"It rattles," said Doby, pawing at the lid.

"Rattling is not a good reason to open things."

"It's the best reason to open things."

The lid popped off. Inside, wrapped in soft silver cloth, was a book. Not a holo-screen. Not a tablet. A real book with pages — and when Doby touched it, light bloomed up out of it like a slow fountain.

Words floated above the pages:

EARTH ARCHIVE — YEAR 2066. PROPERTY OF PROF. PAWS.

Images rose into the air, bigger than Doby.

Hills. Rolling, tumbling hills — and they were a color Doby had no name for. Not silver, not red, not pink. It was cool and deep and soft to look at, like the color was breathing.

"Robo-Cat," Doby whispered. "What is that color?"

Robo-Cat's scanner eye clicked. "Green. Wavelengths five hundred to five hundred sixty nanometers. Formerly common on—"

"No. What is it?"

Robo-Cat paused. His little fans whirred. "...I don't have a better answer."

The images kept coming. Tall green trees with brown trunks. A blue ocean moving, moving, always moving. And there, on a hill of green — a stick. A real wooden stick, brown and bumpy, lying in the grass.

Doby's mouth opened. He had chewed rubber bones and laser-bones and glow-bones his whole life. He had never once seen a stick.

Then the page turned, and Doby forgot how to wag.

It was raining.

Rain fell on big green leaves in the picture, and every drop made a sound — tap, tap, tap-pa-tap — a thousand tiny paws drumming, soft and busy, all at once. The sound filled the whole park. Dogs floating nearby turned their heads.

"Make it louder," Doby said.

"It's at maximum," said Robo-Cat.

"It's the loudest thing I ever heard." Doby's paws pressed against the floor. "Robo-Cat. What does rain smell like?"

Robo-Cat was quiet for a long time. Longer than Doby had ever heard him be quiet.

"Doby," he said at last. "I have never smelled anything. Not once."

Doby looked at his friend. He didn't laugh or make a joke. He put his paw gently on the glowing page, where the rain was falling and falling.

"That's the saddest thing you ever said."

"Logging it anyway," said Robo-Cat, very softly.

The green light of the Holo-Book soaked into Doby's gray paw pad. When he lifted it, the pad glowed faintly green for a moment, like a tiny leaf printed on his foot.

Then it faded.

Doby looked at his paw. Then he looked at the door at the far end of the dome — the big round door with the paw-print on it. Professor Paws' lab.

"Where are you going?" Robo-Cat called. "Park time isn't over!"

"I want to ask Professor Paws what green feels like."

Robo-Cat sighed. His tail propellers spun up and he followed. "The Professor answers questions with bigger questions. You know this."

"Good," said Doby, trotting faster. "I have a really big one."

The corridor to the lab was gray and quiet. But under the round door, a thin line of light leaked out onto the floor.

The light was green.

Inside, something hummed — low and warm and patient, like a big machine waiting to be asked somewhere to go.

Doby stopped at the door. His tail wagged, slow and unsure. He lifted one paw and held it in the air above the door panel, not quite touching. The green light caught the tip of one whisker and lit it up like a tiny blade of grass.

And the Holo-Book in his other paw hummed too, as if it knew the way home.